Blast from the past… to my iPhone

I was a computer game geek in Japan when I was growing up (why isn’t that a surprise?). I played lots of Nintendo – was so called Family Computer, or FamiCon to be short – and also played games on PC-88 at my friend’s house. I didn’t own a PC, but I sure spend a lot of time at this friends house. I can not remember exactly how old I was, but I must have been around 12, 13, 14 years old? around 5-7 grade, I would imagine. That would make it around 1986-88 or so. Spec from 1987, PC-8801 FA (I’m just randomly picking one, I have no idea what model my friend had) was 8MHz CPU speed with 64KB RAM. I remember the games had like 6 floppy discs and you had to load them all before you can start the game. Remember sitting around and inserting the floppies in the right order, one by one…

Anyhow, guess what I found on iTunes store today. Games that I played hours and hours on that friend’s PC-88 computer, namely Nobunaga’s Ambition and Romance of The Three Kingdoms (we called it Sangoku-shi, and I owned a very thick comic book – manga – about that, not sure if I bought it after the game… Well, I am pretty sure it was after, who am I kidding…). The iPhone games are both $9.99 which would be one of the most expensive app that I would buy, but I have feeling I may cave into it – maybe one, but which one? – since they were such a big part of my youth… Looks like this list of people of the three kingdom link may come handy when/if I play. My favorite guys in that manga book, if I remember, were Shu Han’s Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and Zhuge Liang, and Zhao Yun. But it is very strange to have their name spelled in English, as I am pronouncing those Chinese names in Japanese. It makes no sense.

Speaking of iPhone games from the past, I have to admit that I’ve already bought Final Fantasy for iPhone, which, to be honest, I didn’t play that much when I was young. I played a lot more of Dragon Quests – or DoraKue for short, or it was sold as Dragon Warriors in U.S.- than the FFs. Dragon Quest was first released in May 27, 1986 – I was 12 years old. Super Mario Brothers, which I also obsessed over as a kid, was released in September 13, 1985, I was 11. The Wikipedia link before also says that the Sangokushi game was released in 1985. I wonder (read: fear) what kind of games my son will be into when he is 12…

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