I still remember when I was a kid, I grabbed my crumpled pocket money and rushed into the electronics store at the back door of my school. The boss mysteriously took out a yellow cassette tape from under the counter, with "500 in 1" handwritten on the cover with a marker pen. I ran home full of joy and plugged in the learning machine. As a result, the ones that came up over and over were always Contra, Red Fortress, and Green Corps, and the others all showed a black screen of death🚫. But those few "problem cassettes" supported our happiness throughout the summer vacation.
Back to the topic. Recently, I have been installing a mobile game called "Shell Squad" on my phone. As soon as I play this game, oh my, that familiar "pirated cassette" feeling comes back😆. At first it looks like a vertical version of a lawn mowing game, but it has a very strong flavor - dangerous enemies are attacking the entire city, and the city is in crisis. You are awakened by the dream trial and become a warrior with a heavy burden. You must try your best to survive in such difficult times.
When you listen to this opening, does it sound very similar to the opening plot that was full of machine translation in some pirated cassettes back then? Agents, dreams, urban crises, lone heroes... all the elements are present. It reminds me of those unknown niche shooting games in the GBA era. At that time, the manuals were all printed with fancy chronicles, and actually entering the game is a sudden and exciting game.
But the "chu tu tu tu" is different these days. When playing "Shelljacket", I actually experienced the feeling of playing those survivor games on the PSP. The bullets filling the screen, the roars of monsters, and special effects flying around can all be reproduced on my mobile phone, which made my eyes feel a little hot🔥. Really, youth is back! Back then, we played with our PSPs in bed hiding from our parents. Now we have our phones in our pockets, and we can play again while waiting for the bus or taking a lunch break.
To talk about the difference between this replica and the original version, in the past, pirated cassettes were called "buying a lottery ticket", and whether you could turn it on or not depended on luck; now this game can be played after opening it, it is free and has no threshold, and the store does not force you to pay for it. It has the same hard-core spirit of "making your way in the world with one life"💪. The picture quality has certainly improved a lot, but the stubborn mentality of "starting with a gun and picking up all the equipment" has not changed.
Now that the city is besieged by monsters every day, aren't we, the warriors chosen by the dream, guarding this bit of pure land in the cycle of falling down and getting up again and again? In the past, it was used to plug in game consoles, but now it is used to plug in mobile phones. What has changed is the carrier, but what remains unchanged is the heart that wants to live another game.
Dear brothers, if you have ever done such a thing as blowing into the golden finger of a cassette tape, listen to me and try the next "Shell Squad". There is no need to search hard for old antique machines. The dreams you had back then can be fulfilled on your mobile phone. My youth is really back now😭.