A holy day of obligation

Shortly after midnight today, a sudden compulsion gripped me to venture up into the attic to indulge my nostalgia. After two trips that amounted to about fifteen minutes of groping around in the dark, the light of my phone fell upon an old friend:

My Sega Dreamcast.

On the tenth anniversary of its North American debut, I found myself eagerly hooking it up to my HDTV, worrying that the LCD TV would be unkind to its SCARTy output. It's possible that the white wonder was suffering from a dose of stagefright as when I powered it up I was greeted by the familiar chimes but a black screen. Drat.

One cathode-ray-tubed TV later and everything was working fine!


Here are a few things that struck me:

Size: This is one small console, at least by today's standards - [190mm x 195mm x 78mm]

Noise: Despite being one of the smallest consoles to sit under my television, it's undoubtedly the loudest. The Xbox 360 gets a lot of flak for its industrial-strength fan, but between the GD drive and fan, the Dreamcast creaks, whirrs and clanks like a troupe of badly oiled breakdancing robots.

Graphics: Held up amazingly well - my graphical snobbery could have been lowered by owning a Wii, but the graphics were generally crisp and clear, and none of the games I played seemed as though they were impaired by lack of graphical horsepower.

Controller: Design quirks aside (the painful cramps the analogue triggers caused were seared into memory) but the two controllers I found held up incredibly well over time, delightfully free of the flaccid-analogue-stick problem that blights my elderly N64 controllers.

Games: The worst part of the whole endeavour - not because I had a single bad game for the Dreamcast, but because of the condition they were in. I found a spine with about 35 game-discs (8 of which belonged to Shenmue 1 & 2 alone!), reminding me that the jewel cases that came with PAL Dreamcast games were junk, and rarely lasted a week, let alone a decade. Last time I dug out my N64, I was excited by each unearthed cartridge, knowing it was almost guaranteed to work. I began to lament finding my classic Dreamcast games, as I knew the chances of them working were slim.

Neither of my Headhunter discs worked.
Sonic Adventure(!) didn't work.
Crazy Taxi(!!) Didn't work.
San Francisco Rush 2049(!!!) booted, but the game wouldn't load...
Jet Set Radio (!!!) didn't work... At all.
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing and its sequel both worked, but with heavy audio glitches.
Power Stone 1 & 2 both worked, making the entire exercise worthwhile.

The good news is that Sega totally dropped the ball on copy-protecting the Dreamcast, meaning that the only thing needed to pirate games is the internet and a CD-Burner (I'll get cracking on that over my days off.)

Sad facts of a misspent youth: About three years ago, my younger brother set the Dreamcast up in his room. The first thing I did when I booted up the console was review my memory cards to see how much respect he had for the literally hundreds of hours I had poured into the dozens of games.

I found a blank screen.

It was all gone - not that I'd actively miss it or anything - I've gotten by for eight years without needing that save data, but it would have been nice to be able to step back into those virtual shoes and have access to my unlocked cars in San Francisco Rush, or review my collection of toys in Shenmue, or compete against my teenaged former-self in Crazy Taxi for the high score.

I slightly begrudge the fact that I'm missing out on a snapshot of the past because of my brother's lack of gamer-etiquette - I mean, countless hours wandering around a virtual Yokosuka looking for sailors, and what do I have to show for it? [Answers in the comments, please]

Lazy narcissist in self-indulgent blog shocker

I'll be honest, I sat down in front of the computer, and decided to blog, which isn't exactly how I normally do things, and since I'm too lazy to gestate anything from the ol' 'Blog Ideas' file that teases me with good ideas that require effort, I've decided to subject you to a great big heaping of narcissistically-fuelled drivel, the kind of banal author-triva that abounds on blogs I generally deride.

Today, friends, I shall bore you with my musical milestones:

First song I ever fell in love with:

Back in Time - Huey Lewis and the News (1985)



I have no idea what age I was when I discovered how to use the home stereo, but I recall going through dozens of my parents' CDs, skimming through tracks until I found this song. My propensity to sing along to this one song for hours led to my mother telling me that using the repeat feature ruined the disks.

First CD purchase:

Boom Boom Boom - Outhere Brothers (1995)



Thanks to the impressive string of clever euphemisms in the lyrics, I never did quite know the specific machinations of what the song was talking about...

Bend you over
Grab your shoulder
Slip my peter inside your folder
Make you sweat-a
Get you wet-a
Pump it faster to make it better
Dim the the lights then lock the room
Cos now it's time for me to hit that boom

... but I thoroughly enjoyed singing along all the same, making sure to skip the remix of 'Fuk U in the Ass', lest my protective mother feel the need to deprive her 8 year old son of a great source of pleasure.

First Tape purchase:

How Bizarre - OMC (1996)



You'll surely forgive the anachronistic order in which I made my purchases, as 9 year olds generally aren't too pushed about the fidelity or convenience of their music mediums. After spending so long in the dining room on the CD player, I appreciated being able to use my brother's walkman and listen without disturbing the peace or being called a stupid fatass retard for singling along and never getting the lyrics right, despite a solid Saturday morning of practice. (Sigh)

First Album:

Spice - Spice Girls (1996)



For Christmas of 1996 I got a CD player and a copy of Spice, like a million other sheep-children in the country. Took about four years before I learnt that "zig-a-zig-ahhh" was pure gibberish, and not, in fact, the grotesque sexual act I assumed it meant.

***

For the sake of brevity, I'm about to jump forward thirteen years or so, but there are two milestones that I feel I should mention - Blink 182 was the first band I was ever truly a 'fan' of, and Broken Social Scene deserve a mention as my current favourite act, despite my initial dislike for the CD I had been given for Christmas. As of 26/03/09, I consider this to be the most beautiful song I've ever heard:



First iTunes Purchase:

Don't Worry About the World - Monster-0

Amazingly enough, my first iTunes purchase was last Monday - and whilst I begrudge the slight hassle I'll eventually have to go through to remove the DRM, I was impressed with the ease and speed of getting hold of an indie album. You heard it here first - this iTunes doohickey is the future!

[Mind the gap - I can't find a more intelligent way to embed the MySpace player]

Lazy YouTube Post, anybody?

Sadly, I'm not as finely tuned to the needs of my regular readers as I'd like, but I thought I'd post this all the same.

I always find it strange watching cartoons I loved as a child with the heightened critical faculties of adulthood. Some fare pretty well, like old episodes of The Simpsons. Others, not so well, like this cartoon based on one of my favourite games at the time, Sonic the Hedgehog. I had completely forgotten about the section in which viewers are taught life-lessons in an incredibly heavy-handed manner, so watching this handful of clips just struck me as hilarious for some reason. Each clip is only 30 seconds, so give 'em a chance!

With the benefit of hindsight, I realise the possibility that I learned to be a stickler for proper spelling and grammar through a blue anthropomorphic hedgehog. I still enjoy watching Sonic correct the spelling of 'Sonic Sez'. I even ripped off his patronising wink and thumbs up.



Sharing is good, kids. Middle management is even better, because you can take from both parties and not actually provide anything yourself!



Sonic sounds exceptionally 'Boyz in The Hood' at the end of this one.



'Special people'. Good for pointing out the obvious. Slowly.



Don't run away from home. But told through a confusing analogy with a robotic monkey.



Sonic's message to Catholic schoolchildren proved too little too late (yeah, yeah - I know - cheap shot).

Okay last one for now, I promise:



He just rhymed "fool" with "cool". Genius.

Bonus: Why Sully is a teetotaller. (Spolier: cos he ain't no dumb-bot!)

Feeling Nostalgic

So I'm up to my lame tricks again, posting videos on Youtube that I found at bizarre hours of the morning, but I couldn't resist this one, posted here mostly for my older brother's amusement (we were both hopeless WWF fans back in the day and had a tendency to quote the best there ever would be...)



I always wanted to be the kid who got the glasses! (even to this day, I wouldn't mind being the recipient!)