I still remember when I was a child, holding a crumpled ten yuan in my hand, I ran to the corner of the video game store to look through the pile of yellow cassettes with the words "64-in-1" and "Super Mario" printed on them. The boss mysteriously took out a transparent case with a black chip inserted inside and attached a handwritten label - "Sky Era". In fact, there are no genuine pirated copies. It is a great blessing to be able to turn on the phone and light up the screen. Thinking about it now, the graphics on the cartridge were so jagged that they could be used as saws, but at the time, I thought it was the best game in the world.
Now that I have downloaded "Sky Age" on my mobile phone, I was stunned by the free flight in the opening scene. The 360° viewing angle is turned, the clouds flow under the feet, and the land of Kyushu is panoramic. I still subconsciously wanted to press the direction keys and move around, but it took me a long time to drag my fingers on the screen before I realized it - the "Sky Age" on the GBA back then could only flip the map one by one! I remember that in order to see the whole map, I walked around the border for half an hour. As a result, I hit a wall of air, and a line "Please buy a genuine cassette" flashed in front of the black screen. Fuck you, what I bought was a pirated version.
What excites me the most is actually space dressing and ever-changing fashion. There was no dyeing system in pirated cassettes back then. There were only three sets of character clothes. Changing colors was a "hidden secret code" - you had to enter a mysterious password on the title screen, and the success rate depended on luck. Now you can easily match hundreds of fashions with just a few clicks of your finger, and you can even adjust your hair color to a variety of colors. But what I remember is that afternoon, my deskmate lent me his "Gold Finger" card and brought out a fluorescent green cloak that was not available on the server. I was so excited that I pressed the A button under the desk for fear of being discovered by the teacher.
The cute monsters made me burst into tears. Back then, the pets in the cassette were just a few pixel blocks, and they moved like mechanical dances. Now the monsters in this game can act coquettishly and roll around. When their furry tails sweep across the screen, I just want to reach out and touch them. But there is always a voice in my heart saying: That stupid bird that could never learn the "fireball technique" is your real partner. Although it was stuck in the wall and trembled when walking, I kept it for a whole summer vacation.
Romantic adventures and real social interactions were a fantasy in the era of pirated cassettes. Where did the "destined one" come from in the stand-alone cassette? At most, in the two-player mode, you and your brother are crowded in front of the sofa. One person is in charge of moving and the other is in charge of attacking. If you don't cooperate well, you will blame each other. Now you can meet real players in the game, fly together to see the scenery, and like each other in the space. But to be honest, I miss the era when even the save files were lost and we had to start over from scratch every time we turned on the computer, but we still enjoyed it.
The charging mode is 0, free download. But in our days, pirated cassettes cost us all our breakfast money. Now you can experience the complete content that you dreamed of back then at the touch of a finger, but I always feel that it lacks a sense of ritual. Maybe what I miss is not the pirated cassette itself, but the myself squatting in front of the TV, even the noise on the screen felt like a sea of stars.
When I opened "Sky Era" and flew over the first mountain in Kyushu, I suddenly laughed. It turns out that the little man who could only move up, down, left and right can now really fly freely in the sky. Youth seems to be back, but this time, it is no longer stuck in the bad files of pirated cassettes.
I hope every veteran player can find his own piece of sky on his mobile phone. ✨