Chapter XLII: Zany Golf

There’s an old saying: “The neighbour’s wife is always better than mine”. Yes, I know it’s kind of misogynistic and old-fashioned, but you can swap “wife” for “duck” or “drugs” and it still makes sense.

Chapter XLI: Body Blows

I've mentioned before how legitimate copies of games were really hard to find back in the day where I lived. We used to call those “originals”. Sometimes even some fancier print on a pirated game was enough to fool me, because I didn't have much in the way of experience with the real “originals”. We were like that tribal man from “The Gods Must Be Crazy” with the Coca Cola bottle. Because of that, most of us would cherish magazine cover disks dearly since it was the closer we had to an “original”. Little I knew that getting one of those legitimate disks would made me accomplice to something not really legitimate.

Chapter XL: Kick Off 2

It’s been a while since I've last written about a football game. OK, maybe not so long, but it’s funny how many games of this genre have been covered by someone who doesn’t care that much about the real sport. It may sound strange to do this already so late in this blog lifetime, since I’ve so many memories attached to this game that I don’t know where to start.

Chapter XXXIX: Shadow of the Beast II

“We only live to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting”. - Kahlil Gibran

“Beauty isn’t the most important thing, it’s the only thing” - The Neon Demon

Chapter XXXVIII: Dick Tracy

How many times I’ve written about how lucky we were for playing pirated games. We got to watch lovely cracker intro screens and had the opportunity to have much more games than our financial means allowed. I know this is a very politically incorrect thing to say, but there’s something more to it to balance things out. Many of these pirated games were bugged.

Chapter XXXVII: Wizkid

Being such a big nerd ever since a very young age, it was only natural that I would try every opportunity to bring video games into my school assignments so that I could play a little more. First time didn’t work as well as it should, but since then I knew better than to use my questionable drawing skills into the equation.

Chapter XXXVI: Mean Machine

There was an unspoken rule on game shops that dealt with pirated copies. If you got the shop owner a game he didn't have, you would have a copy on the house. It sounds wonderful, but we're talking about shelves filled with disks, some of them quite dusty and mostly unused.

Chapter XXXV: Rodland

By now, it’s well documented in this blog my never ending quest for some multiplayer challenge. My regular friends, due to the fact that most of them didn’t had computers of their own, were rubbish players. Still, this doesn’t explain why Amiga owners Palmtree Paul and Magellan Joe were so terrible. Since I was quite far from the epicentre of Amiga championships, I had no other choice than making up and imagining my own tournaments.

Chapter XXXIV: Warlords

Someone wise once said “We are young when we criticise the elder and we are old when we criticise the youth”. I cannot argue with that, even though that means that I’m getting older. Every now and then I watch how a kid acts and think to myself “I’m sure I used to be smarter”, specially when it comes to videogames.

Chapter XXXIII: Operation: Cleanstreets

In the early days there wasn't much in the way of information when it came to what were the good games. The best games were either discovered by chance or by word of mouth, but since we all know how indiscriminate were kids tastes, that usually didn't work out very well. One of the most common ways of choosing a game was just by its name.

Chapter XXXII: Pirates!

It's pretty obvious by now that I'm not even trying to give this blog any semblance of continuity. That's because I don't know of what game or episode of my life I'm going to be reminded of by looking at some broken glass on the floor or a bird taking a poo. But let me assure you that if everything was done by the book, this would definitely be chapter one.

Chapter XXXI: Wonderboy in Monsterland

I’ve mentioned in many occasions how piracy not only wasn’t fought by the authorities, but there were actually many stores around that sold pirated games in the open. These state of affairs endured until around ’93, and most of our gaming needs were purchased at the store of Mr. Joaquin.

Chapter XXX: Toki

It’s easy to look back with nostalgia when it comes to arcade salons. A room filled with big colourful machines capable of delivering a video game experience unlike anything you could have at home and easily accessible by just a few quarters. Well, “easily accessible” is arguable, since in my country you needed to be at least sixteen to get into one.

Chapter XXIX: Legend (aka The Four Crystals of Trazere)

Having a sister six years older than me meant that my musical tastes were quite sophisticated for such a young boy. By the time I was in third grade, Appetite for Destruction was not only my album of choice but it was also the only music that mattered. After I went to fifth grade, Guns n’ Roses have gotten huge, and so every kid in school was humming Knockin' On Heaven’s Door all the time. That really bothered me. How come these dumb philistines have the guts to smear the best rock band in the world? And so it was that the hateful seeds of hipsterism were planted in the mind of young Ricky Skegg.

Chapter XXVIII: Quiksilver Pinball

Until recently, I had used Pizza as an example of a thing that even when it’s bad, it’s better than just standing still and breathing oxygen. I had to let go of the Pizza analogy when eating at a canteen of a workplace some years ago. What they offered as “Pizza” was just pre-made frozen dough, of the most rock-hard variety, covered in ketchup. So I had to come up with a new analogy instead, and that was Pinball.

Chapter XXVII: Lothar Matthäus (aka European Champions)

“Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.” 

Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian 

Chapter XXVI: Speedball 2 - Brutal Deluxe

While I was growing up, I had a close circle of friends who used to play games in my house. One of the main habitués of these gaming sessions was a friend of mine called Louie FC. I had specific games to play with each one of my friends, tastes differ and all that. Every time I and Louie couldn’t decide which game to play, it was already established that Speedball 2 was going to be that game. It makes sense, it’s a fast and action packed competitive game which brings immediate satisfaction while playing.

Chapter XXV: Joan of Arc

Why do night clubs exist? Is there any reason to be in a closed, dark and claustrophobic place with deafening music? Well, we all know reasons vary between crazy people that for some reason like to dance (like Seinfeld, I don’t dance because “it’s stupid”), and other equally strange people that think that’s the best place to meet other people. I don’t like nightclubs because I reached the apex of that particular experience as soon as I was 9 years old.

Chapter XXIV: The Manager

While I was always a good student during my formative years, there were two classes that spoiled my grade sheet like a dog taking a shit can spoil a good day at the beach. Those were the art and workshop classes. When I was in sixth grade, I and my friend Earl Piranha had a plan that could help us with our grades in art class. And that plan included a particular videogame.

Chapter XXIII: Wings

Going to college must be one of the most exciting times in the life on any man. Gone are the embarrassing stories from high school which we had to carry for so long, and all the episodes of heartbreak and drunken stupidity we all had to endure. Sure, getting to college meant much more heavy drinking was on its way, but at least we could do things right this time, and for at least a short while, pretend to be much cooler than what our past showed. But best of all, it was time to meet new girls which weren’t attached to the small town mentality that I was used to.