Gaming Retrospective (Part 2)

Before I answer the big question as to what got me to pick out a fancy new video game system at the end of the nineties, I need to touch on two minor systems that came into my life earlier in that decade.

In third grade, I was approached by my second-grade teacher. She had some very old computers she had to get rid of, because the school was replacing them, and wanted to know if I would like one. BOY WOULD I! The "computer" turned out to be a Commodore 64, and for the two years or so I had it before it stopped working I wiled away many an hour on its interesting library of giant floppy discs. Memory is fuzzy enough to not warrant a full list of recommended games, but I recall liking Choplifter and Boulderdash and totally failing at Donkey Kong and Impossible Mission. My favorite game, though, was Pooyan, an ancient Konami title that involved a family of pigs shooting arrows to pop the balloons of foxes and keep them from reaching the pigs' house.

Around this same general time period, I also received my first "portable" system for Christmas - a Sega Game Gear with Super Columns, a puzzle game. This was the first "dud" system, as it cost a stupid amount of money and didn't offer too much in return. However, the Game Gear did eventually find a niche - I later got Pac-Man and a collection called "Arcade Classics" for it (Centipede, Missile Command, and Pong), and my mom wound up playing it regularly in the early 2000's. It was pretty much "her" system at that point. I won't be recommending Game Gear games either since I didn't play any that were amazing enough to try and hype up.

Super Columns, by the way, stands out for two reasons in my mind. The first is that for a long time it stood as the only video game in the house that my mom had beaten but neither me nor my brother had. That changed last year when I fired up the old Game Gear one more time and took that thing down. The other reason is the first guy in story mode. His opening quote is "I have orders not to let you pass but play me for the privilege." WHAT A SMUG LITTLE SHIT.

Okay, back to the late nineties. The Game Gear was a bust, the Commodore may or may not have still been working. I was at school one day and I see some kids standing off to one side looking at trading cards. "Hey guys, what are you doing?" Then one kid takes pity on me for not knowing and gives me one of his duplicate trading cards.

...What is this thing you call "Charmander"?