Mon 12 September 2005 - Rain brings on the aliens

Posted in Home life, Video games — Daniel @ 7:19am

GalagaI had it all worked out — 15 more minutes mucking about, then we’d go outside. I’d bring my laundry in off the line — it would be about dry — the kids could jump on the trampoline, or get their bikes out, whatever.

15 minutes later I glanced outside. It was pouring with rain. It did so for the rest of the day. No trampoline, no bikes, and my laundry was drenched.

Damn.

So instead of enjoying the non-sunshine, we went to Bunnings to get some storage boxes. On the way we stopped at the game/arcade place on Huntingdale Road and fed a couple of dollars into a retro video game for some geek nostalgia. It offers Frogger, Ms Pacman or Galaga.

We each had a go, and by the time it was my turn, I was blasting away aliens in Galaga at a rate of knots, my button finger on rapid-fire. The kids were cheering as I cleared through them, got the double ship on level 2, shot everything on the first challenge stage. The pace picked up and it got pretty tricky, I lost the double ship, but I eventually got as high as level 10 before bowing out. It was high-fives all round — a real WarGames moment.

5 Responses to “Rain brings on the aliens”

  1. Jhuny Says:
    September 14th, 2005 at 1:19am

    Cool picture!!! I don’t mind a bit of Galaga myself! Forget the first person perspective, bring back the vertical shoot’em up!

  2. DM Says:
    September 16th, 2005 at 12:16pm

    Check out http://www.mame.net/

    Enjoy.

  3. Andrew Says:
    September 17th, 2005 at 9:21am

    Ahhh galaga.. Many a lost hour spent in my youth playing this classic and others such as elevator action.

    All these games by the way can be played now on modern computers via something called rom emulators or something similar. Forget the exact details but I remember a fun day last year on a friends computer when I had the choice of 1000+ games of yesteryear on his PC, gameplay as original and graphics, sounds etc.. have to digup the details.

  4. Andrew Says:
    September 17th, 2005 at 9:21am

    Hmm….

    Just read comment number 2….

    Kinda answers my query :)

    Yeh, check it out its super cool.

  5. Daniel Says:
    September 17th, 2005 at 12:25pm

    Yes, MAME is well worth the effort.

    Ahem, of course I only play games that I have also bought (via Midway Arcade Treasures for XBox etc), naturally. Yes. Of course.