Nostalgia Time: Rayman

I'm going to tell you a story about a traumatic experience from my childhood due to the game Rayman. I'm not a gamer, but I play games. I used to play games A LOT. I remember falling asleep with my Gameboy Colour in my hands and discovering the next morning that my mother had turned it off and having a major meltdown. Reading Annie's post on her rage quitting bought it all back to me. I am was not a rage quitter, when playing my Gameboy I actually got obsessed and really stressed out about it, I'm pretty sure it gave me grey hairs. I could not put the game down unless i'd completed the section and saved it which is why Rayman was my nemesis.



Pretty much most of story games I played back then had a save option, because the makers were bloody civilised! Rayman however gave you a long code after every five levels or something so if you wanted to turn off you had to enter the code to continue playing on the level you left off. I have one thing to say: you do not give a ten-year-old a code. She will write it down incorrectly or lose it. And then guess what? She'll cry like a little baby. Those heartless bastards didn't care. The pain and anguish I went through because I had lost everything I'd spent hours achieving was unbearable. Then I wised the hell up and decided I'd play it all in one sitting and complete it.

Now here's the dramatic turn, back in the olden days when we had Game Boy colours they were charged with these things called AA batteries, we didn't really have chargers. Pretty much everything needed batteries back then, so obviously my parents would give us the cheap ones because of how fast we'd go through them. I doubt that they lasted more than 6 or 7 hours and this game had like a million levels (well at least that's what it felt like). I don't think you know how hard it is to complete that game in 6 hours. The stress you go through trying to finish the game before that tiny battery light at the side went red induced heart palpitations. And I still needed to eat and pee and stuff while playing the game, so of course I had many failed attempts. I always got so close but yet it was so far. One day I just couldn't take it anymore, I was determined to finish the game at any cost. I took it to the toilet with me, my mum had to feed me and a battled sleep but in the end I did it.

I conquered my everest.

Masses of tears went into it. Several hand cramps (think Chandler), but with the success the pain went away. It didn't matter anymore, nothing I had been through. It was traumatising yes, but I won. I'd give pretty much anything to go back to that day again, just to feel the happiness after my triumph. You don't really get that anymore, not in the days of Call Of Duty, there doesn't seem to be any satisfaction. It makes me yearn for the days of Rayman, makes me want to dig out the Game Boy colour and buy a few dozen batteries just to feel it again.

Ok, my soppy time is over. Live Long and Blog.