2019-10-26 - Landers and Blasters
 ---------------------------------
 
 On something of a whim, I downloaded MAME today, for the first time
 ever. To be strictly accurate, I downloaded OpenEmu, which has MAME
 in it, but I think that's kinda pedantry.
 
 Faced, as a result, with the  riches of practically every game ever
 made for every historic games system, I ended up playing...
 
 Zaxxon & Lunar Lander. The games I played as a kid.
 
 To be fair  though, there's a little  bit of a history  there as to
 *why* I ended up playing those games as a kid and as a teen, and it
 all comes down to economics.
 
 Lunar Lander,  for instance, came out  in 1979, and I  was ten, but
 the country I grew up in  had a complete economic collapse in 1980,
 and  they replaced  the  currency entirely  with a  new  one, at  a
 rate  of  10:1.  This  meant  that  the  spanking  new  machine  in
 the  now-bankrupt arcade  wanted  coins that  were  no longer  even
 available. So  the machine  found its way  to our  clubhouse, along
 with a huge pile of old coins.
 
 As a consequence,  I played the shit out of  that game. Unlike kids
 in other less fortunate (and  non-bankrupt) countries, I could just
 keep feeding in coins without consequence, meaning i could play the
 game for *hours*.
 
 Five  years later,  the whole  thing repeated  anew after  the next
 economic collapse, except  this time the new  currency replaced the
 old at a  rate of 1000:1! The  new arcade went just as  bust as the
 old one, and we got a whole feast of new machines - Dig Dug, Galaga
 and  Zaxxon -  and  another  giant bucket  full  of now  completely
 worthless coins.
 
 Zaxxon  was like  nothing  I'd  ever seen  before,  a 3D  isometric
 scrolling plane-bomber arcade  machine that stole my  mind. Being a
 bit older,  and having more interesting  things to do, I  never did
 get into  it in the  same way  as I did  Lunar Lander, but  I still
 played the  shit out  of it.  I remember being  on holiday  with my
 family a year  later and leaving the Zaxxon  machine decorated with
 my name on every one of the HiScore slots.
 
 So here I am, many, many years later,  and all I want to do is play
 these old games again.
 
 I guess  there's some  sort of synchronicity  here, I  played those
 games as the world I knew  essentially burned itself out around me.
 They're a sort  of refuge, a "safe space" that  I know and love(d).
 With  everthing  that's  going  on  today,  the  rise  of  fascism,
 populism, the endless  cycle of hatred spewing  from some dead-eyed
 american billionaires  advertising agency, I  think we all  need to
 find this sort of safe space.
 
 You won't find that space on the  web, all you'll find is a guy who
 wants to sell  you this bridge, or, more likely,  sell you *to* the
 bridge.  So I  try to  find  it in  these  games, and  here in  the
 gopherlands.
 
 I  would like  to  try  more games  from  the thousands  available,
 though. To give a quick summary I am:
 
 - 50 years old 
 - with kids (4)  
 - who didn't really play  games in the 90s, 00s 
 - except civ and tomb raider
 
 I would  love to play the  *essential* games from that  era, I just
 don't know where to start. If you have ideas for the paths I should
 follow, please, let me  know, either by a post or  by email. I want
 to be all that I can be,  and not just repeating the mistakes of my
 youth.
 
 Anyway, keep on keeping on. Love to all.