Childhood Revisited

When I was a wee lad in those innocent, Cold War years of the 80′s, there was one title that fundamentally shifted my idea of what games could be like.  This was it.  In 1983, gaming technology was pretty spartan, and visually, the most people could hope for was squares shooting tiny colored squares at other squares.  Dragon’s Lair changed all that.  By using the now quasi-Victorian technology we think of as laser disc (for you whipper snappers, think pre-cursor to Blu-Ray and DVD) they were able to store actual hand drawn animation on the disc, and then link it to pre-programmed decision points to create what essentially amounted to a digital version of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, where the stored animation played out depending on when you inputed your actions.  To see Dirk the Daring, a full blown, full color, animated figure running around with music, effects and colors, detail and vividness I’d never seen in a game before was a mindblowing experience for an 11 year old kid.  The fact that Don Bluth was the artist providing the animation was another big plus if you’d watched The Secret of Nimh.

At the time, the game was an astounding 75 cents.  Up until this point, no arcade game had ever broken the two quarter barrier, but Dragon’s Lair was the first.  So popular was the game, that cabinets game built with a monitor sitting on top, to handle the crowd of onlookers that inevitably gathered whenever the game was played.  I was one of the very, very, VERY few kids in my city (at least that I knew of) that was actually capable of finishing the game and it was a rush at the time to have a gigantic crowd of people in the arcade cheering you on, and then screaming and patting you on the back when you finally killed the dragon after a tense 15+ minutes of watching you navigate all the “levels.”

I found the Blu-Ray sitting used on the shelf of a bookstore we frequent for a mere $20.  I had to have it.  The game is definitely showing its age now, but I remember thinking as a kid that it would have been the greatest thing in the world to have my own personal Dragon’s Lair cabinet in my home where I could play it to my hearts content.  I held onto that dream for quite some time, at least until consoles started getting more and more powerful.  Now I’ve got it sitting on my shelf next to Rock Band 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4:  Guns of the Patriots.  It may not have the same “value” gamewise as these more recent, obviously more powerful titles, but those titles don’t bring me back to the local Mac’s convenience store, in winter, pumping quarters into a machine, with the smell of mud and licorice in the air, while my small hands tried desperately to get the timing right for hopping around electrified pieces of floor to take down a mechanical knight.

Some people have songs, or toys, or a particular bicycle that immediately transport them back to their youth.  For me, it’s Dragon’s Lair.  I’m absurdly happy to have this thing in my collection now after all this time.  And in High-Definition.

First Time For Everything

Goodbye 2007

Around this same time last year, I was just about smack dab on the equator, sitting in a hot apartment, cataloging DVDs and games and putting them into boxes for an imminent move to the other side of the planet. Out of all the months in 2007, only January was a low point and that’s only because it was still spent in Singapore.

I don’t foresee the same problem this year.

Happy New Year, all. Hopefully the rest of 2008 will be as good as 2007 was from February onwards.

Day With Artists

The Wife met up with an artist she’d interviewed for her new bloggish site, “Illustrophile” which showcases artists she thinks people should paying more attention to. The artist in question, Indonesian Canadian Tessar Lo, ended up inviting us to spend the day with him, meaning first we had lunch with him and another artist, and then spent the evening with him and his artist friends. Unsurprisingly, much artsy stuff was talked about, although I managed to get in a few licks with some extended conversations on comics, anime, videogames and, towards the end, I was forced to put my foot down and take a stand to explain why Battlestar Galactica was, in fact, superior to Star Trek: The Next Generation.

So you see, you can take the geek out of geektown, but you can never take out the geek…