Back in the 1980s, I had, like many other teenagers, a home computer and, yes, I also used it for playing games. Recently, when I listened to episode 170 of Retro Computing Roundtable, they were talking about ‘Paradroid’ on the C64. It must have only been a side note because it didn’t even make it into the show notes and I had no immediate recollection of how the game looked like back then or how it worked. However, I instantly knew that I was really addicted to this game back then. I couldn’t visualize it anymore, I didn’t remember how the game was played but I still remembered that I spent hours playing it. Strange how the brain works.
Fortunately there is the Internet and it’s easy to find information and screenshots, for example over here on Wikipedia and over here on Youtube. Even only looking at a single screenshot instantly brought back an avalanche of 30 year old memories. And what’s even better, there are Linux, Windows and Mac versions of the game that can still be played today without having to get out the original C64 that sits on my cabinet. The screenshots above show the open source version ‘Freedroid’ that looks pretty much the same as the original. The music and sound effects, however, are different. I didn’t notice it at first until I saw the original being played on Youtube. Again it felt strange to hear the original sound and instantly knowing again, that yes, this was the original sound and that Freedroid’s music and sound effects are not the original.
So what can I say, I haven’t played a game in years, not because I don’t like playing computer games, but because there are some many other exciting things to do. However, after seeing this and installing Freedroid out of the Debian software repository (sudo apt install freedroid) I was immediately hooked again and played it for several hours late into the night. Darn addictive…