All right, readers.
Another day, another tale of lost and found, memories just barely flashing on the edge of my subconcious.
As a kid in the Midwest, I spent my share of time in arcades and Circus Pizzas. Lots of great times to be had, playing games with friends and eating the horribly greasy and bland pizza that, for reasons unbekownst to me, was always cut into squares. To this day I hold a deep love and appreciation for the game, the glory, that is Skeeball. There is no activity like it, whatsoever. There's something unique yet elusive about it, something in the tactile sensation of rolling the wooden balls up the ramp. The unmatchable satisfaction for getting the bulls eye in the center. When I happen on a game as a grown man I can't resist the compulsion to indulge, no matter the amount of sore knees and shoulders afterword. No one said getting older is easy, after all. Cocktails are the difference, I find. What was whimsy as a kid is replaced by light inebriation and arrested development as someone in their late twenties. Alas, my love for Skeeball is not why I write this.
No, my friends.
Today's post is of another mystery solved! Like my post on Depresso, it's a tale of the internet leading me to what I had lost and forgotten.
Read on!
For years I had hazy memories of a game that I was enthralled with, yet whose name escaped me. My friend Scott and I would plunk down our quarters, sit in a cockpit, and steer a hover-craft type vehicle through tunnels and futuristic city-scapes, blasting aliens and hurtling forward with unstoppable momentum. It was a blast! The graphics I could recall were, at the time, mind blowing. Sure, there were plenty of other great games - Street Fighter II, the excellent Simpsons arcade game, the bizarre Play Choice 10 cabinets and even the legendary 6-player X-Men cabinets. Of course, my beloved Skeeball. None of these, however, held the same feel, the same je ne sais quois, that this strange, frenetic After Burner clone held. Looking back now, I realize it was de riguer for the time - mode 7 scaling, sleek Blade Runner-style cityscapes. The music was interesting too, as I recall.
Time passed, attention wandered. I discovered girls. I started playing music. Basically my life moved on from the arcades right before the arcades started to die out, anyway, so the timing was congruent with my forgetting the game. Years later, though, it came back to me. I don't even know why. It may have been a trip to Gameworks in Minneapolis. It may have been something I saw while surfing the web instead of writing a paper in college. Whatever it was, the memories started to come back, if only slightly. I had just the vaguest memories of playing the game, whatever it was. Gripping the joystick, feeling like I was holding on for dear life as I dodged attacks and steered through canals and tunnels. Laden with nostalgia, I wanted to play it again, maybe just to see if it held up, or maybe just to relive my childhood in the smallest, silliest way. But there was a problem.
I couldn't for the life of me remember the title.
All I knew were some of the vaguest details - the type of game, what it looked and felt like. I couldn't even nail down the year. How old was I? Was it 1991? 92? 94? No idea. So, completely blind on the web, I started to look, casually at first. It was one of those things I would pick up sporadically - twenty minutes here or there on Google or a vintage gaming site. I was hindered by my lack of specifics. At one point I stumbled onto the sprawling Arcade Game Museum and their wonderfully refinable search engine. Still, nothing came up that was right. Things were close, but nothing hit it on the head.
Toward the end of a work day I mentioned it to a coworker. It was slowly growing an bothering me. The more I searched the more I grew frustrated. I just wanted to know what it was at this point. I knew it existed, it had to have a title. He mused along with me, saying "So it was like some tunnel-racing thing?" It dawned on me to just try putting some descriptors like that into the search bar. What came up was closer than ever - a similar if less refined game called S.T.U.N. Runner. Indeed it was a tunnel racer, as the genre was known. So, I had a genre to work with. I kept poking away, bit by bit, patience increasing with every refinement of the terms.
Then I saw it.
A screenshot from the game. It was a eureka moment in the nerdiest way. Eagerly, I clicked on the link and lo and behold - the game. Released by Taito of Japan, it was called Night Striker. No wonder I couldn't recall it - the title was so generic it might as well have not had one. But there it was! In a rush it all came back - hunching over in the cabinet, yelling at the screen and elbowing my friend Scott as he grabbed the controls for his turn. The sounds of the arcade, the noise of other games in the background, feeling like you're the baddest kid in the world when you're nine years old. Nostalgia is a strange thing.
I may or may not have found a legal way to experience playing the game again, but suffice it to say I was able to satisfy the beast of childhood memories with a computer program and some ridiculous YouTube videos. It's pretty cheesy and dated, but take a look - seeing this awesomely old school game in action just makes me feel like a kid in the best way. To me it was like finding your old action figures and remembering the good times you had as a kid. It's another mystery I've been able to solve in my adult life, thanks once again to the depths of the web. Hell or high water, it's out there for finding, provided you know where to look. Happy hunting, kids.
Another day, another tale of lost and found, memories just barely flashing on the edge of my subconcious.
As a kid in the Midwest, I spent my share of time in arcades and Circus Pizzas. Lots of great times to be had, playing games with friends and eating the horribly greasy and bland pizza that, for reasons unbekownst to me, was always cut into squares. To this day I hold a deep love and appreciation for the game, the glory, that is Skeeball. There is no activity like it, whatsoever. There's something unique yet elusive about it, something in the tactile sensation of rolling the wooden balls up the ramp. The unmatchable satisfaction for getting the bulls eye in the center. When I happen on a game as a grown man I can't resist the compulsion to indulge, no matter the amount of sore knees and shoulders afterword. No one said getting older is easy, after all. Cocktails are the difference, I find. What was whimsy as a kid is replaced by light inebriation and arrested development as someone in their late twenties. Alas, my love for Skeeball is not why I write this.
No, my friends.
Today's post is of another mystery solved! Like my post on Depresso, it's a tale of the internet leading me to what I had lost and forgotten.
Read on!
For years I had hazy memories of a game that I was enthralled with, yet whose name escaped me. My friend Scott and I would plunk down our quarters, sit in a cockpit, and steer a hover-craft type vehicle through tunnels and futuristic city-scapes, blasting aliens and hurtling forward with unstoppable momentum. It was a blast! The graphics I could recall were, at the time, mind blowing. Sure, there were plenty of other great games - Street Fighter II, the excellent Simpsons arcade game, the bizarre Play Choice 10 cabinets and even the legendary 6-player X-Men cabinets. Of course, my beloved Skeeball. None of these, however, held the same feel, the same je ne sais quois, that this strange, frenetic After Burner clone held. Looking back now, I realize it was de riguer for the time - mode 7 scaling, sleek Blade Runner-style cityscapes. The music was interesting too, as I recall.
Time passed, attention wandered. I discovered girls. I started playing music. Basically my life moved on from the arcades right before the arcades started to die out, anyway, so the timing was congruent with my forgetting the game. Years later, though, it came back to me. I don't even know why. It may have been a trip to Gameworks in Minneapolis. It may have been something I saw while surfing the web instead of writing a paper in college. Whatever it was, the memories started to come back, if only slightly. I had just the vaguest memories of playing the game, whatever it was. Gripping the joystick, feeling like I was holding on for dear life as I dodged attacks and steered through canals and tunnels. Laden with nostalgia, I wanted to play it again, maybe just to see if it held up, or maybe just to relive my childhood in the smallest, silliest way. But there was a problem.
I couldn't for the life of me remember the title.
All I knew were some of the vaguest details - the type of game, what it looked and felt like. I couldn't even nail down the year. How old was I? Was it 1991? 92? 94? No idea. So, completely blind on the web, I started to look, casually at first. It was one of those things I would pick up sporadically - twenty minutes here or there on Google or a vintage gaming site. I was hindered by my lack of specifics. At one point I stumbled onto the sprawling Arcade Game Museum and their wonderfully refinable search engine. Still, nothing came up that was right. Things were close, but nothing hit it on the head.
Toward the end of a work day I mentioned it to a coworker. It was slowly growing an bothering me. The more I searched the more I grew frustrated. I just wanted to know what it was at this point. I knew it existed, it had to have a title. He mused along with me, saying "So it was like some tunnel-racing thing?" It dawned on me to just try putting some descriptors like that into the search bar. What came up was closer than ever - a similar if less refined game called S.T.U.N. Runner. Indeed it was a tunnel racer, as the genre was known. So, I had a genre to work with. I kept poking away, bit by bit, patience increasing with every refinement of the terms.
Then I saw it.
A screenshot from the game. It was a eureka moment in the nerdiest way. Eagerly, I clicked on the link and lo and behold - the game. Released by Taito of Japan, it was called Night Striker. No wonder I couldn't recall it - the title was so generic it might as well have not had one. But there it was! In a rush it all came back - hunching over in the cabinet, yelling at the screen and elbowing my friend Scott as he grabbed the controls for his turn. The sounds of the arcade, the noise of other games in the background, feeling like you're the baddest kid in the world when you're nine years old. Nostalgia is a strange thing.
I may or may not have found a legal way to experience playing the game again, but suffice it to say I was able to satisfy the beast of childhood memories with a computer program and some ridiculous YouTube videos. It's pretty cheesy and dated, but take a look - seeing this awesomely old school game in action just makes me feel like a kid in the best way. To me it was like finding your old action figures and remembering the good times you had as a kid. It's another mystery I've been able to solve in my adult life, thanks once again to the depths of the web. Hell or high water, it's out there for finding, provided you know where to look. Happy hunting, kids.
