30 Years Later

It's always nice to be able to finish something, even if it's a LITTLE bit (okay a lot a bit..) later than expected.

In the last year or so, I've been playing off and on the Wolfenstein game, which I've posted here on Hive a few times. There are fits and spurts with the game, and it is a lot of fun but there are a lot of times where it was confusing and annoying because I would make it far but then get glitched and have to start over. Well, the other day I was able to FINALLY finish the game completely!

I remember when Wolfenstein came out. That's one of the only hints to my age that I'll give LOL but it was one of the games that was out there in the 90's when there was a sudden boom in computer gaming. Sitting in my friends basement playing his 386 with Wolfenstein or Doom was an unbelievable core memory for me. I find it funny that yes I played the game a fair bit with him, I never actually finished the game. I know my friend did, because he owned the thing but we never owned it, at least I don't remember.

Fast forward many, many years and a gigantic gap between the last time I played it, until just the other day when I finally finished it.. it felt like putting the end of a book shelf so-to-speak, in that I was able to finally close out a game that I started a lifetime ago.

These types of things are pretty wild to think about, considering where we are today in the world versus where we were when this game came out. The world was a radically different, and seemingly simpler, place than it is today. Yes the world at THIS moment is wonderful. It's got a lot of issues, but it's on a razors edge of great things on one side, and absolute horror and destruction on the other.

War games like this remind me of that precipice we straddle constantly. War is one of those things that humans have always done, but as time has gone on, especially in the last 75 years or so, we have gotten exceptionally good at killing large numbers of people.

It may seem silly, but I think games like this are an important reminder of how bad things can go if we let them. Granted, there was a lot of history erased or hidden from the general public about WWII such as the Bush family and some other of the ultra-rich American families and banks, funding BOTH the Germans and the Allies because they were taking bets on who won. Yet those families are still in power to this day, but you won't ever hear about that type of history outside a very specific university-level class. Very, very few of the history books that are in the schools throughout the country and world have that type of information.

Unfortunately the post did take an unexpected turn here.. but I think it does tie aptly back into the world that we live in today, with war being waged on several fronts and threatening to be waged on yet more. We need to sometimes end up playing a game like Wolfenstein, where we can play a hero that is able to travel the bowels of hell and vanquish many enemies in the pursuit of justice. It gives me a little bit of hope that we can fend our way out of this mess!