Memories of Ingress Past
With another Ingress anniversary around the corner, perhaps now would be a good time to share our memories of the early days. Here are some of mine.
I remember when...
The original beta version of glyphing was done through the medium of contemporary dance. You had to video your dance interpretation of the glyphs, which was then judged by a panel at Niantic headquarters. The higher the score, the more stuff you got.
Back in 2014, a short lived bug allowed you to get permanent double XP by filling your headphone slot with cheese.
Because of Hanke's obsession with the fictional 70's detective, you could supercharge your blasters by repeatedly shouting 'KOJAK!' into your phone.
The very earliest versions of Ingress were tested on animals. They were absolutely rubbish at it and the whole project was almost scrapped.
Comments
Installing the closed beta, and seeing that I would have to go around and make the portals myself. There's no way this game is going to take off, this is garbage, uninstalled!
I installed it and have nothing to do but seeing the window of a nearby portal 2km away. I had not even a dozen to play on half of the city and spent a whole day do the equivalent of child play in 15min down the street now.
I remember the days before power cubes that we generated XM only by letting Niantic Project acquire enough data about us.
Remember when you had to go door to door and do your own census before you could capture MU? Good times!
They had to act fast this year to get the MUs readjusted
Guffaw!
Remember when you couldn't link portals together unless you'd collected enough wire or string? Man but those spools were ginormous!
It got easier in v0.002 when they changed it so that the 'keys' you got were actually trained ferrets. Remember you could tie the wire to them, show them on your phone which portal you wanted to link and they did all legwork. I can still see the accusing looks those little guys would give me if it turned out the portal was missing resonators.
Insert south park meme "member berries" i memba
On the one hand string/twine was easier to use (and lighter!) because you could drop links with just a pair of scissors. But the wire had more mitigation and required something at least as strong as tinsnips