Saturday, May 22, 2004

"I recall Central Park in fall"

Topic of today: Video games
Yes, I know I'm not a professional gamer and therefore anything I say won't be structurally cool or have any valid points. But I have fun whenever I play and since this place is a silly one, I'm hoping to get away with randomly sharing my memories and thoughts :p


I can't say for sure what year we got our first console, but it was a NES and it wasn't that long after it was released. After visiting our cousins (on dad's side) and playing on their NES, dad was pretty quick to get us one. "Super Mario Brothers" was the game that was always slotted in first and my older sisters and I would take turns playing, while the younger sister watched and said stuff like "Now you're wet !" whenever Mario got out of a water world *giggles*

Dad was forced to play at night, or early in the mornings, since we hogged it the rest of the time, hehe. (We'd get up earlier to play Mario and other games, than when we had to go to school O.o;;;) Mom wasn't interested, but I'm sure she had lots of fun hearing us live vicariously through Mario and his adventures :p

Some games we got to the NES:

Anticipation - Basically you had to anticipate what a big pencil was drawing and when you thought you had a good guess, you'd have to spell it correctly within a time limit. If you messed up on the spelling twice, you got laughed at (by the game) and the chance would go over to the other player. This was a highly educational game, since it was in English and I for one was too young to know the more sophisticated words (especially the Science ones). It was fairly tricky too, because the banana and sausage was deceptively similar ~_^
My vocabulary grew immensely thanks to this game and to this day I still think of it when I hear "sausage", hahaha.

Ice climber - Grab your ice picks and try not to leave your climbing buddy behind, as you whack your way up to the top of the iceberg. Ugh, this game seriously flustered me. Especially that annoying bear that showed up and was all "Ooo, look at me. I'm over here and you won't get to me in time. Haha !" -_-;;;
There was a fair bit of falling out with the sisters when playing it ("Aaaahhh, you jumped before I was ready !") >_>;;;;

Goonies II - "Eeeee, all your Goonie friends have been abducted by the evil Fratellis. It is now up to you, Mikey, to go save them all !" With weapons such as a boomerang, sling shot, yo-yo and bombs (O.o) you'd run through dragon lairs and shark infested waters, to free everyone.
I must've played this game a thousand times and it never got boring. I think the boomerang was my favourite weapon that Mikey had. It could do double the damage, hehe ~_^

Bubble Bobble - Hyperness ! "I gots the shoe and am Speedy Gonzales, watch my dust as I kick it in your face, zooming to get that giant plum. Oooo look, a bubblegum with fast bubbles and don't you dare take it when I just lost another life as you were downing the cakes and crowns… Aaaahh the white whale, run !!!"
............ ehum. ^____^;;;;;
Yeah, I love this game. Especially when playing with my younger sister, hehehehe.

Some games we borrowed, but never bought:

Chip 'n Dale – Rescue Rangers - played it with my younger sister. Most of the time was spent throwing boxes at each other *grins* It got annoying at times, because it was so sensitive to how close you moved to "danger zones". Dissappointing end boss *shrug*

Flintstones - I remember playing basketball... at some point I got really good, but I don't know if the rest of the game went well :p

Solomon's Key - My older sister played this one most. I wish I had given it more time, it looked fun.

Tennis - that and Ice Hockey, were the only sports game I enjoyed. My oldest sister and I would try to get into as many fights as possible when we played Ice Hockey, just to see how many people we could get into the penalty box *lol*

Paper boy - could either be played seriously (getting the papers neatly in their place) or you could wreck havoc (smashing windows and stuff). Hehehe. I liked this game, it was super fun ^__^

Super Mario 2 - for some odd reason we never acquired this one. Though to be honest I didn't mind, since it was my least favourite of the Mario games >_>;


When SNES came out we (dad) bought a used one, because I think we were a bit short on money. It made no difference though, it worked just fine. Having the two consoles also meant that everyone got more play time, heh. So us kids claimed the rights to the SNES and dad got more time with Super Mario Brothers, the only game he ever truly got hooked on, probably.
We didn't buy many games to the SNES (or the NES for that matter), now that I think back *ponders* Apart from the Mario game, "Donkey Kong" and "Sim City", I can't remember if we had more……

Neither can I recall what happened to those two consoles and games. They sort of went back and forth from my sisters apartments and I think the NES broke at some point *shrugs*

A few months back, dad bought both a NES and a SNES, with some basic games.
Now that I've reminiscenced about my younger gaming days (*giggles*) it would be fun to see if I can get my hands on some of the old games I enjoyed so much *makes mental note*


And of course, in 1997 my older sister bought a Playstation and FFVII.

At first I was just watching her play, baffled as to how it worked and blown away by everything. Then one day she got a phone call as she was playing and handed me the controller with the words "Here, try it out". I had no clue as to what to do and died pretty quickly, hahaha. I was pretty content to going back to just watching after that :p
However, my sister had school and obviously couldn't play at any given moment just because I wanted to know what would happen next. So after a while I decided to start a game and see if I couldn't get to grips with how it worked.

And then I couldn't tear myself away from it, hehehe. As my older sister moved out, dad (once again) helped out by buying the console and my younger sister and I bought the FF games together. I would play first and she'd give it a go when she had learned from my mistakes ~_^
Now we both own a PS2 each and the days of shared game play is over *sniffles*

Aside from FF, "Bust a groove" is the only game I've tried out on the PS and I think that it's a kick ass game. My older sister bought it and I don't know what happened to it. The manual is in my cupboard, but the game is nowhere to be found *blinks*
I should try and track a copy down....


Other than that....

My family had/have 2 "Game & Watch" games. One was with Donkey Kong and the other one was with monkeys… that's about all I can remember, haha.

My cousins (on moms side) had Sega and we'd spend more time playing Sonic, than playing with them ^_^;;;

I haven't tried out any of the new[er] consoles and barely played any Zelda *hides from fanboys and girls*


Anything else you'd like to know ? ^__^

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