Friday, January 12, 2007

Why I'm still single, exhibit #685.

My brother sent me this link to a site that lets you download and play Coleco Vision games. Those of you slightly senior folks who grew up in the Atari age probably won't appreciate this as much as I do. When I was a kid, Coleco Vision was the cat's meow. The bee's knees. THE video game system to have.

I'm embarrassed to admit how much time I spent on that damn thing between the ages of nine and twelve. Suffice it to say, when I started playing Donkey Kong Jr this evening, I immediately remembered the music for the second level right before it started. (I scored 71,100 my first time playing that game in almost 20 years, thank you very much.)

My favorite game when I was young was Zaxxon, a flying shooting game that was quite difficult for me. I remember it being very high-tech and graphically amazing. The coolest part was that you had to remember to use the up arrow to go down, and vice versa - just like a real plane! (Hey, I was ten.) And you were lucky if you made it to the big bad spaceship, which I called Zaxxon even though I'm not sure what the name "Zaxxon" actually referred to.

I started to play that after all my Donkey Kong Jrs died, and I only made it to 9600. I just couldn't get past how totally elementary it looks now. OK, and also, honestly it's still a hard game to play. I mean, gorillas wearing diapers trying to save their gorilla dads by climbing chains and avoiding snapping mouths is one thing. Flying through the air trying to remember that up is down and down is up, while avoiding horizontal and vertical missles, while on a quest for the Big Bad - that's on another level altogether.

So yes, folks, this is how I will be spending my evening. It's Netflix's fault - they're late with my next two installments of entertainment.

OOOH! It comes with Frogger! Doo doo doo do do, do, doo doo doo do do, do, doo doo doo do do, do, doo doo doo, SQUASH!

2 comments:

  1. You know, if you posted that entry word for word as a craigslist personal, you'd be inundated with date offers for weeks.

    Of course 98% of them would be grounds for a second "Why I'm still single" entry. But you could at least claim to be irresistible. And that 2% just might slip through.

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  2. That's both an intriguing and a terrifying idea.

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