My friend, I just downloaded "Summoners' Clash" from the app store and played two games, and suddenly my nose felt sore. I still remember when I was a kid, I grabbed the breakfast money I saved and went to the video game store to dig through the pile of yellow cassettes. The boss patted his chest and said, "This is definitely a good game. It's three-in-one and can't be saved!". Then I plugged in the GBA when I got home, and as soon as the boot screen passed, the screen was filled with Japanese text, so I could only guess.
At that time, no one knew about genuine and pirated games, so long as you could play them. A pirated "Pokemon" card will be cleared when the battery is out of power. Every time I turn off the computer, I am afraid of starting from the new town again. But even though it is so hard, we still enjoy it because it is our whole world.
Now this "Summoner's Clash" is said to be a 5V5 heroic battle. The 3D cards are made by the U3D engine. When you manually zoom in on a move, the special effects are loud and real. But to be honest, my first reaction was not "Wow, it's so cool", but it reminded me of the grid-moving days of playing "Final Fantasy Tactics" on the PSP. Although this game has been changed to real-time automatic combat, the formation matching and skill release timing still have strategic depth. It is a bit like putting the brains of those Japanese SRPGs of the past into a mobile phone case that can be taken out and played at any time.
The key thing is that this game is free to download, without the painful feeling of buying out the cartridge. But old players all know that free is the most expensive, haha. But I just want to keep my feelings in mind, and slowly develop it with zero krypton, just like when I played through a cassette more than ten times and still had fun.
Talking about pirated cassettes, the most embarrassing thing at that time was that "Kirby" was bought as "Kirby Brawl". There was a pink ball printed on the cover, but it turned out that there was a blue hedgehog in the game. It took me a long time to play to realize it. There was also a game of "Fire Emblem" that was actually "Royal Knights". I even told my classmates, "This hidden character is so handsome." Now that I think about it, the pirates' random labeling has allowed me to accidentally come into contact with many unpopular masterpieces, which can be regarded as a mistake.
Nowadays, there is an emulator installed in the mobile phone, and you can play the original version of whatever you want, but I always feel that the ritual of secretly inserting the card and booting up the disk is missing. Although the picture quality of "Summoner's Clash" is several dimensions lower than that of the GBA back then, the joy of "playing secretly" seems to be never available again. However, when I gathered five heroic spirits in the game and manually used the special move to take away the opponent in a wave, hey, youth is back! Even if it's just fragments, it's enough to keep me entertained for a while.
Guys, do you still remember the first pirated cassette you bought? Let's chat in the comment area. I'll do it first as a courtesy and skip the first deposit gift pack. 😭