Fruit of Melancholy

Been a bit busy the latest couple of days. With what you ask? I graduated this saturday and I now have a glass apple standing in my bookshelf. After 5 years of studies it feels like a let down somehow. Anyway, that just occupied one day of the whole week. The rest have been a trip into ancient memories of a childhood long gone. First an adventure scaling the world tree in order to save the elves from a meteor spreading its poison across the world. Yes, it was an old NES game, Faxanadu which we never finished since none of us understood what we were supposed to do, a bit hard when you didn't spoke English. Usually I just made up a story as I played. Of course, you could always force your way thru, but for some reason that never happened (it might have been that I easily got frightened by the really weird monsters roaming the game). So after 10 years since last time it was the right moment to strike back. And I did, but my own story elements would have been much better.

But the high point of this weekend (and beginning of the week as well) was the King's Quest-series, 1 - 6. If Faxanadu was hard to understand if you didn't knew english that well, King's Quest was almost impossible. Maybe not the first and second one (with exception for the damned cryptic Rumpelstiltskin puzzle), but the third and onward really needed you to understand the English languish. Of course, you always had the thick instruction manual to help you, not only help, but also make it possible to finish some of the game due too Sierras use of an interesting copy-protection. Easy enough right? No, it wasn't that easy, for some reason our instruction book was in French. Yeah, unfortunately I took German in school. But this meant I couldn't play either the third or forth game since you used the book to make spells in third and being allowed to start the fourth game.

It probably wouldn't have helped either if I could have read it, to frightening with all the instant death sequences. The fourth game wasn't even working for some reason either. So the only games I had a chance to finish (I thought at least) was the fifth and sixth game. The fifth game I did at least come half-way, the problem was the desert. I don't know way, but I didn't dare venture into it. That would have been the easiest one to get, just make a damn map and go for it, but NO, I didn't dare, instead I went into the damn witch forest several times and got killed of. The sixth game then? I played it almost flawlessly and got all things and talked to everyone, but then I got stuck at how to climb the damn Cliffs of Logics where you needed, you guessed it, the instruction book to finish. WTF!

What's the deal you might ask with a 24/7 internet at ones disposable? Not then, so when I finally got my hands on the games I could easily break thru these problems. But guess my frustration when I, for example finally got the fourth game to finally run on my computer and I'm met by the message "at page X, phrase Y write word Z". I obviously didn't ask my parents to bring the book since, it was in French, and that I didn't think I would use it. Thank God for the Internet!