Okay, within that context I can understand your point. Though, and I mean this with the best of intentions, Chick tracts themselves put a very specific interpretation on the message of Christ. The anti-Catholic tracts are a strong example of this.

In my own experience with the tracts, very little of the message of Christ's love came through in those, with the emphasis being more on judgement and conversion through fear. Perhaps the need to explicate the positive isn't needed on the target audience, who already accepts the message and feels awash in Christ's love, but coming from the outside it is not the best face to be putting forward.

I was raised Christian but have long since recanted, though I remain an armchair scholar of theological writing and thought. If the Chick tracts brought some beneficial realisation to you, that is good. But I have to say that, in my experience, they tended more to amplifying folk's opinions that devout Christians were synonymous with ignorance, fear, bigotry, and enclave mentality. On that count they are detrimental works.

I know I have broken the cardinal rule of not discussing religion, but hopefully I have confined myself to the very particular topic at hand, and that I have not caused offense. I realise that my own experience of the world is just that and nothing more, and that all people have their own unique understanding of life which is just as valid as my own.

Hey! I don't have a girlfriend. Don't judge me!

My Hair.

I miss waiting for weekends to go buy computer game magazines (PC Gamer, Computer Gaming World, Analog, COMPUTE, and PC Magazine) in "Gran Morrison" just to check if there were any hints of the games we had and we were stuck at (King's Quest series, Leisure Suit Larry Series, Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, and many others).

I also miss having a tangible manual or cloth map (Ultima VI and Ultima VII) or the book of Runes (Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss).

So, this is completely separate from what this thread is really about, but I don't want to start another thread just for this one question - I just realized that there is a Baldur's Gate for GBA. Does anyone know anything about it? Is it good?


Ah, before the days of the internet I would always call my buddy and ask him for hints and tips, because he always played and finished most of the games before I did. Pretty sure he got very sick of me at times. :D

Check out the youtube let's play. It looks fairly bad, but moderately enjoyable. It's very similar to PS2/XBox/GameCube's Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance. It has a few locales from BG, but not much.

I love the PS2 game.

The GBA videos looked like it would be good enough for a GBA.

I miss digging through used book/record stores and finding things I was excited about. Now I just find things for $10 more than I can get it for online.

Also, I feel like eBay made everyone feel like their junk in antique stores is worth a lot more and the prices went way up.

Then why do they vibrate?

Ohh, in that case...

Right thing to do : P

Hurrah! I'm just glad it wasn't a trainwreck. Too often I find I am being clear and eloquent in my mind, only to discover the resultant writing looks like scratch paper from an opium den. :)

EDIT: Unrelated to our discussion, but one other thing I miss is games that included all the content right out of the box. More and more it seems that what you get with a game depends on when, where, from who, and at what level you buy a game. I understand that milking extra dollars from the fans is why this practice is prevalent now, but more often it leads me to avoid a game entirely until the Ultimate Game Platinum: Zircon Encrusted Tweezers Edition is released three Xmases later.

In case it falls in-between your legs and you don´t notice ;P

Although it probably has been mentioned already, I really miss the nice packaging, comprehensive manuals and goodies that came with games back in the day. Even the copy protection was often kind of cool, sometimes even useful ingame (Pirates!, Task Force 1942, Elvira) and not just something to annoy the honest customer. The manuals often had a couple hundred pages and you could really spend hours studying them.

Nowadays if you want something that at least looks like it got the extras from older games you need to dish out some serious money for the limited/collector's editions. And tbh, the quality of the stuff that mostly in there just can't compare with the work invested in old manuals etc...I mean sometimes you would get audio cassettes (Carrier Command, Loom), books (Red Baron, Grail Diary from Indiana Jones 3, Magazine from Wing Commander). And you didn't need to pay extra for that stuff. These items really helped creating the atmosphere that made those games back then so special.

I know it sounds really cheap, but: I really felt as if the devs and publisher actually cared about their games. It was more like a piece of art rather than just another game with a rushed release to get the quarterly finance report up to par.

My abacus

I miss games that worked right out of the box. Sure they might have had a few manageable bugs, but I can't remember as bad as they release now. Aside from that Bullfrog title that erased your hard drive; that they caught before it went on sale. I guess I miss quality without the need for a bunch of updates and patches.