After the release of Stories Untold on Switch, a reader takes a look at other games where you’re pretending to use a real computer.
Ever since I first got my hands on a computer, I’ve been fascinated by the sorts of games that get released. You have your role-playing games like Wizardry or the shooters like Halo, then there’s the very small sub-genre of video games that aim to mimic a real computer, which seems rather redundant as you’re already playing it on a computer.
Uplink
Released in 2001, Uplink places you as an unnamed agent of the Uplink corporation. Using a security firm as a front for illegal operations, the Uplink corporation takes on jobs from large companies seeking to take a shot at their competitors, whether it be by falsifying a college degree for an employee or destroying a competitor’s files. The Uplink corporation hires up-and-coming hackers seeking to prove their skills, with the promise of large paychecks. The game is controlled through a virtual operating system known as UplinkOS, and the game’s art is comprised entirely of different shades of blue and black. Much of the game is a puzzle, figuring out how different programs work, and using them to your advantage to get around the security that lies in your way.
Breaking through security isn’t the only thing that matters however, as if you get caught, the company you work for will throw you under the bus and claim no knowledge of your actions, leaving you to deal with the fallout yourself. You also have a program known as a trace tracker, that beeps faster and louder as the government gets closer to tracking you down. The game gets very tense very quickly, knowing that you only have a few minutes to get into a system, get out and get rid of the evidence that you ever existed.
Digital: A Love Story
Described by the developer Christine Love as, ‘A computer mystery/romance set five minutes into the future of 1988’, Digital places you as an unnamed young girl in 1988 just receiving her very first computer. Set before the invention of the Internet, you are given the number for a local Bulletin Board System (BBS) known as Lake City Local. Hopping from BBS to BBS, you talk to different users and learn of a virus that is propagating around the ARPANET, a network of BBSes, ‘murdering’ any AI it discovers, and destroying the network operator’s computers.
Though some users have useful information pertaining to the virus, many of them are simply trolls, posting random, nonsensical messages attempting to enrage others. Many of the messages lack punctuation, proper grammar, and capitalisation; sometimes they barely even resemble English. This often makes your goal of destroying the virus difficult, as a large portion of the users are of absolutely no help.
The game is presented through a virtual OS known as Amie Workstations Version 1.3, and resembles the sort of OS you’d find on older computers, like the Apple II. Complete with the shrill screeching sound you get when dialling into a BBS, scan lines, heavy use of the colour blue and the inconvenience of having to type in the BBS’s number every single time you wanna connect, it truly replicates the feel of a 1980s home computer.
By reader Anon
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