Then there was the time when we would all crowd around Gabriel to play Jedi Knight, complete with its ridiculously plentiful gaping chasms, crushing lift elevators and ominous music. The boss pictured below (or rather bosses) were seriously a tough pair of nuts to crack. The smaller one kept jumping around like Yoda on LSD, and the bigger brute was just as deadly. I will always remember the funny time when, in charge of pressing the quicksave button, (Joel was in charge of the quickload) and I was feeling very tense at some point of time. Some guy was chasing us and Kyle had to leap across yet another chasm. I jerked my hand onto the quicksave button, just as we jumped, and Murphy's law was invoked; we didn't make it, and my brother told Joel to load. Load where the jump had failed.

Picture this: LOAD.... errrrryearggh!

LOAD.... errrrryearggh!

LOAD.... errrrryearggh!

Needless to say, we had to start off some place way back.

Later this followed with less crowding, with exception to hotseat Heroes of Might and Magic (where, at the end, with the climatic battle involving 1000 Troglodytes, 50 Black Dragons, 900 Pikemen and 55 Angels, our heart would race just as fast as it did with the Weapon. Was it Ultimate Weapon?)

(sorry, I couldn't seem to resize it, and I'm not about to start up firefox.)

I graduated to the addictive SimTower, Theme Hospital and SimCity, (For simtower, I'd build to a certain point, leave the game running for 5 minutes to gain profits, then come back and spam, all the while in the black because of the hotels.) For Theme Hospital, there was always the joy of spontaeneously being issued a crosshair pointer when a rat scampered through the hospital.

Just the other night, I watched my brother play some guildwars, where it was set to a Halloween theme in all locales. He told me that all the servers were based in the US, but the ping was still good, with the exception of these few weeks where the connection has been less reliable for some reason. Then, in windowed mode, he just exited GW to desktop. Man, I wish BF2 could do both.

Still, there's no reason to hope when CitiesXL and CODMW2 come out soon enough.