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In response to a birthday wish blog post by Michael Klamerus, I’m going to talk about an obscure game from when I was a kid - Operation Inner Space!

I played this game at least a dozen times at a friends house back in the early 90s. It originally ran on Windows 3.1 and was a total blast to play.

The premise of the game is that you are “inside” your computer. After a long intro screen where your space ship is “transported” into your computer. You choose the drive you want to play on (yes, back when you had a C, D or E drive) a you then float around in space, similar to Asteroids, blasting random space junk but also at random intervals actual files on your computer. Shooting an icon is fun, but blasting a .exe or .dll file? That’s the best!

But the thing that actually really made me remember this game were the ships themselves. There were dozens to choose from, from animals to funky space ships to even a rubber duck. The novelty of being “inside” your computer, blasting random files as a purple rubber duck was just catnip to my pre-teen brain.

There‘s something weird and wonderful about old PC games like Operation Inner Space. Developers didn’t have millions of dollar budgets, or marketing machines or even the internet. You had to learn about new games from word of mouth or through magazines or BBSs if you did have internet access. And then you could share those floppy discs with friends, games that were written efficiently to maximize disk space. That whole era has a strong DIY vibe that you just can’t find anymore, and is why I love stuff like the IndieWeb nowadays so much.

And the most amazing part about Operation: Inner Space ? You can still buy it and play it! The company’s website has a full walk through on how to get it to run on 64 bit computers, including how to set it up using DosBox for play on Linux or Mac. Yes the full version costs $25 (yes really) but as someone who LOVES old games (I mean, I have a Galaga tattoo for god’s sake) this just hits a sweet spot for me. I may have to get DosBox working and try the shareware demo and relive my summer days from 30+ years ago.

And if you’re curious to see what it was all about, check out this YouTube video showing the gameplay