And to this day, I still lay awake at night wondering about the game that got away

The unthinkable happened at work today: I worked.

Maybe I should elaborate some.

In my college, we go out and work for our third semester. Through one of my professor's husband, we were able to get contract from IMP Solutions, which is a division of IMP Group, an international multipurpose company based in Halifax. They do work in aviation, aerospace, and they own CanJet.

Our mission, if we chose to accept it, was to provide assistance in any way possible to the Annapolis Valley Regional Health Department's Information Services team based off-site at their new office complex.

I'm not sure how much of my work I could actually talk about (I signed a non-disclosure agreement), but I'm sure I CAN say that due to their lack of organization, I've spent about an average six of my eight hours a day playing emulators.

So it seems the less work you do, the more you get paid? Benefits of an education, I guess. Although I didn't need a college education for my favorite task: Lobbing decommissioned computers into a dumpster from two stories up. It amazes me what I do (Or don't do) to make money.

Anyway.

I've had a hankering to play my Genesis again. Unfortunately it's packed away for my future move, and it'd be a pain in the ass to pack it up again, so I decided to download a torrent which claimed to have "Every Genesis rom", and was a 700MB compressed file. I get the file and it turns out it contains 7.3GB of Genesis roms. Now I know a Genesis rom will weigh more than, say, a NES rom. But THAT much space? I'd need a dual layer DVD disc to burn them all. Behold, why it was so large:



Who in the hell needs one, let alone six beta versions of Chuck Rock 2?!

But yeah, I have my IBM NetVista with frontal USB ports and a USB joypad based on the original PS1 controller, so it serves just fine. I need to get one with analog sticks so I can play N64 games.

Anyway, everybody has that one game that looked interesting when they were a kid, but they never got to play it. And to this day, I still lay awake at night wondering about the game that got away.

For me, it was Sub-Terrania.


^{Best cover art for any game approved for all audiences.}

I read about this game in a really old Sega magazine (Which I tragically no longer have). When I was a kid, I had a Game Gear. This made me "cool" in a sea of kids who owned Game Boys because my games were in color and my batteries only lasted about a tenth that theirs did. Which makes me I'm sure only one in a handful who would willingly spend money on compilations just to play Sonic Game Gear games.

I didn't actually get a Genesis until I was 15 or 16. So clearly I didn't get to play it. But I wanted to. And nobody I knew had ever heard of the game. Until one fateful day when I finally did own a Genesis, I spotted Sub-Terrania sitting in a plastic pouch on a rack at my EB Games. Unfortunately I didn't play it as much as I would have liked to. I think it had something to do with me getting laid at the time.

But with me having all the free time in the world at work, I made it so. And I love this little game. It plays like Solar Jetman (Another game of my childhood), but with a serious dosage of Sega-brand attitude. Basically, the shit has hit the fan on a subterranian dig on an alien planet. It seems the aliens don't like us (Maybe we didn't let them unionize), so they've decided to fuck things up. And you get sent on a mission to save miners and blow shit up.

I'm going to do a video on it, it's just a question of whether I just do it for the sake of it, or submit it as a VGVault for ScrewAttack. I know Stuttering Craig wanted a while ago for me to make some stuff for them.

I also plan to do one on P.N. 03. Because any fan of oldschool shooting games would love it.