I told you I had a surprise coming for you guys in the mail.

I actually managed to dig up a copy of the original article that inspired my series of One-Page Games. This article is from The Rainbow Magazine, August 1986 issue. It is over twenty years old.

There are two old magazines that I absolutely adore and will pick up copies anytime I can find them. They are The Rainbow and The Space Gamer. And the reason I like both of them is because of the attitude they conveyed.

The readers and editors of The Rainbow were all in a state of fascination – “Look at this! This is a computer we can own! How cool is that! I wonder what I can make it do…”

The readers and editors of The Space Gamer were the same way, amazed at the stories they could tell and the fun they could have with roleplaying.

In both magazines you get a sense of childlike wonder as people explored these previously unexplored continents – one in the mind and the other in silicon.

I miss that attitude. I haven’t seen it in a long, long time. It has been replaced by cynicism and curmudgeonism. And that makes me sad.

When Steve Jackson Games started their magazine Pyramid I was hoping to see a little of that attitude come back, but I was disappointed. The feel of Pyramid was slick and professional; the attitude was almost that of people telling an inside joke – yes, we love games, but we don’t…love-love games, because that would be really dorky. Especially since we’re all over thirty now.

That’s not to say that Pyramid wasn’t an excellent magazine – it is. I was a subscriber for over three years and enjoyed reading it very much. I’m just saying that the attitude is different.

And on the video gaming side…do you remember the first game that you absolutely obsessed over? The one you simply could not stop playing? The one you could barely drag yourself away from to go to school or work, and would instantly resume playing once you got home?

I’ve had several games like that. One of them was Civilization. Another was Doom. Tie Fighter was another. And so was Fallout.

When is the last time a game made you feel like that?

This is why I adored Oblivion so much – it was the first time in years that I felt I could just fall into a game and live there for a while, forgetting everything else (well, after the chilluns were in bed, of course). But before Oblivion I’d have to go back years, practically to the Golden Age, to find a game like that.

Is the games? Or is it me?

Have I lost my own childlike wonder? I’d like to think I haven’t…

Well, I love-love games. Truly. With all my heart. Yes, that makes me a geek. And a dork. And a knucklehead mcspazatron.

This is me. I am Gabe in this comic. Except that, you know, I’ve never actually put a game down my pants.

I still think it’s incredibly awesome that video games exist and I get to play them, and I hope I never lose that feeling. I also need to get better at game development so I can make more of my own games, in an effort to help other people feel the same way.

Sniff…I love you all, guys! I love you all!