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I want to ask you a fun question. What do you remember about the first game console you ever owned?
Me? Well…I remember a lot. Some might go as far to say that perhaps I remember a little too much… I know for certain that my first gaming console was the Sega Master System 2. Sure, before this, I had access to an Amstrad PC, which had a nice little collection of games available. But nothing could or would ever compare to a game console that could be plugged straight into the back of the TV. At the time of this emerging technology, this was to me, to put things simply, a technological revelation that I was desperate to have a crash course with! I can still recall faint figments of memory of the very day that I first got the console. Mind you, this was at least thirty years ago. So bare with me while I share the little pieces that I do remember. Let me start by saying that receiving the console was most likely the highlight of my year. Pause for a moment and think about what that says about 1990’s life in rural outback Australia? Bored were we? Yes! Wanting excitement and adventure in any format we could get it? Yep! Well, whatever the case, the truth is, there is little else that I remember about our family trip to Toowoomba on that day, other than it ultimately leading to me finally obtaining the Sega Master System 2 for myself! Beyond doubt, I recall that it was some time in the early 90’s, I mean, of course it was! After all, it's not like the system was released in the late 1940’s! From what I can recall it was some time before the release of Jurassic Park and some time after the original Bill and Ted. Most likely, it was released right around the time that my afternoon TV sessions were being treated with a healthy dose of Duck Tales. If I had to guess, I would say that it was perhaps right around 1992. Which would have meant that I was about ten years old at the time. This machine was made for me! The store that we would purchase the game console from was K-Mart and to this day I still recall seeing the stack of game machines upon entering. This was no ancient monument to the dead! It was a monument to the living and to the advances in technology. Further more, I now see it as a monument to my childhood! So? What were we doing in Toowoomba? I can tell you now that it wasn't the Sega that we were shopping for. We were meant to be clothes shopping, but there we were, as a family. Sidetracked by a giant pyramid of brand new Sega game consoles. Without doubt, the end cap stack itself was simply momentous to behold! I had never see anything so glorious in all my life. The consoles were stacked on top of one another and the stack formed a broad pyramid that reached towards the roof of the store. Turns out that K-Marts marketing team was spot on during this visit. The advertising obviously worked for me but more amazingly, as I was soon to discover, it somehow worked for my mother and my sister as well. While I wasn't paying attention, (no surprise, I'm easily distracted), my sister and my mother had somehow secretly formed a pact between them. Looking back now I am sure that they were possessed. They had somehow peacefully come to an arrangement to split the cost of the machine between them. It was quite possibly the last peaceful delegation between them before my sisters’ teenage years really took flight. Whatever the case, this secret pact was formed because of one simple reason. The price. Even now I still recall the device being reduce from its normal one hundred odd dollar price point to what I believe was now a neat seventy nine dollars. This was evidently convincing enough to put the discussion onto the table. It should be said, as a family we were as broke as Grandma but we still managed to scrape together enough coin to buy the Sega Master System 2. Thanks K-Mart! You’re brainwashing techniques really worked in my favor on this one! After the purchase I recall heading back to the motel room and immediately setting the console up on the old cathode-ray TV. The TV itself was mounted on the wall and boasted a whopping 32 cm display! That, believe it or not was pretty standard for the day. For those with no perspective of what this means in regard to size, it helps to think of your old school computer monitor, it was roughly that big. The fact that I remember this to this day is evidence enough that it apparently made a massive impression on me. After all, back in those days, it really was about the simple things and the getting Sega Master System 2 was perhaps one of the simplest memorable occasions of my simple child hood life. Whatever the case maybe, first console or not, I had indeed managed to play Sega before this. Please, bare with me while I share a “friends, brothers, uncles” story. My friend down the road had older brothers and his older brothers were the proud owners of an original Sega Master System One, they were also the proud owners of a fine collection of what is now considered classic games. Lucky for me I had played their Master System on play dates and was completely captivated by the technology. I recall their master system having two preinstalled games on it. One was Wonder Boy and the other was some Secret snail game, the likes of which I have not seen since. The secret snail game could only be accessed via a sequence of controller button presses. After a little research I soon discovered that the secret snail game was called Snail Maze. My cousins also had a Sega Master system, except theirs was the next edition, version 2. And from what I recall it was in fact here, at my cousins’ house that I was first introduced to the idea of a gaming console at all. I still recall a chat with my cousins one day about a special channel that their dad had put the TV on, the very night before this conversation. This special channel, they boasted, apparently allowed him to play arcade games. The way they explained it to me was that the games had come from their TV antenna, which was hung from the side of their house. I remember thinking that they were full of shit. I was 6 or 7 at the time and gaming consoles were completely foreign to me. It was through conversations with friends and relatives that I first learned of these mythical devices. So this, my friends, is how the myth of gaming consoles at home started. Over the next couple of years, after first hearing whispers of such a thing existing, the Sega Master System 2 went on to became a massive hit. The sad truth was that we had one store in town that sold the devices. One! What I do recall was that this store had a demo model set up that customers were welcome to play. Some afternoons, while my mum did the weekly grocery shopping, I would find myself in line, waiting patiently for the previous costumers to finish using the console before I could finally get another chance to get my gaming fix. This wait would often lead to a pent up sensation of excitement that I’ve rarely experienced since. Like I was saying, back in the early 1990’s it was all about the simple things. The game on the demo console was always Alex Kidd and it was here, on a demo console, in a small town electronics store, 220 kilometers from anything that closely resembled modern civilization, that I first got a real opportunity to have a good go at the game without being interrupted. I also happen to remember that outside of Goondiwindi, it was K-Mart and Big W stores that had offered these demo units. I remember visiting Toowoomba, 220 kilometers from my home town and these were first stores that my brother and I would head. My mum would go clothes shopping, which in all honesty bored the socks of my brother and I, which most likely resulted in more lost socks, which in turn resulted in mum going more clothes shopping! This was an apocalyptic cycle of endless boredom and Sega was our savior! However, because Toowoomba was 220 kilometers from my home town of Goondiwindi, my local Chandlers Electronics store was my only option of playing the demo consoles in my home town. However, this was soon to change with the release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendos second console release. My local video shop, called Go Video at the time, was quick to set up a nintendo console that you could rent for half an hour blocks at a cost of five bucks a session. This was a complete rip-off of course, even for 1990’s prices, but at the same time, if you couldn’t afford a SNES, it was an awesome way to play the latest and greatest game releases. Thoughts of hiring this nintendo machine bring back memories of a man-child we knew by the name of Hogsy. We weren’t sure what this dudes real name was, as far as I’m concerned he somewhat resembled Julian Assange and probably was. Legend has it that Assange was known to frequent the region from time to time. Whatever the case, Hogsy would often stop into the local video shop to hijack the game, even though we paid for it! Therefore, in typical gamers retaliation fashion, we honored him with the title of “Hogsy” because, to put things simply, he was a freaking game hog! But more on the legend that was Hogsy in another article perhaps? He has already eaten up enough of my valuable time. Now, I feel I have strayed far from my original conversation. So to help bring it all back into perspective I will remind you here that I was indeed discussing the Sega Master System 2. Now, the reason I wanted to discuss this gaming system was because of the game that came free with the console. The name of this game was Alex Kidd in Miracle World. It should have been called Alex Kidd in ‘push you over the edge world’ or Alex Kidd ‘It’s a miracle I didn’t have an aneurism playing it, world’. As a kid this game was a beast. And I can tell you now, as an adult, this game is still a beast. And, it should be said, we didn’t call it Alex Kidd in Miracle World; we simply called it Alex ‘the’ Kid. This game is notoriously difficult, was back then, still is now. That’s what’s great about it! Throughout the years the game itself has been re-released on the Nintendo Wii and Wii U console virtual stores. Up until recently, it remained largely unvaried. That is until its re-release on the Nintendo Switch in June of 2021. How I missed the release of this game is a testament to how I have completely neglected gaming for the past couple of years. What have I been doing! Oh, that’s right, I went down the Sodium Hydroxide rabbit hole… The re-release of Alex Kidd in Miracle World is a game worth buying. With the flick of a switch you can play the original retro version or you can chose to play the new enhanced version. The truth is that the original game is so well made that at times I forget which version I am even playing. Proof that it’s not about the graphics and that it’s more about the game play itself. Alex Kidd in Miracle World is simply addictive. Often I find I have been playing in retro mode without even noticing. The new version however is more appealing to the eyes and ears. The retroversion soundtrack still haunts my nightmares. The sound of Alex’s death is particularly sticky, as is the repetitive soundtrack loop, which plays in my head as I write this. So, there you have it. Hogsy, Chandlers, some place called Toowoomba and Alex Kidd in Miracle World. Happy days. Happy days indeed!
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I am behind the times. What have I been doing?! Oh, that’s right, I have a job and some pretty strange hobbies. Combined, these tend to take up most of my time.
As this is the case, I have fallen behind the times regarding video games. I attempted to play Ghosts of Tsushima, but it simply didn’t stick. The Pod-racer 64 re-release on the Nintendo Switch, on the other hand, well, let’s say that that game stuck and then some. That’s how I spent my Christmas break. I was so thoroughly invested in pod racing that when I went back to work, I drove the work truck so fast around a roundabout that I lost a generator out one side of the vehicle. Luckily a milkman was there to pull it off the side of the road. So, it’s safe to say that finding a good game has been somewhat of a challenge for me lately. Things are tough in the gaming market when the only decent one left to play was initially released more than twenty years prior. So it came as somewhat a surprise to me to find The Evildead Game on the shelf at my local EB Games. How the hell had I missed this? Surely I should have heard about this from somewhere! But no, sadly, this had almost slipped under my radar. But there was hope. The best thing was I hadn’t completely missed the bandwagon. It wasn’t due to be released for another couple of weeks. Well, now the time has come. The release date has come around. All I need to do now is willingly compete in the eternal struggle to kick my son off Fortnite and I will be good to go. Here comes the boom!….stick.
Once upon a time Link was riding through the forest minding his own buisness when a stranger known as Skullkid popped out of nowhere and stole his horse Epona along with the Ocarina of time. Link unwittingly chased Skull Kid into the world of Termina where he is soon cursed by the Skullkid. In his new form as a Deku Shrub Link follows the Skullkid deeper into the rabbit hole where he soon discovers the Creepy Mask salesman and Clocktown. Now the race is on to reacquire the Ocarina and save the inhabitants of Clocktown from the moon which is pummeling through the sky towards Termina! Along the way Link meets many new characters including the Bombers Gang, Astronomer and a list of other interesting locals. The adventure has only just begun!
The fragility of a games enjoyability partly relies on the games story line not being unwillingly or forcibly revealed. The reason? Spoilers are enough to crush the spirits of gamers forcing them to wonder why they are playing the game at all.
I happened across a spoiler for The Last of Us 2 through the google search engine and it happened organically (algorithmically) without me even trying to look for it. Once revealed the spoiler planted a seed of doubt in my mind which made me question why I was playing the game in the first place. This pesky question was raised every time I would find another clip of ammo or another health kit. What’s the the point, I would ask myself. The spoiler that was revealed to me was simply that bad! Luckily for me, it turned out the spoiler wasn’t even true. So it’s a good thing I played through to the end. This game is quite simply a work of art which immediately enticed me to play through again. It’s that good. I originally planned to write my thoughts on The Last of Us 2 in segments. This, like most things I do quickly changed. Now there will be only two parts to my thoughts on The Last of Us 2. And here, after my spoiler rant is the second instalment. With parallels to current global circumstances, already having been discussed in Part 1 of this discussion I thought it would be a good time to talk about the game mechanics and the actual playability of the game itself. The controller schematics have been fine tuned to perfection. If you’re familiar with the original The Last of Us gameplay than you will be immediately familiar with 2’s button configuration. If you’re a master at the multiplayer version of The Last of Us, you will have this down pat! Good for you, your game just got a heck of a lot easier. Patience is key with this game. It also helps to remember that it is just that, a game. When you’re about to flip out due to being continually eaten by a steel stalker it helps to remember, it’s just a game. This thought will ground you, allowing you to get your shit together and work out a new strategy of attack. It can be said that strategy in this game counts for a lot. If you learn to attack things from a different angle you will get through it. Remember, it’s not impossible, it’s just hard. The story of the game is superbly composed. The games greatest asset is it’s ability to tap into the players emotions. It presents characters to you, builds them up until you yourself develop a relationship with the character and than forces you to do something sometimes truly painful with them or in some cases to them! It forces the player to question the big things such as what is right and what is wrong. It reveals to the player that there is indeed two sides to every story and both sides can appear as though they are the bad guys. Better yet, perhaps there is no such thing as bad guys in the first place? So, with emotional strings being pulled like the strings of an emotional Pinocchio this game gradually puts you through hell before coming to a heart pounding crescendo! The gradual acquisition of refined skills eventually allows the player to really tear up the screen with guns blazing! It also allows the player to have a complete blast doing it. Playing these “skilled” chapters of the story with such a skill level allows you to feel powerful, finally you get a good chance to mess with the NPC’s giving them hell in the process! Some parts of the game are excruciating almost torturous to play. You really have to peck away at it in parts. This balances out the ‘skilled’ chapters with perfection and forces the player to really set out a strategy before making a move. If you go out with guns blazing in these “unskilled” chapters you will more than likely be put down. In parts The Last of Us 2 is truly terrifying. Let it be said that your adrenaline levels will absolutely spike while playing this game. Naughty Dog has fined tuned the experience to make it really nerve racking. The sound effects play a massive role in helping to immerse you into this experience. Time has indeed been taken to perfect this games ability to draw a player in. The evidence of this is in the atmospheric experience we have been given to play with. Finally The Last of Us 2 is very thought provoking. It reveals the darkness that could possibly follow after the collapse of a civilisation and it reveals the different factions that may come about due to a lack of governance or better yet a lack of good leadership. It especially reveals the importance of quality leadership. The game even manages to shed light on serious issues that exist in the real world such as sexism as well as gender appropriation and religion. In the real world there was considerable kick back in regards to more than one of these topics, especially on Twitter. Neil Druckmann was taking some serious heat there for while. It also demonstrates how these small fractures can lead to wider divides and how they might be teased apart by the members of different factions of a new world order. Evidently, some problems may never be solved. Overall The Last of Us 2 is a brilliant game, one of the best I’ve ever had the privilege to play, it was indeed a rare experience that deserves to be replayed immediately. The wait is over. I have finally gotten my hands on The Last of Us 2. Was it worth the wait? Without doubt, yes.
I should first address the infected elephant in the room. The relevance The Last of Us 2 has with current real life is almost too unbelievable to be true. I mean, sure, we are not living in a post apocalyptic world yet but give it time and who knows? Right? The similarities this game has with current events is uncanny. For example, while wandering through abandoned supermarkets in this game you can see signs on the wall indicating the need to stop the spread! The signs also clearly indicate the need to wear face masks. As you progress through the story line one of the tasks of the game is to gather up individual units of supplies and one of these important supplies you are constantly on the look out for is ethanol (alcohol). Do you recall hearing about the recent importance of ethanol in hand sanitisers? Ethanol plants around the world were forced into 24 hour operating schedules just to keep up with the increase in demand! Do you remember how hard it was to find alcohol based anything? For this to be considered so important in the game is obviously eerily relevant, perhaps touching a little too close to home for comfort. Especially if you reside in part of the world where Uncle COVID is really pulling daily life to pieces. Snap! Back to reality. Originally the spread of Covid 19 pushed The Last of Us 2's release date back indefinitely. This fact caused me to wonder. What influenced the creators (Naughty Dog) to release it now in June of 2020? Was it because they wished to take advantage of all the unemployed or quarantined people still at home? Well, no, right? Because, if they were doing that then they wouldn't have planned to delay the release in the first place. Clearly the relevance of the game to the current dire situations was enough to consider this but it didn't happen. Instead they went ahead and released it in June 2020. The reason? Could it be that they thought there was a real possibility of the pandemic getting worse? Perhaps this is why they back tracked on their indefinite release date? I guess only Naughty Dog will know the answer for sure. But talk about either extremely good or extremely bad luck right? Naughty Dog has spent the last six years developing this game only to have the release of it fall into the heart of the worse pandemic the world has seen since 1918? What are the chances of that? One in a hundred? Further relevance to current events is the importance placed upon group factions and civil divisions. Like in real life, the game pandemic has caused massive social upheaval. Quarantine Zones were created to control the movements of the people and the police and military were sent in to enforce these QZ's. The only real differences between the game and real life is that the infection is caused by a cordyceps infection not a coronavirus and the other difference is the depth of the civil collapse. Without doubt, I am exaggerating to the extreme but it should be said that the similarities to current real life were probably enough for Naughty Dog to delay the release of the game indefinitely. Luckily for the last of us, this has recently changed with the release of the game. While playing the game I began to read between the lines, this forced me to ask myself a couple of dark questions. What would it take to push someone over the edge? And, is being pushed over the edge the real reason for anyone going to war? |