I still remember that in the summer of 2003, I grabbed the breakfast money I had saved for three months, ran to the canteen next to the black Internet cafe at the back door of the school, and dug out a yellow-shell "128-in-1" cassette from the boss's greasy drawer. The boss said that this thing can be used to escape from the room and cultivate immortality. I believed it. As a result, when I got home and plugged in the GBA, the startup screen went by - hey, it was all reskinned versions of Arkanoid and Tetris, and when I clicked on the "Escape Room" icon, I got a black screen. Youth, this is how you get tricked.
But do you know? That pirated cassette with a black screen planted a mystery in my heart. Until recently, I accidentally found a game called "Escape Room Series 3: Fantasy Adventure" on a mobile game emulator. The moment I clicked on the new chapter "Fantasy Book Fantasy", I was completely stunned - the familiar, stiff icon arrangement, the neurotic puzzle logic, and the philosophical beginning of "Is the world fictional?" were exactly the same as the screenshots that flashed through the pirated cassette. 😳
Of course, the current replica is much smoother, and clicking on the touch screen is much friendlier than using the GBA cross-key to poke the screen. But to be honest, I missed the black screen pirated cartridge - at least at that time, I thought I had really found some amazing forbidden game. Now that I have played the original version, I feel that it lacks a bit of "stolen" excitement. However, the atmosphere of the game is really amazing. The ink-style painting world, coupled with the proposition of "does the external world really exist?" makes me, an old toy, confused while deciphering the puzzle: maybe the mobile game I am playing now is just a fantasy created by my brain. 🤯
In short, if you have bought that kind of cassette with "100 in 1" printed on the cover but only has 20 games, if you have also been stuck for three days on a puzzle and finally found out that it was a pirated Chinese version with garbled code, then this new chapter of "The Legend of Painting Fairy" is really worth regaining the feeling of youth. It's free, absolutely free, unlike when we had to save money to buy pirated copies. 😎
Youth is back. Although it has changed from the black screen of GBA to the dots and dashes of mobile phones, the pleasure of solving puzzles has not changed at all.