{"id":2842,"date":"2013-05-28T14:24:11","date_gmt":"2013-05-28T14:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=2842"},"modified":"2013-05-28T16:13:12","modified_gmt":"2013-05-28T16:13:12","slug":"recollections-of-days-long-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=2842","title":{"rendered":"Recollections of days long gone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Games don’t always bring back one specific memory.\u00a0 They sometimes bring to mind certain things I used to do on a regular basis, or people I used to hang out with, even though it only vaguely relates to a video game.<\/p>\n

A few things come to mind when I think of Metroid<\/em> for NES.<\/p>\n

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\"1987<\/a>

1987 – Nintendo (NES, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Console, eShop)<\/p><\/div>\n

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On top of the epic bicycle story where I recounted seeing Metroid<\/em> beaten for the first time (“Samus is a woman…\u00a0 so?”)<\/a>,\u00a0 I have a memory of\u00a0one particular\u00a0Winter day with my friend Katie.\u00a0 We were in the basement at her place, playing with who knows what kind of dolls, or “house”, or whatever video games she happened to have.\u00a0 Her mom was babysitting me, since my parents and sisters were all downtown at a curling tournament.<\/p>\n

The phone upstairs rang, and it was my mom!\u00a0 She was at the good ol’ Co-Op, and wanted to know which game I wanted her\u00a0to rent; Metroid<\/em> or Simon’s Quest<\/em>?\u00a0 I was at the foot of the brown-carpeted stairs to the kitchen, contemplating the choice…\u00a0 it was a very tough decision to make!\u00a0 Not only that, but Katie’s mom didn’t really *know* games the way my mom did, and I always felt timid when talking about games with people who don’t know games.\u00a0 Still do, actually.<\/p>\n

I ended up\u00a0yelling “Metroid<\/em>!”, and went back to playing with Katie.\u00a0 We had a bit of a road trip planned that day, which became a bit of a tradition we’d both get very excited about.<\/p>\n

Her mom would always bring her and I to various places around Fredericton.\u00a0 We thought it was always\u00a0“far” and called them “road trips”, and we often packed lunches, and other things to do.\u00a0 Indeed, places like\u00a0Burton and Keswick Ridge were really out there when\u00a0we were\u00a0kids.\u00a0 We even went\u00a0so far as Hillsborough\u00a0for a train ride, one time!\u00a0\u00a0We always\u00a0considered ourselves pretty lucky, since they were all simple\u00a0yet incredibly\u00a0fun experiences.<\/p>\n

Well, except for that one time we had to pull\u00a0the car off to the side of the road\u00a0because Katie killed a tiny spider with her juicebox straw and FREAKED OUT.\u00a0 Other than that minor occurrence, they were all fantastic times!<\/p>\n

In any case, I don’t recall what we did on that particular day, but I ended up being dropped off at Fredericton’s Capital Winter Club with the rest of my family.\u00a0 That was the arena where the curling tournament was going on.<\/p>\n

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\"The<\/a>

The C.W.C., where I spent many days as a kid… and eventually, many days as an adult, albeit for different reasons.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The C.W.C. has four curling sheets (made of ice, duh) with an enclosed seating\u00a0area\u00a0for people to watch from.\u00a0 There’s a bar on the main floor, as well as another lounge upstairs that people could hang out and watch from, if they wanted to.\u00a0 Around the corner from the bar, however, was a tiny little room that I was always drawn to.\u00a0 In it was\u00a0four or five arcade cabinets, and though I couldn’t quite reach the controls, I was perfectly satisfied with watching the “attract” mode.<\/p>\n

It was still pretty early on in my addiction to games, so I remember seeing a few titles for the first time, in there.\u00a0 I couldn’t read quite yet, and the stylized graphics of the game names made it even harder to know what\u00a0they were called.\u00a0 Still, I remember seeing Arkanoid<\/em>, Donkey Kong<\/em>, and either Centipede<\/em> or Millipede <\/em>among the cabinets they had.\u00a0 In my mind, those two are\u00a0both incredibly similar, and I still don’t know the difference between them without Googling them.<\/p>\n

In the corner, however, was the game with the greatest graphics I had ever seen.\u00a0 It had more colours than anything I had played on the NES so far, and it had an isometric view.\u00a0 It looked so real!\u00a0 It only gave the appearance of three dimensions, but it was incredible.\u00a0 There were\u00a0coconuts bouncing around the stage, waterfalls, and\u00a0little\u00a0monkeys running around…\u00a0 it looked so alive and vibrant.\u00a0 I was so mesmerized by it, that I remember just standing there, staring at it for quite a while.<\/p>\n

When I started writing this blog (almost two years ago, already), I went back and tried to find out what game it was.\u00a0 It wasn’t that tough, actually, since “isometric Donkey Kong clone” did the trick just fine!<\/p>\n

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