Having gotten a chance to skim over some of the books already...
There is a fair bit of mis-information in some of these posts reguarding specifics of the game. Not that it matters much in terms of the spirit of the thing.
What I don't quite understand is how any particular version of D&D make people play much differently than any other version of D&D. You can play any version with ot without minies and you can get as complicated or simple as you like in any version of D&D depending on your tastes.
Personaly my memories of childhood D&D are that it was pretty lame most of the time as folks hardly role played and were mostly jut keen on getting XP and treasure for thier characters so they could claim to beat up someone elses character by virtue of their vorpal sword of life stealing etc...
I think a lot of people kind of agrandize the days of youthfull RP. We all used to get a big thrill playing asteroids and donkey as well. Try sitting down to those for a few hours today and see how thrilling they seem. Were all pretty spoiled by generaly better games, but we often look back with nostalgia at the older ones.