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Video Game Memory 003 - Going through THREE copies of Baten Kaitos just to get to the end
Baten Kaitos (GameCube, 2005)

Oh, Baten Kaitos, you bug-riddled game, you! If I hadn't been so enamoured with your story, I probably wouldn't have bothered. To be honest, it was the first time I'd ever really encountered glitches/bugs/whatever it was that kept making the screen freeze when I changed scenes in a game, so I wasn't really sure what to do. Except buy a new, equally bug-ridden copy, of course. I can't remember the name of the exact village where it first happened, but it was just after I'd met my fourth or fifth party member, Savyna, and I had to go through a jungle to get to my next destination. But when I got to one particular screen, it just kept freezing every time I tried to move to the next one. The screen would fade to black like usual, but then it would just stay like that and buzz strangely until I was forced to reset it. I tried again and again but eventually realised that there must be something wrong with the disc, so back to Amazon it went.

Thankfully they were quite good about it, and they sent me a new one. I was a bit anxious it might just happen again, but when I finally made it to that elusive next jungle screen, I breathed a sigh of relief. And I kept breathing sighs of relief right through the game every time we moved forward hitch-free, all the way up until the final door before the final boss. I almost couldn't believe it. I'd made it so far, and now it was going to rob me of everything I'd been working for? Not on my watch.

I was so determined to finish it that I ended up resorting to eBay to find another copy. This was during the GameCube famine of the late 00s after all, and faithful Amazon no longer stocked it, so I had no choice but to risk it elsewhere. Now I've always been a bit wary about buying used games after I accidentally bought pirated copies of Pokemon Emerald and LeafGreen from an Amazon Marketplace seller once (another story for another time), but I really, really wanted to complete this game. And it worked! I got past that door, and I beat the final boss into the next decade. I even managed to return my second faulty copy to Amazon (several years after I actually bought it) and get a refund too! A happy ending to a rather troubled story, but we finally got there in the end.

Now I just hope I won't have to go through the same trauma again when I come to replay my current copy, because if I come across another Baten Kaitos bug one more time, I might just cry.

Video Game Memory 002 - Realising Pokémon Stadium was STILL turn-based
Pokémon Stadium (N64, 2000)

I was a real Poké-maniac when I was younger. I must have put at least 200 hours into Pokémon Red, replaying it dozens of times until I raised about 15 Lv.100s. But let's be honest - back in the day, Game Boys weren't very pretty to look at. Red did a pretty good job of bringing my favourite critters to life, but when battles were turn-based and lacked all the excitement seen in the anime, I was still left waiting for my Pokémon dreams to be fulfilled. I wanted to become the Pokémon, running and dashing around the battlefield and kicking ass like Ash and Pikachu. Then Pokémon Stadium was announced, and I thought my prayers had been answered.

How wrong I was. What I thought was a real "let's battle Pokémon in a giant stadium" simply boiled down to a graphical update of the Game Boy games. It was still turn-based, and it was still painfully static. Sure the Pokémon themselves looked awesome and the moves looked even better than I could have imagined, but I remember being severely disappointed that Pikachu and his fellow monsters were stuck rooted to the floor instead of being free to move around.

Still, that didn't stop me from enjoying some of the toughest battles I'd ever faced, and it certainly didn't stop my school friend and I having insane fun with the mini-games. It's a shame that even the most recent iteration of the Stadium idea - Pokémon Battle Revolution - is still based off this same old template, but hopefully one day they'll finally make a proper Pokémon game that breaks out of its turn-based monotony and injects a much-needed dose of action into the mix - because that would probably be enough to actually make me start caring about Pokémon again (but I'll talk more about that another time). Until then, I'll just have to content myself with politely taking it in turns to beat the living daylights out of my opponents.

Video Game Memory 001 - Discovering Zelda
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES, 1988)

To kick off this 100 Things Challenge, I'm going to share one of my earliest video game memories. Now, I didn't actually "discover" Zelda by playing Zelda II. We had both NES games when I was little, and I used to watch my brothers play them for hours on Saturday mornings. You know how kids can never sleep and always wake up at the crack of dawn even on a weekend? Well, when it got to 8 o'clock, my younger brother and I always used to creep quietly downstairs to play until our parents got up at a more reasonable hour. Sometimes we'd watch TV, other times we'd watch my older brothers play the NES, and occasionally when they got bored I'd try my hand at it myself. I played a myriad of games, mostly to very little success, and Zelda II was definitely no exception. After all, Zelda II is one of the hardest Zelda games in existence. Half the time I only reached the first boss, and then get lost somewhere around Midoro Swamp. I'd very rarely make it to the second temple, but somehow that didn't really matter because I just really enjoyed playing through that first dungeon.

I'm sure the same thing happened with the original Legend of Zelda too. I would never make it very far, but considering this was over twenty years ago, my memory's a little hazy. One thing I do remember very clearly though is Zelda II. I remember wandering the map for ages just listening to the music, in awe at this wide open world before me. I remember reading the instruction booklet and thinking, "Oh, so that's why it's called Zelda!" I didn't really understand what Link was doing when he got to the end of the temple and beat the boss - as far as I could make out he was just lighting up some statue and making it glow - but I did know that I was on a mission to save the princess. I also knew that riding up and down on the lifts was incredibly fun.



But as my brothers were infinitely more skilled than anything my five-odd year old fingers could manage, I ended up experiencing a lot of the game through them instead. I particularly remember them discovering all the hidden spells, and I always got excited when I saw the screen change from the bright red interior of a house to those large, grey stone steps that descended into the old sage's hideout.

The jump spell was my favourite, as it allowed Link to soar into the air at twice his natural jump height. Not only did it look great, but that coupled with the infamous down-stab attack was one of the best things about Zelda II. Instead of just jabbing your sword in one of four directions like the previous game, you could jump and dive and slam it right through a monster's skull, bouncing from one enemy to the next in glorious style. Of course, being an 8 bit game it was hardly very graphic, but it felt like you meant business. This Link was like a ninja, and you didn't mess him about, no sir.

It wasn't until several years later that I actually went back and completed the game. I can't remember how old I was, but it was definitely before I left school, so probably somewhere around my mid-teens, and it was surprising just how much it held up to that rather ambiguous day's standards. The combat was still as fresh as ever, it hadn't lost any of its charm or challenge, and that last temple... goodness me - that's a memory for another day. Even playing it again today on my 3DS, all those things are still true (though somehow it seems to have exponentially increased in difficulty in the intervening years!). I still feel like a ninja, the soundtrack still rocks, and there's still that same sense of child-like wonder everywhere I go. Its paths may been less well-travelled, but they're certainly no less loved.