In 1990, I walked in to a Japanese toy store by the name of Pony Toy Go Round in little Tokyo in Los Angeles. I used to get my Dragon Ball toys and cards there (mostly cards, cheapish). They sold video games and I occasionally bought clearance bin fami-carts and I had befriended the the flamboyant gaysian clerk that worked there at the time. He was playing the PC Engine on one of his TVs. I asked him what game was playing, to which he replied "In Japen, this game is called EESU". It had been the intro to Ys II - It blew my mind. I couldn't comprehend the CD graphics, the music. Anything. It was just surreal. I later discovered that the game had been released for the TG-CD. I had made it my mission to own one of these.
The day was Saturday, May 11th, 1991. I was 12 years old. Two days after my birthday, I had bought a used TG16 system that came with Kieth Courage in Alpha Zones and the box was beat up all to shit. My dad had given me 50 dollars for my birthday like he does every year because it was easier then to try and figure out what I wanted, I also had some bucks in a tootsie-roll bank and begged my mother for 20 bucks (my parents were divorced and we were poor, I lived with my old lady). She finally caved and said it was part of my birthday money. My good pal Alex had his dad drive us out to Game Dude (we had no car) where I would buy the system for like 70-something bucks used, I think I had like 1 or 2 bucks left afterward. My friend had some bucks and he bought a used copy of Vigilante. Both games were rather shitty and not a whole lot of excitement, I'd let my dad know that I really wanted the CD add-on if he was thinking about getting me ANYTHING for Christmas. Ironically, he had investigated what was gonna be hot and bought me a Super Nintendo for Christmas, I was very happy but I still
really wanted the TG-CD. The next year, I would get closer to my dream of owning the TurboGrafx 16 CD-Rom System. My friends dad who took us to the game store managed to haggle the long-haired clerk at Japan Video Games for a used TG-CD down to 125 (I only had 100 dollars on me, my friend paid the rest of it) and they threw in a copy of Ys Book I&II because at the time it was "a cheap game" according to the worker there (what ridiculous price does this go for now?). We went home, hooked it all up. And popped in Ys and the rest was gaming history.... An amazing soundtrack that blew my mind, visuals and characters that would burn into my mind for years to come are all the things that make me Obey to this day.
Topic: Happy OBEY Day (Read 932 times)
