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Old 03-5-2021, 10:49 PM   #11
Hateandhatred
"The Quebec Steparatist."
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Join Date: Feb 2011
Age: 33
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Default Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge



March 5th

Today's challenge is: Big Personal Impact.

Despite today's theme, I actually have little... tangible (?) experience with the game I picked. That because the VAST majority of my time playing the game was spent before I had turned 5. Which means I only remembered the bare minimum to be able to find what the game was as an adult... As well as something else. Therefore, today's review will be less about the game than about how it impacted my life.

The game I picked today is Montezuma's Revenge for the SEGA Master System (my favorite console, by the way), and something I learned as an adult is that this title is a reference to the violent diarrhea one might get while travelling abroad, especially in South America. I mean, there's no way I couldn't mention this. And while I'm slightly off topic, I might as well mention that this is possibly the first videogame I've ever played, at least at my place, as I did play Super Mario Bros. 1 at a hospital when I was a toddler. Other candidates would be Hang-On, which ran on my console whenever you wouldn't have a cart in (or if it was reading it poorly, which happened a lot), or Kenseiden, which I could only find out about because I could remember the first boss enough for Marionintendo to find it for me.



Anyway, it's kind of a classic exploration game based on Indiana Jones. You select your level as you enter the temple (more on that later, this is extremely important), then you rappel down into the first area. You have to avoid monsters and other enemies and collect gems and keys to open doors. I guess you could call that a Metroidvania, except all the screens are static and there are no powerups or bosses (that I know of anyway). It's also not really good, and you're better off playing Zillion instead for a similar kind of game on the Master System.



So, why did I pick this game? Here's the thing. If you select a high enough difficulty, you can only spend a VERY limited amount of time on any given screen. Once you've been in it long enough, an eerie sound effect will play, and a bat will come screeching to capture Panama Joe (the bootleg Indiana Jones you play as). That bat is also invincible and can fly through walls. Basically, if you heard that sound effect, you had to leave the room immediately, or else it'd carry you off screen and you'd lose a life.

As a 3-4 years old kid, I thought it was a crow or a raven, and my parents also referred to it as such. I also wasn't a fan of that crow AT ALL, and my parents would use it against me whenever they'd want me in bed: When they wanted me to go, they'd say that the crows came every night into my room to check if I was sleeping, and if I was still awake, they'd grab me with their talons and carry me into the night's sky, where they'd shred me into confetti or whatever. You can bet your ass I was ducking into my covers every single evening, crying and probably pissing myself most of the times, and regularly had nightmares about it.

Looking back, I think this shit is hilarious and I wanna high five my parents for doing this (they probably never realized how much it terrified me), and honestly I was a difficult kid and I'm surprised that's really all they did.

I of course bought this game again once I could figure out what it was, and I love it because the sticker on the cartridge is white instead of red like pretty much every other Master System game.

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Last edited by Hateandhatred; 03-5-2021 at 11:09 PM..
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