The game that led me back to video gaming

My love for gaming started way loooooooooongggggggggg back..... I remembered holding this casio LED game console with the title WESTERN BAR in it ( yes, one game console is preprogrammed with only ONE game inside, no such thing as cartridges ).

In Western bar, a bartender would roll out dishes and bottles of beer.You, the cowboy character had to shoot them before they hit the floor. If you PAJIAO ( hokkien for parallex error ), the cowboy would cry and lose his “life”....

That was easily 23 years ago...Although now that I think about it, in both cases the plates broke anyway, WHAT THE HELL was he crying about?

At that time i never had a WESTERN BAR myself, and always relied on my friends to lend me their handheld just to savour the few minutes of playing the game. In school, if you want to be recognised, you just have to hold onto it and make sure you play it in places where there's crowd. SEEN AND BE SEEN... YEAH!!!!

Then came Nintendo's SUPER MARIO brothers. Till today, i think there's easily 100+ variations of games under that name. That wasnt in my favourites list though. I had to play that game just to keep track of my primary school mates' lunch topic.

I started sleeping little when i found out about this game, Delta Force. Later i learnt that the proper title to this game was Contra. The secret ( which didnt become one in a matter of weeks after the launch of the game ) was this : UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT A-B - SELECT - START... I chased this game from its first, to its second, and finally its SUPER FAMICOM series ( i presumed it was the 3rd )...

Until i learnt about street fighter. How can i not know about this game? Its easily THE GAME starting from 1992. When my kind aunt bought me a FAMICOM with that game, i suddenly have many good friends who would come to my house and challenge me in the game. Hell, who cares if they were just acquaintances? I only wanted to increase my database of fighting patterns, and the only way to do it, is to observe how other players play , and finally to fight them with my own set of counter moves.

Somewhere in secondary school, my involvement in uniform group grew, and slowly i parted with my gaming life. Once in awhile, I would enter the arcades to sample the newer series of street fighter i.e the Zero Series... Towards the end of my secondary school life, i realised that i needed a powerful game console to play that game. In the market then was SEGA SATURN and PLAY STATION.

Ashley suddenly became my good friend in JC. He borrowed me his play station, and then the routine began all over again. I started trashing computer opponents, relishing the frustration kept within me accumulated by all the short comings in my JC life. I was not only active in gaming now, but also equally spending alot of time doing CCAs and went out more with lady friends. I supposed that's growing up for a guy.. HAHA...

Army put a stop to all my life... for a good 2.5 years... and when uni began for me, i had no time to even think of video gaming. My passion turned to physical activities. In year one i took up bouldering, and went trekking with NTU ODAC very often. Friends were made, bonds were forged.

Years passed... One day, during my OFF shift period from work, i walked into bugis arcade, and felt obliged to lay my hands on an old friend whom i was afraid would deny my existence. Putting in the 50cent token into the STREET FIGHTER machine was somewhat a breathtaking moment....

Thank goodness, my fingers found their way back to combos. The feeling....Its akin to bumping into your primary school friend... Since then, i was more regular in the arcades, trashing and being trashed by other people. I supposed that's life. You wont win forever; There will be someone out there who's so much better than you.

In my previous post, i talked about getting a new game console for my new house. This game was the ultimate reason.



Isnt the graphics superb?????