39 - Memories: Games II - The Sony Era
This one’s not for everyone; the next in a series about my history with games! - read the previous post here.
From the small, moving upwards.
I had my Gameboy for the longest time, but when I went back to HK on a family trip, one of my uncles introduced me to a number of gaming things…but the the only ones I remember were Rainbow Six (on PC, which I played like once and didn’t understand), and the Playstation.
I have a really soft spot for Playstation - I played the PS1 to death, and my PS2 actually still gets plays even to this day! I didn’t go past PS2 in Sony-land, but I still lust after the exclusives on the PS4! (The FF7 remake just came out and it looks so good!)
The PS1 was an incredible achievement - Crash Bandicoot, FF7, Metal Slug, The Simpsons Game, you name it, we probably had a pirated version bought from a seedy shop in Shenzhen that was hidden in a closed down part of a shopping centre and you could only get there if you told a particular handbag shopkeeper that you were looking for games. Then they’d send someone to get you, bringing you up to a floor that was closed, into a shop that was closed behind a metal rolling door, and they told you to shush, tensely waiting to see if the soldiers patrolling the area would bust them. They hid all the discs in the roof, and you’d point to pictures in a book, and they’d compile them for you, you’d pay them, and they’d escort you out of the centre.
As you can see, super above board :D
A lot of the time, I remember playing alone, but I actually would love playing with my sister when she joined. She wasn’t always very good (hi Steph!) but she was usually willing to play and that was really fun.
I remember spending an entire afternoon playing Crash Bandicoot: Warped in my grandmas small apartment in HK while my parents were out seeing family friends and grandma was asleep. I had been glued to this tv for literally hours, playing through so many levels in one go (I think I’d got through 3-4 full worlds?) when suddenly, as people started coming back home to arrive for dinner, the dog (a border collie named Dick - an apt description) walked in front of the TV and pulled the PlayStation down off the TV stand because of the controller wire, dislodging the power and crashing on to the floor.
All progress was gone. DISASTER. No-one could understand the pain - I was distraught for days after that. Luckily the console itself was okay, but still…
I’d love to end that story with ‘And that day I learned the meaning of resilience and I went back and smashed through all those levels again because I’m awesome‘ but alas the real ending is I cried a lot of the night, seeking solace from my parents, and then learning the incredibly hard lesson that I needed to SAVE my progress…anyway. I didn’t play again on that trip.
I loved playing Dynasty Warriors on the PS2 - an incredible game based on the Three Kingdoms era of China (more specifically, one of the Big Four books of China - The Romance of the Three Kingdoms). As an ABC (Australian Born Chinese), I was super into seeing these cool Asian heroes hack and slash their way through enemies and rack up kills in the hundreds and thousands - the myriad weapons, stylish costumes and different ways to play just tickled my brain in the most pleasurable way.
It was a curious thing for dad, I think, because I’d be telling him about things that happened in the Three Kingdoms era, in English, so he had to try and work out what I was talking about, but in Chinese - pretty hard eh? It was kind of nice too - a bit of a bonding moment for us as my dad is a Chinese history buff - and he would tell me more stories about the characters themselves. He’d also correct me when I was telling him the wrong thing about history - but that’s all in the learning about another culture. The joys of bilinguality!
Dynasty Warriors, as well as Star Wars: Battlefront 2, were the key games when hanging out with family friends. It was super fun to hack and slash along with another person through enemies, or to co-ordinate attacks on key points. Being a kid, you could literally just mash buttons randomly and it was still super fun. I mean, we got better at it over time, but it was a great feeling of seeming like you’re really good when you’re obviously very bad (what’s changed tbh). I miss that local multiplayer aspect of games and I’m trying to find those games that can help to recreate the experience (which I’ll get to in one of the later posts in this series - the Nintendo Switch is filling that void!)
Next instalment - from virtual, to physical!
Chat soon :)
✔️ Real Life Recommendations
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Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - a lesson in resilience, or why it’s not as good as ‘antifragility’. The opposite of fragility is not just resilience (keeping your ground in the face of adversity), but antifragility - systems that improve in the face of adversity. I love the concepts, but he takes a long time to get there…Taleb writes well, but be prepared to fight through the jungle of new words (Mithrandism? non-meek?) before you can get there.
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Tigertail by Alan Yang - a new movie on Netflix, written and directed by Alan Yang (who also helped co-write Master of None with Aziz Ansari), tells the tale of a Taiwanese migrant who moves across to America to try and find success. The immigrant story is fully on show here - and though the pacing is slow, it shows the heartbreak and struggle of difficult decisions that immigrants have to face. The pacing is slow at the start, but there are a lot of very #real immigrant Chinese parent moments in it that is worth the watch :)
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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Final Fantasy 7 Remake Trailer - actually considering whether I need aNOTHER console in the house just to play this! It’s fascinating to think that the love for the game has persisted over the years, all the way to becoming a viable product for Square Enix to do a remake of!
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Making Crash Bandicoot - many years later, reading this piece was an eye-opening experience to see how games were designed. A lot of hacking around with what the hardware would let them do, saving different characters and textures in different parts of memory…I sometimes think that this era was more innovative than now - building things with paradigms that hadn’t even been developed yet!
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Romance of the Three Kingdoms podcast - If you’ve ever been interested in this Chinese epic, this podcast was incredible at distilling the stories into bite-sized pieces that could be digested episode by episode. The stories are interwoven with amazing characters, predictable storylines and Chinese culture. I blitzed through this one and loved it - it’s niche appeal for me is from my Chinese heritage; I might not be able to read it through in the native language, but I can at least understand the story :)
🌱 The Calathea Corner
It’s been pretty cold this last week or so - I’ve been trying to ensure Feleafcia gets enough warmth and moisture. I’ve always loved how there’s this red tinge under her leaves - it contrasts really beautifully with the green on top!
