saik
mr.nobody
posts : 242
| hi, in an effort to get myself to shut up on irc, i think i'd best make an effort at writing a column. i play quake 3 with the mighty fh, under the alias saik(obviously enough). i've posted the odd bit of news here and there but, aside from trying to fix b0rked computers, this column is probably the only thing i've "contributed" to quake players anywhere - ever. this is significant because i have played quake since 1997. i don't even know how to make a website! so, as you're guessing, i'm a lazy bastard.
so how did i get into quake then - well, way back in 1997 when i were just a young(er) lad, the family bought an *amazing pc*, a brand new gateway 2000 p2 233 with 32mb ram and an s3 virge. phear. i knew so little about pc’s at the time, i asked the sales guy about getting an upgrade to a gateway 3000, maybe it would run 3dfx games. anyway it had a games bundle. virtua fighter was so cool – the games were brilliant compared to the sega mega drive that was downstairs. i'd seen quake down at a mates house thought it was pretty good – bit too brown though. i read in pc zone that quake2 had just been released, and scored 97% or something. on the next page i saw grand theft auto, i thought the idea was ‘fucking a’ and i was sold on that - i forgot quake entirely. when i had scraped the money together (at 14 years of age, these things take time) i went into game on grafton street, but the fuckers wouldn't sell me gta. apparently i was too young. cunts, what might have been...
damn. so i settled for second best and bought quake2 - which has, in fairness, corrupted me far more than gta ever could have. i played the (then amazing) single player the whole way through on software mode, and i used mouse + wasd, because pc zone told me keyboard was for lamers! (i guessed that was bad) i swapped for quake1 then, and played that most of the way through. then pc zone released a cover cd with mods for quake on it, most notable ones being the reaper bot and killer quake (so much fun). i just played and played these mods and then i played them some more. it was around this time that i read in pc zone about quake2 competitions. thresh beating down billox etc, and the concept of playing games for money. sad and all as it was, i got hooked on "getting good" from then on. then came eraser bots for quake2 - which rocked, i played them for hours and hours. i thought i was the business (but i hadn't even seen q2dm1 at this stage).
then when oceanfree came along, my parents decided to get on this internet thing. i was dying to get online, so i had rehearsed the "getting online" procedure in my head about 70,000 times. armed with a 33k modem and an oceanfree cd, i was connected within about 3 minutes of the announcement. straight away i fired up gamespy, and wasted 2 very frustrating hours trying to get it to go. finally it worked, and i hopped onto a server. it was a ffa server, on a map i'd never seen before (q2dm3). i can’t remember the first frag though - at that stage i'd played so much bots, i didn't remember that kind of shit. that christmas i upgraded to 96mb ram and a voodoo banshee, and along came flat rate surf no limits, and before it, a 180 pound phone bill. i played a lot of quake2 online with snl 200 ping. i was in my element. joined and got kicked from a few clans, played in ukccl etc. i didn't know there was an irish scene at all. hi to anyone who can remember me from quake2!
quake3 test etc came out, it ran like ass on my machine. so i continued with quake2, which was getting very boring, the scene was dying. upgraded to a p500 but quake3 was still ass, voodoo banshee like. i joined ei (evil incarnate) which was about as good as i got in q2. i got booted for being a knob. fairly pissed off, i gave up quake for ages. i can't remember what i did instead. i came back for the odd duel to beat people who had been playing in my absence and were slagging me on irc - (respect teh skillz – i *was* that cocky 15 year old) i tried my hand at q3 when i got a dodgy tnt2ultra, but it was ass on 300 ping, especially as i knew nobody on the scene. the house was being done up, so i lost my internet connection. all a big blur (yeah, about 2 years of a blur). fast-forward a bit. did my leaving etc. got the 33k connect back. worked over the summer, and i played a little q2. i was appalled as *everybody* was low ping now. i mean i wasn't bad for a hpb, but in reality, i stood no chance for tdm. disheartened, i gave up again and became an irc idler, downloading music, played the odd game versus bots.
at the end of the summer i bought a fucking monster pc for the time - it even had go-faster stripes. i started to idle in #quake.ie, probably because i had wanted to get in on an irish scene if there was one. i think i played a bit of quake3 on my new pc. i found out about a lan on in limerick and by pure jam, i got a lift – with vincunt no less. it was fragnet of last year. i had heard about the koopa lad at this stage. he was going in the same car as me! talked about nothing but quake the whole way down. got to limerick and got set up – saw koopa taping his mouse mat down, “wtf nerd” was my reaction at the time. played a few games – quake3 was vicious on lan. i was very new to quake3 at the time and i had never played tdm properly, so i got raped. i had played quake2 on isdn in a net cafe once, but this was *the best ever* all these nd lads were there, those i’d seen playing on the irish quake teams - bunny, beast, and the legendary devore. they weren't half the nerds i thought they were. sound out. we slept on the floor in their gaff as we couldn’t afford b&b, very generous of them.
after the lan i got a go of 50 ping at a net cafe and i won a few duels. nd were entering bw so they wanted a training session and got fh to come down to limerick again. i think this was when i joined fh, the best clan evurr. we played hardcore in limerick, all night long. i’d given everybody in fh more than a few heart attacks with my woeful tdm. so i played as much as i could on the 56k, and downloaded a ton of demos, trying to improve. this summer i got isdn. it’s so good, especially after coming from 3-4? years of modem, and it totally shits on 56k. so now i’m in with the irish quake scene and my setup is good (taped down mouse mat and all), and i can play regularly. rulez.
ok that’s it for now. here ends? the quake life story of a nerd. overlong, but i had to type it before i forgot it all. i’m sure bits of it are inaccurate. cyas in limerick.
one last thing, quake3 is now 3 years old, does this make you feel old? i was 16 when they released it, weird.
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