I still remember when I was in junior high school, I saved up half a month's breakfast money and found a yellow-shelled GBA cassette in the corner of a video game store. The cover had “School Storm” printed on it. The boss mysteriously said that this game could be used as a principal to manage students. When I got home and plugged in the phone, the boot screen read "National Academic Master" - good guy, it's another cased cassette modified by a pirate! At that time, I didn't know what a version was. I only knew that pixel villains lined up to enter the classroom. I was responsible for building buildings, recruiting teachers, and watching students take exams. I spent the entire summer playing.
Now I have downloaded the official version of "National Academic Master" on my mobile phone. The interface is much higher-definition and there are various activities. However, the excitement of "playing with cassettes secretly" has become the filter I miss the most. In comparison, there is no novice guidance in the original cassette? It's all based on blind guessing. Students can only stare blankly if they fail the exam. Even the archives are made of password paper. If you copy a wrong letter, it will be cleared🤯. Nowadays, the remastered version of the mobile game is very considerate, with one-click hosting and automatic upgrades, but I can't help but click on the manual operation, just to get back the feeling of "the fate of the whole school is in my hands" in middle school.
The cassette of the buddy at the next table was even more outrageous. The cover was "Pocket Monsters". When I went in, I asked the principal to make up lessons for the students. He said this was called "cross-border linkage", and we laughed for the whole class. Now I am browsing the rankings of "National Academic Leaders" and watching my students get admitted to Tsinghua University and Peking University. It feels like I am back to that afternoon when I borrowed a classmate's computer to connect to the computer and plugged in and out cassettes until dark. Youth was stolen from pirated cassettes, and it was also quietly hidden by these pixel memories. This version on my mobile phone now can be considered as a way to make up for the regrets of the past🎮
(Does anyone still remember those magical cassettes of "Super Academic Mary" and "Final Fantasy Cram School"? Check the password in the comment section!)