Give Gozer a Break

I've been back playing Tetris a few times recently, but nowhere near the intensity of how much I played it last year. Suddenly this weekend I broke my all-time high score in marathon mode with ease. It amazes me how sometimes absence can make you better at playing a computer game. It reminds me of when I had Ghostbusters as a kid on the Sega Master System. That game had me stumped for an awful long time, I was constantly getting killed on the staircases before reaching Gozer.

In the end the frustration got the better of me and I stopped playing the game. Then about half a year later - for no real discernible reason - I decided to give Ghostbusters another crack. After a few tries I finally got to final level with Gozer and completed the game.

How did this suddenly happen?

Maybe I had lost some bad habits by having the rest?

Or maybe the break refreshed my enthusiasm?

That reminds me, I really need to go back to the 2009 Ghostbusters game. I drifted away from it - not because it was too difficult - but because the game mechanics were so clunky. But still it has the original voice cast so it would be worth going back to if only for that.

Does the third level of Operation Wolf exist?

Remember when rapid-fire used to be a thing? I recall it being a big selling point for a lot of third party controllers when I was younger. I guess it is not such a useful function for modern games. I really liked the official Sega rapid-fire unit. You plugged it in-between your controller and the console - thus making any controller rapidfireable (uh... let's pretend that's a real word).

I paired it with the phaser on the fun port of Operation Wolf on the Master System. I say fun but I never got past the second level, as I ended up running out of bullets because of the rapid fire. And yet I never turned the rapid-fire off. I knew that Operation Wolf in the arcade used an uzi-style gun so in my young mind it made perfect sense to keep the rapid fire on. Never once did it occur to me that they adapted the game for home systems.

I really need to go back one day and try and play it through properly, that is if I can find a television that will work with a light gun nowadays.