Computers

I have been interested in computers ever since my father bought his IBM PC (XT) when I was in first grade. The games that he acquired were pretty limited and and I discovered that the public library had a barrel (literally) of books of games on the Commodore 64 and Amiga, and I eventually found one for the IBM PC. It had source code for some rather simple BASIC games, which I soon began to modify. One thing led to another, and I began writing my own games. Sadly, my store of ideas was greater than my perseverence and I tended to start writing a new game when I ran into a problem with the current one.

My favorite was my attempt at Super Mario Bros. for the PC. I took some graph paper and spent hours in 8th grade copying levels from the Nintendo Power magazine. I then typed in World 1-1 into my program and got going. I didn't really know how to program graphics, so I just used the extended ASCII characters. I tried out a test version, and was rather disappointed--my version didn't seem as much fun (even without programming in the monsters). So when my Goombas (represented by a capital omega) walked off their platforms and didn't fall, but kept walking on air, I gave up on that project...

Since then I have become much more adept at programming, eventually working my way into a job developing software, which is what I currently do. Programming is a frustrating hobby, though, because the time spent is rather considerable and the reward does not seem worth it, so I have done less of it recently.