There's been a kidnapping! It's Rachel, the daughter of the President of Sercia!

[davywavy]

Woke up at about 4:00am this morning feeling profoundly unwell, so I’ve decided to skive Wade International today. I’m sure they’ll survive without me. If I feel up to it later I may stroll to the park or into town, though.

On Saturday it was a pleasant sunny day and I was feeling restive, so I hopped on the train to Brighton for want of something else to do. It turned out to be a good move, as I had a pleasant and interesting day, starting with me looking up from my book on the train and realizing that I was sitting opposite Patsy Kensit. Thus far everyone who I’ve told about this has told me that I must have been mistaken, that it must have been a lookalike, but I’m firmly convinced; she’s aged a bit since Lethal Weapon 2 - and not necessarily well, either – and she was reading through a stack of newspapers (Telegraph, Mirror, Guardian), presumably looking for mentions of herself. Determined not to be a sad gawper, I read Breakfast at Tiffanys and reminded myself just how irritating Holly Golightly really is.
Arriving in Brighton I paused in a charity shop where I found a copy of Dave Lee Roth’s autobiography, which awakened in me a desire to play Jack Lewis again complete with yet more tales of crap rock & roll excess, and then headed to the arcades on the pier where my trip took the form of a ‘Best of David’: Time Crisis 1 & 2, Vampire Night, Daytona, Street Fighter 2 and Gunblade. If they’d had Double Dragon, Twin Cobra, and Narc then my voyage of electronic death nostalgia really would have been complete.
Went to the beach and read for a while – and Brighton beach was full of people snogging. I don’t know if this was some sort of deliberate scheme to make me feel left out, but it seemed that at every point of the compass as I looked around there was a couple with tongues firmly buried in each others faces. Eventually I gave up trying to read and stared at the sky, dreaming of distant people and distant things - and part of me wishing I weren’t there on my own.
After a few hours I went off to meet interior_lulu, whom I haven’t seen in some years – not this century, I don’t think. It’s always difficult to know how to start a conversation after such a break: “So, what have you been doing for the last four and a half years” always seems the best I can come up with but feels (and is) false and contrived. After an initial period of being stilted we found out that we still got on and chatted enjoyably and I ended up feeling that we had both mellowed considerably since we saw each other last. Sometimes it takes a reminder of the past to bring the changes into focus.
Cheers, Al, it was a good day, and hopefully I’ll see you again before 2009.

Comments

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

No, you fool! From memory: Time Crisis 1:
There's been a kidnapping! It's Rachel, the daughter of the president o Sercia! get into the castle and rescue Rachel!
Sometime, somewhere, someone is planning a government overthrow. A small rebulbic is in danger. It's time for the one man army - Richard Miller!
Rachel Macpherson!
Eek!
She must be dead by now...
Sherudo Garo!
Since you have travelled so very far, be my guest and lt me entertain you!
Wild Dog!
Just to be sure!

Time crisis.

I played that game far, far, far too much. I set high scores on machines on three different continents at one point.

Time Crisis 2 was the one with General Ernesto Diaz, NeoDyne Industries and the Starline Project. I remember when someone noticed that my Giavanni ran an organisation called LeoDyne Industries which had a satellite project called Starline: "You stole your characters' motivation from a video game?"

[jonnyargles.livejournal.com]

D'ye know, I thought it was the first one, but there was a niggling suspicion about an earlier game with two cops. It's only know that I realise that was Virtua Cop.

Anyway, nothing beats Final Fight for intros; an ex-wrestling mayor, the rivalry between Guy and Cody, but united in their rescue of Mike Haggar's daughter. It was almost Homerian in its pathos.