Asheron’s Call 2 is back!

They like to say that there are certain life moments in which you will always remember where you were.  On December 30th, 2005, I was dancing on top of the great Deru tree, bearing witness to the end of the world. The sunsetting of Asheron’s Call 2. It was like losing a friend for those of us who still knew and loved the game. Players cried, and went through stages of real grief over it. And to this day, people on the Facebook group comment about how much they miss their Tumerok Hivekeeper (ok, that was me), or playing in a Drudge rock and roll band. If you look in the comments section on any AC2 YouTube video, you'll see a constant theme of "oh man, this brings back so many memories, I wish I could play again."

The developers who worked on the game also had an emotional investment in it, and felt the same loss when the closure was announced, especially since they'd really done some great things with the Legions expansion just prior. There’s a really good article on The Game Archaeologist about the story of AC2 and its final days from the dev side of things by former Producer Eric Heimburg.


SO, those were sad times, and even though we’ve had time to get over that after SEVEN YEARS, I would still go back if I could.  People have, during that time, worked on emulating the game, but not with complete success, and I don’t personally want to get into the weeds enough to figure that stuff out (though the fact that they were doing it is yet another indicator that this game holds a special place in peoples’ hearts). The people at Turbine who made the decision to axe Asheron’s Call 2 are long gone, but are there any remaining who still remember, or feel the level of affection for the game that I do?

Evidently, there are. And holy @#$%*… they just did the unthinkable. Asheron’s Call 2 is back.

It’s free to play, all you need is a subscription to the original Asheron’s Call. There have been some changes made, so the old installations of the game won’t work. It would be astounding if people actually HAD old installations, of course; for me that was at least two computers ago.  You’ll need a fresh download, which they provide here. Also, old characters are not there. Which I think is a good thing overall. I am perfectly happy to start over and get re-acquainted with things.

Over the years, I’ve tried to get back into games I used to love. My husband and I dabbled a little in World of Warcraft, and I installed Dungeon Keeper, Caesar III, Sacrifice, and even the Sims. They were all fun for a few hours’ walks down memory lane, but then I’d move on to other things. This is different.

Thanks, Turbine. Thanks for listening, for caring, and for taking the time to do something like this when all hope was lost. I can’t wait to go back, and I hope this allows some people who never knew AC2 to discover and enjoy it.

Geekumentary: Classic Game Room

This is the story of one of those "I wish I'D done that" ideas that you wish you'd done because it's basically something you DID do - if you've sat around with your friends talking and joking about video games, the only part you forgot was taping it and making it a weekly show.

Classic Game Room is a bit of a mix of actual Classic Game Room episodes with a story about the "rise and fall" of the show intertwined. If you want to revel in the memories of your Atari, Genesis, or NES, it's definitely worth a turn in your Netflix queue.



The hosts are likeable, and the reviews are funny, but not hysterical. The forumula's since been perfected by X-Play's Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb, though they were almost certainly influenced by this 1999 predecessor (which has also returned in 2008 with new reviews).

What kind of bugs me is that, while I respect the effort that went into making this documentary, and recognize its value as a bit of history of the game review industry, you can get Classic Game Room (or, for that matter, Gamers) on Netflix, while you cannot get my favorite geekumentaries like TILT or Uber Goober (or Pizza! the Movie; I'd like to see that one). Come ON, Netflix! Give the geekumentary genre a chance to shine! I'm discovering an awful lot of good material out there that's rather difficult to come by. I really hope Get Lamp and Second Skin will be available.

Photosensitive Seizure Warnings

This one’s not necessarily about something “cool,” but my mention of Aladdin’s Castle (a chain of video game arcades from my youth), brought to mind the time I witnessed a photosensitive seizure first-hand, and I thought you might find that story interesting.

First, what IS a photosensitive seizure? A good summary appears on the Microsoft game studios website (http://www.microsoft.com/games/home/photosensitive_warning.aspx). Basically, flashing light patterns, like for example, a strobe, can sort of derail your brain, and cause a seizure in people who have no history of such experiences. The thing about the seizure warning, it’s mostly a CYA for the game developer, because as I’m about to relate, with or without that warning, we never would have had an inkling of what was going to happen.

So this incident was back in the day, must have been 1988 or 89, before such warnings were included as frequently on video games. My brother and I had rallied a group of friends for a birthday party at the local Aladdin’s Castle video arcade. I don’t think it was actually anybody’s birthday, we tended to just take advantage of the fact that the birthday package, for about $10 a head, gave your group free run of the place after-hours. It was fantastic!

Things went fine for the first hour or so. I can’t remember what I was playing (it would have either been Timber or New Zealand Story, aka Kiwi Kraze) when one of my friends came running up to me saying something was wrong with my brother. I'm almost positive he was playing a game called Alien Syndrome when it happened. I ran over, and saw him on the floor, convulsing. I yelled at the attendant to call an ambulance, and then just kneeled down next to him in a panic, having no idea what was wrong, or why he was on the floor convulsing. His lips turned blue, I remember that distinctly, and even now I’m getting a cold feeling in my stomach thinking back to it.

One of my friends started doing CPR, and though later in the ambulance, I heard one of the emergency crew tell the other that that had been the wrong thing to do because his heart was fine, I will never forget how that guy stepped up and DID something, when I was just frozen. His name was Stephen, and that may have been one of the last times I saw him, because we moved to the east coast shortly thereafter.

I also remember in the ambulance ride to the hospital, the medics asking my brother simple questions like how old he was and so forth, and wanting to answer for him, because he was still pretty out of it, and slow to answer. My mother met us at the hospital, she’d been off getting us something for dinner, and this was before cell phones, so she didn’t know until she got back to the arcade what had happened.

My brother was fine. Such an incident had never happened prior to that, and has never happened since. There is absolutely no history in our family of epilepsy or seizures. When I would tell people what happened, they would assume it had happened to him before, but it was totally random. They say that playing games with strobes in a dark environment can trigger it, and back then, arcades were dark, beautifully cave-ish environments, not like the ones at the mall today.

Years later, when the MMO I was playing added a photosensitive seizure warning to the documentation (Asheron’s Call: Dark Majesty – mainly for simulated environmental lightning effects), a friend pointed it out to me and thought it was amusing. People just don’t envision something like that happening, but it does, and I will never forget how scary it was as a kid, who had no experience with that, and no idea what to do. Anyway, just thought I'd share since it's a very rare thing to have seen.