sgGamers

Recently, I went about re-discovering the fun of old skool 2D games. This was triggered by my dabbling into some programming of the GameBoy Advance machine. As I was coding up a library to handle 2D sprites and a sprite animation system, I found respect for the game developers who make games on 2D gaming platforms.

My goodness, those machines were so limited in their hardware capabilities and yet, the game developers were able to work with the limitations in order to create wonderful worlds that so many players have enjoyed.

For example, the Nintendo Famicom machine was only able to support 16 colors to display on screen, out of which, only 12 colors were effectively usable. And the game developers had to work with only 12 colors in order to make their game world come alive on screen!

But did that prevent them from making great games for the Famicom? Nope. We had the great Super Mario Bros, Final Fantasy I, II & III, Legend of Zelda, Dragon Quest, Pacman, and countless of others that kept us playing and make us believe we’re living in the world that is in our TV screens.

So anyway, I went out on an inspiration hunt for old games. It resulted in me acquiring a brand new dirt cheap WonderSwan Crystal bundled with Final Fantasy IV and Front Mission, and the recent release of Mother 1+2 for the GBA. So here’s the lineup, I took some pics just to show you I really got the stuff:

Both FF4 and Front Mission were great! Man, this is what GAMES are about!

Anyway, what really blew me away was this really old and charming game “Mother”. “Mother” is a direct port from the same game released for the Nintendo Famicom in 1989. And boy, it was a blast to play! It’s a RPG game, but not your usual fantasy setting. It’s set somewhere in modern times with psychedelic long-haired hippies fighting you as enemies, a crow holding a cigarette, and a fat version of John Lennon appearing somewhere along the way.

The game’s so fun that I’ll tell you a story of my strange little visit to the zoo. Okaayyy…. I hear you, yeah, not another boring story again? How about I throw in some “12-color” pics so it won’t put you to sleep in about 5 seconds?

So we start out by popping the cartridge in the GBA and after the title screen, here we go!

That’s me in the middle of the screen, wearing that red cap, and you see, I just had a nice hamburger lunch in that building to the left and heading my way towards the zoo, yippie!

Hangin’ with the locals and saying hi to old granny on the top. If you notice, Elvis lives here too, he’s at the bottom corner. Okay, time to go!

So, following the road out of town, I stop by the little river to do a ‘lil business. And youch!, a snake attack!

Followed by a dog and that long-haired hippie!

After shoving some grass up the hippie’s nose, I finally come to the gates of the zoo.

See the poor captive rabbits. One of them was so excited by my presence it went into a blur frenzy.

The monkeys were equally excited and one of them started to blur as well.

Some animals got so excited that they broke out of their cages.

The pandas, however, were calm.

Nothing ever touches the flamingoes, ever!

The penguins, ditto.

Now, things started to get more interesting with this Singing Monkey. Yup, you read it right, it’s the only one here in this zoo and it sings! Hmm….. I wonder what song it sings…..

Whoa! Now things are really getting psychedelic over here! What the hell is happening!!!?!?!

Awww.. ain’t that sweet? The monkey sang a song!

And to end it all, the smoking crow attacked. You don’t see cigarette coz Nintendo saw it fit to remove the cigarette from the crow for this GBA release of the game.

So well, that’s my story of a strange little visit to the zoo.

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