Watching a guy draw a map...

[ghorahn]

So, I was probably 12 when I played Wasteland. One afternoon, I'd been wandering around in some dungeon...I believe it was a sewer, but this was too long ago to remember specifics. The next day at school, I was talking to a friend that was playing Wasteland as well. Kid named Tommy Nguyen. I told him about the sewer where I'd wandered around for a while and (presumably) died before I called it a day.

So he grabs a piece of paper and a pen, and starts drawing a little map. As he's drawing, he's telling me "Let's see, you fight a [something or other] here....and here's some [ammo or something, I don't really recall]..." And before long, he's drawn a complete map.

So I take it home that afternoon, head back into the sewer, map in hand....and the map that he'd drawn, off the cuff, was spot-on. Every square, every encounter. It was the damndest thing, especially since I'd watched him draw it, there in the classroom at school.

Anyhow, that's somehow become my most prominent memory of the game.

[Tynblade]

That is the mark of a great game. The one you can't just wait to play while you're away and you actually plan your strategy before getting into it again.

[Hell Razor]

I remember being at the computer game shop that I rode my bike to when I was like 11. An adult came in and went to the counter because he was stuck in Wasteland and needed help. He was in the sewers and needed another servo motor or something. I was just playing some action game they had on display at the other end of the store, but the owner was like, "that kid over there probably knows." So I paused and turned around and had already figured out exactly which servo motor he'd missed, because it was a tricky one that took me forever to retarce my steps to locate, and I described to him exactly where it was and how to get to it.

[Fargham]

Even though its been over 20 years since the last time I played the game, I bet I could go to the exact unmarked house in Vegas to find the Protox Ax that drops there. Thats how burned into my memory the game is.