Friday, January 13, 2006

Taipan

I MUST, MUST blog about this. Last night I took back my old laptop from the PJ house and eagerly started playing my Apple ][e games loaded in it. Never mind that the screen had “melted” after not using it for years, I determinedly loaded up Taipan. I love the old Apple ][e games, do you remember them? Thing is, once I get my new computer for the internet and games, I don’t know how to download all the good ol’ games.

Currently, I have Tapper, Jungle Hunt, Moon Petrol, Gemstone Warrior, Montezuma’s Revenge, Aztec, Lode Runner to name a few on my old laptop. But my all-time favourite remains Taipan, the game that encourages you to trade Opium in order to become a millionaire. The trading company name I give is usually Harpers Trading. Why? Because I saw my cousin Karen use this sophisticated name when we were young and when I could only come up with corny names such as Winner and I’ve firmly believed that if I use this name, I would achieve Ma Tsu level successfully. Later I found out that Harpers Trading company brings in Ferrero Rocher chocolates into Malaysia.

There are still so many games I’ve been looking for like Gremlins and one monster game I used to play with Ron, with two players that look like ice cream cones and Willowisps as one type of monster. I can’t remember the name. Then there’s Bats in the Belfry, Mario Brothers, Alkanoid, Carmen Sandiego, Helicopter (although I never know what the objective of that game was) and another game with you as a 2-inch creature who can fly and throw knives at some jumping creatures. The screen shows 3-levels and you’re supposed to go from screen to screen in order to find your way down to the last level where there’s someone you need to rescue. The sound of the approaching jumping monster still haunts me but I can’t, for the life of me, remember what the game is called! Oh, then there’s the quiz game, you bet a certain amount before selecting what category to answer before the time runs out. It had the $ sign as the border and would blink clockwise to indicate your time. Remember that one?

We used to fight over the computer whenever we’d go to my cousins’ place in Melaka for the holidays. I remember they always had the most updated games and we’d go scouring Melaka for the 5” floppy disks with the new games.

Anyone knows where to find and download these games?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

you know I love those games too and I didnt know one could get them for computers now. I think the game with the two ice-cream thingy's was called "widow-maker"??? Remember all the geli creatures such as will-o-wisp (the long, slow-moving ones) and of course the widow maker could suddenly speed up and rush to kill you. It was quite a difficult game and we had to position ourselves so that if one was attacked by the widow maker, I could shoot you with my arrows to revive you! What about Conan? And there was another game where there were creatures such as the Manticore, Phoenix and Banshee etc - what game was this called?? The game I still geli most is Aztec with the huge geli spiders and remember the octopus-like creature which was right at the bottom? ugh!

jo said...

i think the game was called "ice demons". the game with the manticore and banshee is called archon, it's like chess right?

i still have aztec on my laptop but i can't find gremlins anywhere. no one seems to have played it, i've asked a few friends. the song is still stuck in my head, do you remember it?

Anonymous said...

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