When we started GamerWok, it was to be a site where gamers and tech-geeks could come and discuss and share in our opinions on the landscape of gaming and technology.  But every now and then, we find ourselves reminiscing about the past.  To truly appreciate where we are now, you have to keep looking at the past.

That's where our Wok Down Memory Lane series will come in.  Each article the editors write about something of the past that influenced him/her about technology or games will kick off a series of articles or reviews about that particular topic.  For the first series, we will be looking at the venerable input device, the mouse.

My first experience owning a mouse was, of course, because of a game.  My dad had just purchased our first family computer - a IBM Compatible AT Class system.  This computer was first released in 1984 and by the time we got it, it was already old tech.  Nonetheless, it came pimped with a 8MB of ram, a 20MB HDD, and a full height 5-1/4" floppy drive.  The glory of the machine was displayed on a yellow monochrome monitor and ran DOS 4.0.  Baller.

At the time, the only real games you could play on it were Kings Quest and Police Quest.  I couldn't run Leisure Suit Larry because that required VGA graphics, which I did not have.  Then Where in the US is Carmen Sandiego was released in 1985 as the sequel to Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.  I knew I had to have this game and I begged my mom to buy it for me and as a reward for finishing my grade 4 class with honors (how Asian am I!) she agreed.

But to my surprise, the game required something called a "mouse" in order to navigate the menus.  Previously, all other games were able to map the cursor to the arrow keys but this one forced you to get a peripheral before you could play it (Wii Motion Plus certainly took a page from this).  Try explaining to your mom that the $50 game (yes, even then it cost that much) would require another $25 peripheral to play and that her "reward" to you just ended up costing an extra 50%!  Eventually my begging and promise to do chores for the rest of the summer softened her cheap Asian heart (I love you mom!) and I got my first mouse.

This was an IBM clone mouse with two buttons (suck it Apple!) but came without drivers.  For it to work, I had to copy my friend's "mouse.exe" file from his genuine IBM (yes, he was rich) and run that every time DOS loaded up.  Which of course led me to write my first ".bat" file to automatically launch "mouse.exe" whenever "carmen.exe" launched as well.

Since those early days of a two button ball mouse to the very first optical infra-red mouse, to the 5600 dpi 4G laser Razer Mamba, the mouse has been by the side of computer users for the last 25 years.  We here at GamerWok love our PC games, and would like nothing more than see a resurgence in the popularity of computer games.  And like many PC gamers, our gear means everything to us.  That's why we're going to be following up this Wok Down Memory Lane with a series of gaming mice comparisons.  Coming in the next few days, you will see the latest wired gaming mouse offerings by Razer pitted against each other in a balls-out battle royale.  Let us know what your memories are of PC gaming and technology in the comments below!