18th Century Fox

Been expending what little mental energy I have to spare banging my head against the recent remake of Colonization, in part because the original was one of my all-time favorites, and in part because it works on my mother’s Hewlitt-Packard/ Vista laptop without any necessity for a connection to the Internet.  Playing the original was a pasttime I shared with my now deceased mother-in-law Noel, who was also a big fan of the historical period;  we spent a lot of afternoons and evenings side-by-side on an old sewing bench, drinking unsweetened iced-tea and staring into a 15″ monitor, laughing ourselves silly over the outrages perpetrated on us by the King and the natives and the Europeans, and vice versa.  She was the one (in our house, anyway) who came up with the idea of using Privateers to haul small batches of expensive cargo like silver over long distances and run blockades, a brilliant piece of strategy that never occurred to me, and that I have never lost admiration for her for thinking of.

The old iteration of the game was based off the original Civilization engine.  The new iteration is based off the Civilization 4 engine, and seems insanely hard, having kept all the basic concepts of the old game that worked against you, but thrown out all the parts that allowed you to win.  (Those interested in the sordid details can look here, where I continue to hold forth about it.)  I have yet to beat it, even on the easiest difficulty.

I have also just finished this morning reading the novel Johnny Tremaine, an exceedingly well-written story set in that same time period.  It reminded me anew how often older books seem to kick the hell out of newer ones, and also left me paradoxically ashamed even as I enjoyed it, because it reminded me simultaneously that a great many people of all ages and both sexes, on all sides-  people no different or better than you or I-  gave everything they had to give during those great conflicts, often against their will.  And that they deserve more consideration than being reduced to sound effects and pixels.