This is the story of my life, and my life-long ambition of becoming a game designer. Since my memory is pretty much a swiss cheese with more holes than cheese remaining, my timeline or recollections might be a bit vague; however, I will do my best to be as precise as possible.

First contact

My first contact with video games came through my father. He was always obsessed by modern technology, and this spectacular new invention called the “computer” quickly caught his attention. It was no wonder then that, from an early age, computers were prevalent on our houshold, and thus in my life.

My dad, an amateur programmer himself, programmed some basic BASIC applications to let me toy around with the computer, and learn some stuff in the meantime. My first contact with computers was a fact. After that, some educational DOS games followed, as well as the first “real” games I got in contact with: the King’s Quest series, the Leasure Suit Larry adventure games, and a freeware (yes, in 1990) ASCII game called Castle Adventure. I, being a wee lad at the time, could hardly understand anything that was happening, and obviously (and perhaps fortunately), the erotic undertone of the Larry games was also lost on me. But these “computer games” surely fascinated me, and I quickly got the hang of randomly clicking the screen until something happened and then clicking some more.

From then on, games would be a constant, but not yet important part of my life. I would be playing games casually all throughout my childhood. Some stuck with me more than others. I will now briefly discuss the games that, in retrospect, influenced me most, in the order in which they were released. This was the golden age of adventures, and adventures were pretty much the only genre my dad played at the time (he also never bought Lucasarts adventures, so I missed those – caught up with them since then though). Most of the games in this list will therefore be adventures.

Prince of Persia (1989) was a first in many ways. It was the first game to use rotoscoping (a form of motion capture) for its protagonist, resulting in unparallelled realism in animation. It also invented a new genre of platform games that is highly popular up to this day. It was also the first game that really got me hooked. I recall playing this game with my nephews whenever we were together and a PC was nearby; we played this game for hours on end, trying to figure out each level piece by piece. I played this game so much as a kid, that I can still finish the game at first attempt when I replay it today. For years, this was the game I wanted to make, and wanted to improve on. Many of my first attempts at making a game of my own were (failed) clones of Prince of Persia.
King’s Quest 5 (1990) is the first adventure I recall that I somewhat knew what I was doing. I had figured out how the inventory worked, and how I could solve puzzles to advance the game. The story was lost on my, since I could not read or understand a word of English at age 6, but I understood the main plot line my looking at the pictures. I could follow along with the epic quest of King Graham to get back his castle and beloved family, and boy did I get immersed for the first time! The cursed forest at the start really had me running scared, as did the creepy end sequence where you sneak around the house, avoiding patrols and setting everything up for the grand finale, which was an epic spellbattle with the evil wizard Mordack. Since I did not really know what I was doing and ignored all the hints scattered throughout the game, this was by far the most difficult scene in the game.It’s actually quite surprising that I finished this game at all (I also don’t recall exactly how much I did myself, and how much my dad did), since this is considered one of the most unfairly difficult adventure games ever made, full of totally illogical and senseless puzzles which can stop any smart adult from ever completing the game. To be honest, the hint book I found in the box (I still have every game) also might have helped.

Lemmings (1991) was a very smart puzzle game, which required quick reflexes, out-of-the-box thinking and a lot of patience. This game, developed by what would later on become Rockstar and make one of the most succesful game series of all time (GTA), truly was one of the best games of the time. Along with Prince of Perisa, it had me hooked playing the game for hours with my nephews every Wednesday when we would get together at my grandmother’s to eat pancakes and play (videogames). Not so much a huge influence as a huge time sink to me.
King’s Quest 6 (1992). Now we get to the big one. If I would have to give one pivotal video game from my childhood, this would be it. By that time, I was old enough to understand the story and the context rather well (still without understanding a word of English), and I was old enough to immerse myself in the experience completely. This inspired story of prince Alexander, who would set out to a far away island penisula to save a princess, only to get caught in a web of local politics, conspiracies and mythical lore, is lauded as one of the very best adventure games of all time, and rightly so. It contains many fantastical characters, and mashes together some of the most interesting myths and fairy tales of different civilizations into a surprisingly adult game about death, betrayal and love, with different endings depending on how you play the game (a first in video games?).Playing this game at age 8 was like walking through the fairy tale stories of your childhood, while you were still a child! Whether I was exploring the maze of the minotaur, fixing the relationship issues of the red and white queen of chess, deceiving the seven dwarves or talking to death himself: this game captivated me from start to finish. As much as Prince of Persia inspired my first game design endeavors, King’s Quest 6 inspired my creative writing and drawing.
Eco Quest 1 (1991) and Eco Quest 2 (1993), two somewhat educational adventures written especially for children, also influenced my imagination greatly. The first one was set in a polluted sea, while the second one was set in a polluted rainforest. In both games, the player played a young boy who would set out to solve the problems of the local population and take care of the evil men who were destroying their ecosystem. These games were quite a lot easier than the King’s Quest series, and brought me a lot of fun as a kid. Several iconic scenes, such as the one in which you explore the lost Indian City of Gold (called El Dorado) or the one in which you explore a sunken Greek-like city which was re-inhabited by marine animals, have greatly increased my already quite vivid fantasy.
Robin Hood: Conquest of the Longbow (1992) was another game that really pushed my fantasy into overdrive. This game (loosely) tells the story of Robin Hood, reimagined by Christy Marx. It contains all the parts of the classic Robin Hood story, but imbues it with a rich story, interesting, multifaceted characters and a bit of celtic druid magic. This game was quite dark at times, featuring some pretty dreadful imagery and adult themes (witch burning, oppression of the population, corruption, religion fanaticism). The puzzles were smart, and imaginative, featuring things as hand reading and magic gemstones. (This is probably where my fascination for different gemstones started). This game is also regarded as one of the best games of the adventure era, and is a must-play for anyone to date.
Laura Bow 2: The Dagger of Amon Ra (1992) is a horror detective game set in an Egyptian museum were suddenly a horrendous murder takes place. The building is locked down, and anyone is instructed to remain inside until the murder is solved by a detective on the scene. However, more murders happen, and eventually Laura Bow (the protagonist) must solve the mystery on her own lest she be killed in a violent fashion as well. This game, while a very good (and absurdly difficult) detective game, is only mentioned in this list because it first confronted me with another emition: terrifying fear. When I watched my father play this game late at night, one of the murder scenes got me so scared that I could not sleep for the entire night. In retrospect, the scene is quite silly, but it really shocked me to death as a child. This is the first and last time in my life that a game, movie or anything else got me so terrified. No horror movie, horror game or shock movie on the internet shocked me so deeply as this game. Which is, I guess, quite an achievement on its own, and a reason to put it on this list.

The Game Boy, while released in Europe in 1990, did not get to me until a while later. It would mark the start of the second part of my childhood, and will be discussed in the next post. By 1992, I had also started making games of my own: on paper.

Roll up the sleeves

As I was playing the defining games of my childhood, something in me woke up and decided that I wanted to make games like that myself. Because I was too young to work with a computer properly, nevermind program for it, I started drawing adventure games on paper. My first series was called Castle Quest (might sound familiar to some of you), quickly followed by all kinds of Quests inspired by the Sierra series, such as Papa Quest, Zee Quest and Junior Robin Hood. I also made some more “experimental” stuff, such as the paper platformer series Super Kid Sega, the physical Game Boy competitor K-Gof and the paper Prince of Persia rip-off Prins. I was not pushed in doing this; it grew organically out of my obsession with drawing (and reading) Belgian comic books.

Instead of the linear, uncontrollable nature of comic books, I was more drawn to the interactivity of video games, and started challenging (pestering) people in my environment to play my fantastic paper-based adventure games. They were just hundreds upon hundreds of pages of drawings of environments with puzzles in them that I would explain patiently to the player who was playing the game. I’m not sure the players enjoyed these massive adventures as much as I did making them, but they definitely were my first step in game development. I must have been 7 or 8 years when I made my first adventure.

After my very early childhood, which was dominated by computer games and mainly focused on adventures, it was time to explore new worlds, and the Game Boy my dad brought back from a trip to Singapore did just that. With action/platform games such as Super Mario Land, Turtles 2, Mortal Kombat and so on, I discovered that games were more than just point-and-click adventures. I started drawing platform games on paper (seriously). The player would play with his fingers, avoiding obstacles by lifting their fingers in different motions, depending on which obstacle was to be avoided. To my surprise, these games were a huge success on the elementary school playground, and people would line up to play them. This was probably my first success as a game designer.

As I explored new game genres on the Game Boy, so did my dad on the PC. Games such as Sim City 2000, Transport Tycoon, Command & Conquer and others found their way to our home, and changed my view of what a video game could be. Now, I will discuss several of the most important games from this period of time, up until my transition to high school at age 12, which will be the third part of my story, and will start with Warcraft 2, and the introduction of Blizzard into my life.

Chip’s Challenge (1989) only got to me several years after its release, when I was older. And I guess this is a good thing, because this game is HARD. Probably one of the hardest, most hardcore puzzle games ever made. But also one of the best ones. This is illustrated by the fact that, 20 years later, the game still sports a very active fan community, which are hard at work making new levels, sequels and so on. This game was a top-down game in which you move a guy around collecting computer chips to open up the portal to the next level. On your path are opponents with predictable movements (left-wall huggers, bouncers, etc) and hazards such as fire, water, and so on. One misstep kills you, and forces you to replay a level that might require hundreds of moves in which every single misstake is fatal. Crazy, but surprisingly addictive and fun, and I still recommend playing it today (I replayed the entire game a couple of years ago, and it was still fun).
Super Mario Land (1990) for Game Boy was a masochistic game for the simple reason that it did not support save games. Every time you turned of your Game Boy, you had to play all from scratch again. And they didn’t make the game easier to compensate either; Super Mario Land was quite tough. After months (perhaps years) of practice, I finally made it to the end. I can’t recall any game in my life that took so long to finish in terms of years.
Syndicate (1993) was a surprisingly adult and shocking game for the time, but I was too young to grasp this. Instead, I noticed a totally unique game, with very open-ended, nonlinear gameplay, complex depth and intense action scenes. This game is quite unique, even up to this day, and there hasn’t really been a game like it since. It learned me that open-endedness can really add to a game’s replayability, and can give the player the illusion that he is in complete control.
Theme Park (1994) was the inspiration for the superhit Rollercoaster Tycoon a couple of years later, but this one had a more profound impact on me. Again, I was a little too young to understand the somewhat complex research aspect of the game, but it didn’t stop me from having massive amounts of fun building, running and ruining theme parks. The theme of the game, which obviously has a great appeal to children, was very well integrated in the gameplay, and the excellent, accessible graphics made this game an easy sell to any child. Bullfrog was in a roll these days, these games (along with Dungeon Keeper and Theme Hospital) made Peter Molyneux my first idol game designer.
Command & Conquer (1995) had a profound impact on not only me, but the entire game industry. While Dune 2 introduced this new genre called RTS, it was C&C that laid the foundations of the genre so well that it would take 10 years until people started deviating from the basic concept ideas of C&C such as resource gathering, base building and unit training.
Sim City 2000 (1995) was one of those games that could really get you hooked. Even when you didn’t really know what you were doing, such as me at the time (what the hell does a 11-year old know about finance and loans?) Building cities just speaks to people’s imagination, and it was so well-done in this game that the only games that ever improved the quality of this one was the second sequel (Sim City 4).
Civilization 2 (1996) was another game that pretty much fits the same description as Sim City 2000. It was quite perfect in its design, incredibly addictive and was built around an inspiring theme. It appealed to me naturally.