My cousin gave birth to her first child two nights ago. Congrats to both parents and child! Looking forward to see my first cousin once removed in person.

I realized now that I’m sort of a distant uncle. Wow, this feels weird, and it makes me feel older too. And every time when I feel older, I get nostalgic and start thinking about those days when I was a kid.

Talking about those kiddy days, I was browsing Reddit (a HIGHLY ADDICTIVE news aggregator site that I frequent almost 24/7) when I came across a thread submitted by a redditor. He posted a thread talking about this old game called Rodent’s Revenge. What’s that, you ask. Well, just see the picture below:

(Taken from some PC Gaming website link)

Nostalgia overload.

I used to play that game Every. Single. Time. I remember once when I was playing this game and my Dad passed by and saw me playing it. He watched for a while before asking me what exactly was I playing:

Dad: “What are you playing?”

7-year-old Me: “A mouse killing cats.”

Dad: “So… how do you do that?”

7-year-old Me: “You push the blocks around to form a square around the cats to trap them and then you push some more until they become cheese then you push again and you get the cheese!”

Now that I think about it, my explanation sounded a bit… odd. But still, it was an awesome, awesome game. My brother and I killed hours just by sitting in front of it and figuring how to kill the cats. The game looks deceptively simple but as you go to the next level, it gets harder and more complicated and you need to use more brainpower to play.

So when I saw this game again, I went to the link and downloaded the game and started reliving the old days. My housemate saw me playing it and I had the same conversation with her as I did with my Dad.

Here’s the wiki link explaining the game and for those who remembers the game, here’s the link to download the game.

Playing this game triggered some memories and I started reminiscing about the old PC games I used to play. So with the help of Google and Reddit, I hunted down those games. Below are a list of my favourite old PC games:

1) Chip’s Challenge

(Taken from Wikimedia)

Essentially a puzzle game, the aim of the game is to collect chips and advance to the next level. Wikipedia describes it better than I do. Another game where my brother and I spent hours and hours on it.

I like the boots in the game too. The boots are some cool stuff. Fire Boots, Sticky Boots, Ice Boots. Yep, cool shit, man.

2) Lode Runner – The Legend Returns

(Taken from Wikimedia)

Anyone born in the 80s or early 90s has got to play this game before. I mean, come on, this game is classic. You might have played a few of its many variations and it was available on Gameboy too (I know, I have the Gameboy version).

My brother and I were obsessed with this game for three reasons. 1) It kicked ass. 2) It seriously, seriously kicked ass. 3) When we discovered there were a two players option, its ass-kicking ability increased exponentially.

Besides that, my brother and I found out that we could actually make a Lode Runner game from scratch. All we needed to do was to use the materials provided (something like the Sims but way better in ass-kicking capabilities) and build a level ground up. We would plant golds and weapons for our gold hunters to collect, crazy monks to provide some comic relief and challenges and we would also build some incredible looking mazes. When we were really bored, we would create multiple levels with increasing difficulty. I won’t say that playing this game taught us game design and computer programming but shit, at least we learned something new.

One of our favourite past-time was to create a level filled with bombs. Basically we would plant bombs EVERYWHERE. The thing about Lode Runner is that when you ignite a bomb and it explodes, other bombs in its near explosive vicinity will be ignited and explode too, so thus creating a chain reaction. So basing our experience on that, we’ll create a bomb-infested level and start the bomb chain-reaction. Our aim was to see who survive the holocaust. Of course, we made it more fun by putting in the crazy monks and random booby traps and weapons (like the dizzy gas).

Good times.

Here’s the Wiki link explaining Lode Runner.

3) JezzBall

(Taken from Wikimedia)

Another time-killer. The aim of the game is the contain the balls in very small space and cover up at least 75% of the space. Wikipedia explains it better.

4) Pipe Mania

(Taken from Wikimedia)

My brother and I loved this game. I get a sense of adrenaline rush when I see the green goo slowly slicking out and I DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT PIPE!!!!! WHERE IS MY PIPE? WHERE IS MY PIPE??

Wiki link explaining the game.

5) SkiFree

(Taken from Wikimedia)

Classic game. No explanation need.

But if somehow, you have not played the game before, here’s the Wiki link explaining it.

I never learned how to beat the stupid monster though.

6) The Even More Incredible Machine

(Taken from Abandonia)

Although not one of my best favourites (was never the little Engineer), I enjoyed this game cause I get to build stupid and incredible stuffs, as long as it still complete the objective of the game. I can’t remember the objective of the game, I think it was to move a basketball.

Abandonia and Wiki explains it all.

7) King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow

(Taken from Wikimedia)

This game was THE BEST! (Capitalized, highlighted bold, italics, exclamation mark). Our very first immersive game, my brother and I spent literally hours on the computer to the point where we do marathon gaming from Friday evening to Sunday morning (stopping for meals, baths, sleep and all-the-things-little-kids-have-to-do-because-of-parents).

Our parents didn’t mind us playing this game because, seriously, this game required you to THINK. You had to find the clues, use them and try to finish the story. The fact that every action you do have some sort of consequences on the plot also intrigued my brother and I. While we were free to explore the amazing fantasy world of King’s Quest VI (sort of), we were also driven to finish the game and see the end of the story.

The thing is that, it took us 7 years.

Yep, 7 years to finish the damn game. We started when we were around 7 or 8. And we didn’t finish it till we were 14. There were reasons why we took so long.

First, the game was complex. Well, sort of. Even with the guidebook that came with the CD-ROM, we still could not crack some of the riddles. Furthermore, the guidebook doesn’t tell everything but rather, provide hints and useful information.

Second, short attention span (kids).

Third, we were young and probably didn’t really know exactly how we were suppose to play the game. And no, our parents did not help us. They are not interested in computer games.

So for 7 long years, we tried umpteen times doing the same thing: get stuck in the middle of the game and end up restarting the game just to try some ‘theories’ of ours and see if we could complete the game and the story.

It didn’t work.

In the end, we gave up and there was a 2 year long hiatus (and also partly because we got sidetracked by Half-Life and Half-Life: Opposing Force, Civilization, Red Alert 2: Yuri’s Revenge and Age of the Empires 2).

One day, I chance upon the King’s Quest CD and thought to myself: “I got to finish the game!” So I went onto the Internet, did a search for a King’s Quest VI walkthrough, printed it out, loaded the game and…. finished it within 3 hours.

Well, fuck, I felt incredibly relieved and stupid at the same time. My brother was also shell-shocked, we spent 7 years of our life figuring how to crack the game and we finally finished it in 3 hours. Okay, so we cheated, but what the hell can you do when you slave 7 years on something that was not showing any results?

But would I do it again? You bet I would. This game fucking rocks.

Here’s the Wiki link if you don’t know this game.

So that’s the list of my favourite old PC games. Those were good, good times.

Now I’m off to play Rodent’s Revenge.

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I’ve always wanted to post this video but I keep forgetting. It’s a quirky video but you’ll enjoy it.