"… You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Kodan armada!"
On Father’s day of 1985 my Dad got a Sega SC-3000 Personal Computer, our very first PC. A state of the art hybrid computer/game console capable of playing some of the most awesome games of the time. It was very similar to a commodore64, as it could load games from both tape and cartridge… it even had a BASIC interpretor and color screen! My favourite game of all was one called Star Jacker, a cute little top down space shooter where you start out with three little space pods, and work your way through a variety of levels, earning power-ups, speed boosts, and so on.
The nature of the game wasn’t altogether dissimilar to many you would come across in the arcades of the day, yet I loved it, simply because it made me feel like Alex Rogan from "The Last Starfighter"…. well, if you blur your eyes enough it kind does look like a Gunstar…. see here, here, here, and here!
I was bored again tonight, so instead of searching for blogs to read I went looking for items from my childhood. That’s when I cam across a ROM for this game. Seeing how totally awesome Gentoo’s package management system, Portage, is I was also able to dig up an emulator in no time and I was playing the game full screen on my 19 inch monitor.
Totally awesome! The best thing I love about memories is coming across things from your past and then finding that they were in fact better in real life then how you remember them. Tonight, for a sec, I felt like I was 5 again, and that’s something that made me feel more alive than I have felt in a long time.
Ah yes, the joys of childhood, where everything is about playing, adventure and fun. It’s such a shame we lose so much of it in our adult lives, succumbing to the pressures of having to provide for ourselves and of having to meet stringent societal standards in our actions and behaviour.
Glad you had a chance to enjoy your early youth as a computer nerd last night mate. Some things just never change!!! 
Aahhh, the last Starfighter. I loved that movie. And yes the ships in Star Jacker do look like the Gunstar. Where’d you find the ROM from?
Posted by Rob on April 12th, 2005 at 9:16 pmMan, It’s at times like this when I notice the age gap 
You’re getting old Josh! I don’t remember either game or movie.
Love that nostalgic feeling though – and how amazing it feels to actually bring back memories of things you had forgotten by seeing photos or handling school reports and things..
I think the first game system I had was an Atari, then we had an XT computer, and finally a 286 (real computing power! *grin*).
Is that what you were doing until the early hours of this morning?
Posted by Melly on April 12th, 2005 at 9:25 am