I still remember that when I was a child, I saved a month's pocket money, went to the canteen in front of the school, and spent five yuan to buy a pirated GBA cassette. Those yellow-cased cassettes often cannot be read when inserted into the machine. You need to blow on the gold finger and press it in hard - hey, the screen lights up! At that time, I didn't know what genuine products meant. I only knew that the cassette covers were garishly printed, and the “256-in-1” and “Devil's Edition” were standard. It was common for the game to suddenly crash in the middle of playing, but we still enjoyed it.
Youth is quietly flowing away in the "squeaking" sound of those pirated cassettes. Nowadays, any emulator on the mobile phone can run the games of the year very fast, and the screen can also turn on filters, but I always feel that something is missing - probably the ritual of pulling out the cassette, breathing with your mouth and inserting it back again.
However, I recently discovered a mobile game called "Star Guards", which made me regain my energy of squatting in bed and playing tower defense. This game is about humans being driven out of the earth by the Zerg. They have to build fleets and arsenals in space and fight back all the way back. To put it bluntly, it is a classic tower defense strategy gameplay, but the graphics are very interesting and full of technology. Moreover, it is actually a free mobile game + buyout system (the charging mode is 0, I guess it is in-app purchase or advertising?), which makes an experienced player like me shine.
Having said that, the tower defense games we played on pirated cartridges back then were not so sophisticated. I remember there was a pirated NDS combined card. There was an "Interstellar Defense War" in it, which was just a simple fort to fight bugs. The picture was not even a mosaic, but my deskmate and I played it all night long. Now those glowing energy turrets and transforming Guard Legions in "Star Guards" make me slap my thighs when I see them - if I could play this kind of thing when I was a kid, why should I insert the cassette until it smokes?
Oh, by the way, the developer is Hainan Yiyou Technology Co., Ltd. The name sounds strange, but the quality of the game is really good. Running platform 5.0, I wonder if it refers to Android 5.0 or above? Anyway, my old phone runs pretty smoothly. Compared with those mobile games where you can earn money and draw cards at every turn, "Star Guards" is more like the way we used to squat in an arcade to play for half a day by throwing in a coin. It is pure and direct, without those messy social functions.
In the final analysis, pirated cassettes are the collective memory of our generation. Although they are disgraceful, they are also products of a special era. Now that conditions are better, mobile games can be downloaded with genuine versions, and there is no need to cheat, but the joy of "inserting a card to play" is becoming increasingly difficult to find. Fortunately, "Star Guards" made me smell a little bit of the old days again - not the smell of plastic on the cassette, but the refreshing feeling of "defending the last wave of bugs, slapping my thighs and shouting that I'm awesome".
Dear old friends, if you also miss the days of playing tower defense on handheld consoles, you might as well give this a try. The fleet is ready to go. Sir, please give the order - haha, the lines in this game really have that flavor. Youth is back again. Although those yellow shells and red flower screens cannot go back, this heart is still there. 🚀🎮