Will Ooi » nostalgia

A Memory of Game Exploits and Player Integrity (but also Friendship)

Will Ooi — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:34:11 +0000

Inspired by a particular Tumblr blog, drawing this map has brought back a flood of memories and emotions. Around about 1997, I was hooked on the original Command & Conquer, having first read about it in one of those great 90's UK game magazines (CVG I think it was) and deciding to get it on the Sega Saturn. (As an aside, I used to always hate how reviews of the Saturn version criticised the gamepad controls, especially the inability to assign teams of units to buttons - but you could! It was the PS1 version that didn't have that function!) After pouring hours into the game, and gaining perhaps far too much satisfaction in slowly building up a ridiculous and unnecessarily large GDI army to crush and torment those enemy NOD bases (I used to have my units wait patiently outside their barracks, annihilating any newly produced men as soon as they walked out), I had finally met my match. I mean, as far as difficulty levels and player feedback went, I'd gotten used to playing all night and failing missions, using that trial-and-error experience and coming back stronger the next time round. But wow...this one stage. It was almost as if there was hidden karmic balance code on the disc, keeping track of the number of enemy soldiers I'd brutally vanquished and just waiting for the right time to punish me for it and striking down with furious anger. And with the debut of the NOD Flame Tank unit, all it took was one, slow-moving, ugly-looking but devastatingly monstrous vehicle to achieve such righteousness.

[Gamasutra Feature], [Mapstalgia]

Memories of VHS

Will Ooi — Tue, 11 May 2010 03:06:30 +0000

~ With modern eyes we now see them as ugly, primitive-looking things affiliated with old plastic cassette tapes and perhaps somewhat related to those equally-redundant computer floppy discs. How quickly technology has progressed from the days when having variable fast-forward and rewind speeds (fast, double fast, Triple Fast!) on VCRs warranted praise and worship, and how stubborn I was when DVDs first came out, adamantly insisting that I would never (ever) convert, clinging desperately onto my collection of VHS movies with their inconsistently-sized and ripped cardboard covers and maintaining passionately that being able to record from TV was a basic human right. And indeed, by not making recording a standard feature on DVD players haven't we all turned into JB Hi-Fi bargain pile-raiding uber-consumers, needing to own entire series of shows and collector's editions of movies when we could have easily taped them for free? Well anyway, before I allow the nostalgia to forever be replaced by the progress of DVD and Blu-Ray user-friendliness, here are several of my fondest childhood and adolescent memories of VHS.

Nostalgia

Will Ooi — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 01:11:30 +0000

Inspired by Pep ~ A trigger takes me back to a precious moment I’ve kept dear The mere thought of which elicits a tearful sadness alongside a warm sense of comfort and safety ~ Revisiting a golden time and place from long ago with a fresh wonder and joy for a world so new That [...]