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[ Tuesday, August 13, 2002 (3:04 AM) ] ( link )
Classic Nintendo: While cleaning out the garage, my brother and I discovered our old 8-bit Nintendo, complete with our ancient collection of games. Within half an hour we had it installed on our big-screen TV and were re-living our childhoods. Among the games that we have: Abadox, Double Dragon II, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Crystalis, Megaman 2, Defender 2, 3D World Runner, and a 20-games-in-1 pack (among some others I've probably forgotten).
The 20-in-1 pack deserves special mention. We got it free several years ago when some person whose restaurant we frequented gave it to me and my brother as a gift. When we came home and tried it out we were disappointed, at first--most of the games looked terrible, and seemed to play terrible too. But within a few days we had become converts: what the games lacked in graphics they made up for in gameplay. Among the 20 games: - Ice Climber: Two players race against each other to reach the top of a mountain. If you move faster than your opponent then the screen can scroll past him and cost him a life. My brother and I used to get into screaming fits about this game, and yesterday we did it again. (I think we liked it a lot better than this guy.)
- Baseball: A terrible looking game, with absolute no skill involved, that is also conducive to screaming fits between opponents.
- Tennis: See Baseball.
- Battle City: Two tanks have to work together (for once) to protect the base, an icon that looks disturbingly like a Nazi eagle.
- Excite Bike: Race against awful computer players! Crash for no reason! Become unable to climb up hills! Build your own course!
- Yi Ar Kung Fu: There can be only one.
At any rate the 20-in-1 collection was great, and my brother and I had a blast.
Then there is Crystalis, a true classic in every sense of the word. The premise behind Crystalis is something like this: you have to collect four ancient swords, each with a succession of three items that increase the swords power, and then you get a super sword that allows you to defeat the big bad guy. No, it's not original--but boy was it addictive when we were kids. (And even now it's capable of reducing us to drooling fools in front of the television.)
Finally, two of my favorite games ever: Megaman 2 and Double Dragon II. I remember those games being really hard, and certainly when my brother and I played Double Dragon II we rarely progressed past Level 5. But now, for some reason, the games seem a lot easier--maybe our hands are more dexterous, or maybe we're just not as retarded as we used to be (leaping off buildings, walking into enemies, and so on). At any rate it took us half an hour to go further in Double Dragon II than we ever had before, and only one hour to beat all the bosses in Megaman 2 and advance one level in Dr. Wiley's castle. And to think we spent all that time as children trying to do just half of that.
So my brother and I had loads of guiltless, healthy fun, flavored by the nostalgia of seeing all of these childhood classics back on the big screen. Yes, I know that the Nintendo was a brain-destroying toy that sucked time away from studying and contributed absolutely nothing to society. But I wouldn't have given it up for the world.
[ Sunday, August 4, 2002 (3:37 AM) ] ( link )
Never eat lobster sashimi: I have always been an avid meat-eater, but today I came the closest I have ever come to actually renouncing the consumption of animals. (Not that I'm vegetarian now--at least I think not--but read on.)
My family and I went to a new Japanese restaurant today, and as a treat my dad ordered lobster sashimi--a very expensive dish, and supposedly quite a delicacy. When it came we were pleased with the presentation of the dish: the lobster had been cracked in half, and its head was laid on its base so that its nose (or whatever it is that the tip of a lobster is called) was facing upward, while behind it the tail had been turned upside down, opened, and sliced into thin raw bits for us to eat. The lobster looked and tasted amazingly fresh, and all of us enjoyed it immensely.
Then my brother (a non-sushi eater) said that he had seen the lobster move. We laughed at him--he's always been squeamish about sashimi. So my brother poked the lobster head--and the antenna definitely quivered. We got quiet when we saw this, then my brother poked it again and the antenna started wiggling again. Then the forelegs of the lobster started moving weakly as well. By this point most of the lobster had been consumed, but we were all getting freaked out. So we pushed the dish away toward the edge of the table, and when we did the lobster head toppled over backward against its own shell--and the lobster went crazy.
Well, at least that's what we thought at the time. But there was no doubt this time that the lobster was moving--it was jerking its big claws around widely, wriggling its forelegs, snapping its antennae back and forth. We all jumped back from the table and pulled a waiter to take the goddamned dish away from us before we lost our appetites entirely. The waiter whisked it away with a little reminder about how fresh their seafood was--but by that point I didn't really want to eat anymore.
Of course I've always known, when I eat meat, that I'm eating an animal that has been killed--and when it comes to lobster it's a tradition at Chinese restaurants (and probably others) for the waiter to show you your live lobster before they take it into the kitchen and boil it alive for your meal. But it's one thing to know these facts, and quite another to see the lobster live out its last moments as you eat its raw, mutilated flesh. Perhaps this is anthropomorphizing too much, but I couldn't help but think that the lobster was struggling to escape from us.
I used to poke fun at my friend Lindsey when she said, in defense of her own vegetarianism, that lobsters scream when caught. Suddenly, I don't find that very funny anymore.
No more lobster sashimi for me, thank you very much.
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