Classic Games

Cousins can teach you all sorts of things. Movies your parents will never let you see, a new set of video games, and how much fun you can have with a simple stick...i mean magic powerful staff of awesomeness.

My cousins lived on the side of a large hill, surrounded by forests, coyotes, free roaming deer, and it was almost a mile from the main road to their house. Their "driveway" was where i first learned to drive despite the constant jostling of potholes in their gravel road as we announced our arrival with a glaring "ARRROOOOOOGAAAA" horn my dad had salvaged from an old car. Later, I learned how to drive their manual transmission tractor when trying to pave down some of those potholes when they got "Really bad".....which means our car got high centered.

We usually stayed over a weekend, so our adventures as kids were as follows: Daytime - outside, each of us with some kind of "weapon" fending off the valley from dragons, trolls, our brothers, bears, harpies, and the dog who would get a little rambunctious in our fort. Dusk - rush inside and snag what food we could before retreating downstairs to play video games, or watch forbidden movies while the adults remained blissfully ignorant and left us to our own devices. The next day would repeat until we went home, while the dog chased us down the driveway.

It was here that i was introduced to things like Kings Quest, Sims, Myst, Super Smash Brothers, Mario kart, and a variety of other games. But mostly, in this post i want to talk about Kings Quest.

Thanks to Influence Bad (also introduced to me by these cousins) for introducing me to DOS emulators, and reminding me how many hours i wasted on this game.

Yeah, by wasted, i mean downloaded again and am playing again and wasting more hours following around Prince Alexander, in his garish costume and dainty yellow scarf which he somehow managed to retain despite a SHIP WRECK as he searches for Princess Cassima, who's being driven so crazy locked in her tower that she's talking to birds.

Man i love this game!

Even now, more than a decade later, i'm still remembering little quirks about this game: Like if you keep touching the rotten tomato in your pack, it insults you.

Other news:

Back to the saw dust. I ended up adding the coffee table to the project list with the pair of end tables. Since they're made the same, and have all the same cuts, just at different lengths, it made sense to do it at the same time. Dad agreed and we're going over the cut list tonight to get everything in order. With any amount of luck, these will be BUILT this week or next. Then i can get onto finishing, sanding, staining and varnishing which i don't need a second set of hands for.