Ree’s musings

Strange happenings tonight. Arak came over and he showed me some bits of video games. He's trying to whet my appetite for the 3D Legend of Zelda games even though that is totally heretical to Reeish thinking. Also, it is working. OMG so pretty.

I wanted to show him exactly what happened when one of my games locked up on me, so I fired it up. I always get wrapped up in the story so the glitchy end to my explorations makes me feel slightly ill. I walked up to the buggy spot, taking my time to delay the inevitable, and told him to watch.

And that's when I saw an animatic I had never seen before. O.o?

I don't know what changed. I had already done everything I could to clean the game media and my console, and none of it worked when I tried to play shortly afterward. But today I saw that animatic and managed to get all the way to a save point. Yes! I told Arak he must have an aura of Cure Light Wounds for video games.

Before Arak left, he tried turning his Game Boy on. It had frozen on him earlier and he wanted to see if it would work correctly now.

"Well," I impishly reminded him, "it was in the same room as my game. Maybe it was affected too."

It was. We parted, happy with our lot.

When my brother Squirt got home after work, I giddily informed him of the events in his absence.

He laughed... and said, "Think that would work on Super Metroid?" He had two copies that both had graphics glitches -- statues reskinned with missile tiles and so on.

A quick search of the room turned up a copy that had been well within range of the perceived game cure. Squirt told me to pop it in and try it.

I started a new file. And played well past Kraid, at least 20% of the way through the game. The glitches were completely gone.

I'm thinking Arak should set up shop at an upcoming convention: "Heal your vintage video games with our fantastic aura! 100% success rate (as of Dec. 21, 2007) - rates negotiable - all game types welcome to try - no refunds."

In the meantime, I can continue my game! And play a file on Squirt's Super Metroid too! Awesome! (That's probably enough caffeine for the morning though. Heh.)