Thursday, April 6, 2006

   Nostalgie
So today I'm doing my monthly work of charity/actual housework and ended up rearranging the shelves in my bedroom to make room for more manga, dusting, and getting together old books to donate to a library in NO. In doing so I ran across some books I barely remembered, like the Dragonling series and Heartland. The former was one of my favorite series as a little kid (the books are intro-to-chapter-books length), and I really hope that some other kids love them too. They were very well-written, as I recall. Heartland was a bore, though. Maybe some horse-loving preteen girl will find them more interesting than I did. Then there was Deltora Quest, and a few others. Good books, most of them--just below my current reading level and practically memorized. I even ran across the first Magic Treehouse book... Anyone remember that series? It was very popular at the local library, I recall. Then again, there were a bunch of books I ordered from the Scholastic book club and never read, and some required reading books I never want to see again. Cough, Jacob Have I Loved, cough Cry, the Beloved Country, cough, The Black Pearl, and so on. I feel really good now, knowing that I'm giving people books I really enjoyed or that they may need for school, and not just a bunch of crap.

I also looked at the prices to see if I really remembered them correctly. Yup. There was a time not so long ago when a good book cost $5 or less. Last night I bought The Great Gatsby (school reading again, ugh), and it was $12-flippin'-95. The book is half the size of the average young adult novel, ladies and gents, and it cost more than the volume of Hana-Kimi that I bought, which not only is twice as long but had to be translated and has pictures on every page! I feel like a grandpa sitting in a rocking chair on the porch telling stories... But it's true, books used to be much cheaper.

Nostalgie, by the way, is the name of a piece of music from Magi Nation, one of my favorite classic Game Boy Color games. I remember that the sheet music was written in the instruction booklet so you could play it on a piano. That is a great game, right up there with Lunar Legend, I think. The sarcastic dialog was probably my favorite part. One line I distinctly remember was triggered by "looking" at a book case--"It's a book case. Full of booky goodness." There was even a scene where the character wanders into what he believes is a tool shed and is actually...well, we don't know for sure, but it's definitely not a tool shed! The gameplay was rather difficult though, so I stopped about halfway through. Fun music though, and nice graphics.

Since I'm talking about GBC games, I'd also like to toss in Dragon Warrior Monsters. I remember getting the game and finding the wrong game inside, so we had to drive all the way back and get it exchanged--and I bought it at Columbia Mall, which is a long drive. It was fun though. Never made it to the end, though, because just when I got close I lost the cartridge, and when I finally stumbled upon it again the saved game was gone. Very sad. Not a ton of replay value because of the issue of training (like Pokemon, only slower, ugh), but it was a very long game. I loved my monsters. I had a favorite three: a Rain Hawk for magic, a Great Drak for power, and a Unicorn for healing. Nice monster graphics, very pretty. Lots of hidden features, too, and side quests galore. It can get a little repetitive though, especially near the end while you're training for the tough bosses. Ah well. Good stuff.

Also, remember the awesome old YGO games? The ones where monster type actually mattered and you could cheat really easily and magic and trap cards didn't do shit... Old games rock, especially the ones with glitches! ^_^
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