So, what actually prompted me to get it? A memory.
A couple of minutes away from where I live there's this tiny, greasy restaurant, the kind where you go when you want cheap, hearty, good and, well, greasy food, and cheap wine. It's been closed since lockdown, but the other day I went past it and I remembered being there, somewhere in 1990 or 1991, and they had a couple of arcade machines, one of them was the perennial 'Pinball Madness' and the other would cycle through a variety of games - including Cabal and Juju (A.K.A. Toki). As I stood in front of that restaurant, watching 13/14 year old me playing those games, I got flooded by a rush of memories and emotions.
Some bits of my life I really hate to think about. Especially when I think of the years between '90 and '95. Those were hard years for us.
Around 1990 my family finally fell apart - it had been years in the happening, really - and that event set in motion a series of other events that would be disastrous for us. It seemed that everything that could go wrong did go wrong. My father disappeared for a while, my mother lost her job and fell into a deep depression, my brother got into drugs and ended up in jail... these were hard times. We'd gone from having a sort of tranquil life to being on the edge of poverty. Poverty, without squallor, we were poor but not destitute, we'd sometimes go hungry but not really know hunger. It's all relative, right? We still had a roof under our heads, so right there we were blessed, moreso than many. And yet... we had precious few luxuries. My grandmother got my mother an old, beat-up car, but that was mainly for visiting my brother. There were no more family vacations. And things that I'd easily taken for granted, like asking for some change so I could go play some games in those arcade machines - or some others, bigger and better, but much further away from where I live - those days were gone.
It left me with a bitter pang inside, even then, and yes, I do know there are far graver injustices in the world, and yet this was my family life that had been upended and I'd eventually come to learn to adapt, before something bad happened to me.
So with that in mind, I did some digging and found a deal online that suited me just fine - it fell right where how much I was willing to pay for it, and it just felt right.
I placed the order, and it got shipped from Spain to me on a friday, and monday it was already in my hands.
I had to wait until my working day was done to start playing with it - and I will say that the OS does take some time getting used to - and taking an inside look at what it offered in terms of games.
A cursory glance showed me a bunch of embedded emulators, for a number of systems, ranging from the classic NES to the lesser known WonderSwan. We've got Megadrive, Neo Geo, SNES, PS1, Famicom, PC Engine and more. And the great thing about this open ended OS is that it is fully customizable, so you can load more emulators, and as many games as your SD memory card will take. But for me, the key selling point is the embedded MAME and FBA emulators - these are the dedicated arcade games emulators. And it comes pre-loaded with hundreds of games, including the aforementioned Toki, as well as a number of other older favorites of mine.
When I used to go to some of the bigger arcades here, now long gone, there was always a distinct winner. Whatever Konami did, I played. And boy, those very early '90s were a treasure trove of amazing games by them, all side-scrolling, multiplayer beat'em ups - X-Men, The Simpsons, Teeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Asterix, Sunset Riders, the side-scrolling shoot'em ups Wild West : C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa, and the G.I. Joe shoot'em up - a game that I absolutely loved back then.
Another favourite was Capcom - I'm not even going into the Street Fighter series at all - but sticking with those side-scrolling beat'em ups, they had Final Fight, the absolutely batshit crazy Captain Commando, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Punisher, and the greatest of them all - Aliens vs. Predator.
And what do you know? All these are included here. Oh! And also, some from my pre-teens as well - Snow Bros! Shadow Dancer! Hammerin' Harry!
Because I usually wake up really early - especially now that I managed to more or less get my sleep schedule a bit more under control - I´ve been playing these classic games before I start working and I always do a complete run of them just for the fun of it. Truth be told, what with unlimited continues it's far easier to just plow through them - these games were HARD and for sure they were quarter munchers in the old arcades.
I'll eventually get to know a bit more about modding the console itself, installing custom firmware and whatnot, but for the moment it's all about keeping on diving in and seeing what else we got there - there's still tons I've yet to explore.
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