My First Time

Interstellar Hype Train 1999・・・ Space Channel 5

July 13, 2015 — Leave a comment

I miss ‘cool Japan’. That post bubble economy, hyper-cute, retro futuristic land of dreams. I basically miss when everything was like a Puffy AmiYumi music video. It seemed that everything cool came from Japan in the late 90s, and video games were no exception. It’s thanks to Konami’s Bemani division that flooded the market with their catalogue of technicoloured, well-timed button mashers. Peripheral games like Beat Mania, Guitar Freaks, Dance Dance Revolution and Pop’n Music dominated the arcade, while more ‘call and response’ styled games such as Bust a Groove and UmJammer Lammy found their home on consoles. Konami dominated the arcades with rhythm games, but another key player in the waning arcade market hadn’t contributed to the flood just yet. I’d say Sega would’ve been focusing more on the upcoming release of the Dreamcast at that stage, and merely dipped their toes in with Samba de Amigo – a cute, but safe entry with maraca peripherals. Continue reading

Who Am I Really? ・・・ Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty

June 21, 2015 — 2 Comments

I ushered in 2008 with all four of my friends, hosting a pathetic excuse for a party in my house before moving out of home. Calling it home still feels weird, but it’s still the place I’ve lived in longest to date. I had just spent the previous year essentially house-sitting until the lease ended after my father retired from the Air Force. No one should’ve left eighteen year old me in charge of anything. In the year I lived alone I held a lot of intimate drunken gatherings, I lived off a single meatloaf for three weeks, I blew up the fridge and one month during winter I slept in front of my heater in the lounge room for warmth.

Those drunken gatherings were known as Camp Dirty Bad Fun, and mainly consisted of my best friend who had moved schools, a friend from the year above and two other friends from the year below. So basically I’m admitting to giving minors a lot of alcohol and letting them throw up in my garden. We’d try and have a theme every time, the first Camp Dirty Bad Fun ended up a Midori-stained toga party, there was a bad mall goth night and the final gathering was meant to be classy cocktail party. It was not. It pretty quickly descended into a rant about these dang Metal Gear games I had been playing and I drunkenly tried to quote a bunch of crazy stuff I had just seen in Metal Gear Solid 2. No one really cared. Then I spilled a bunch of cheap wine on my nice dress and went to bed grumpily. Why didn’t anyone find being pissed on by a Russian PMC hilarious? I thought I was friends with a bunch of plebs.

I had found a copy of Metal Gear Solid 2 for $15 a couple of days before, and having just finished Metal Gear Solid 3, I was keen to get back into sneaking around as a well rendered ass. I knew vague details about the twists, the possessed arm and of course – the famous purple stuffed worm in flap-jaw space. I thought it would be good for a laugh. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. Continue reading