Space Cadet.

Space Cadet.

sounds familiar? go to your "Start" button, > All Programmes > Games > Pinball.
Yup~ that's the ever-present classic "3D"-pinball game that managed to stay in the package of Windows o/s, back from, as far as i know, Windows 3.1 up till Windows Xp today. Sometimes i wonder what the heck is it still doing there, I bet if not until now that i've mentioned, most of us actually have already long forgotten about its existence even.

here's the story:
So i came back from my aikido training, sat infront of my computer, didnt feel like bathing yet since it's such a cold weather, and i started to browse around my just-formatted pc. As it was just formatted, i dont have much stuff to browse, actually. i had even discovered that there's a MAGNIFIER in the "accesibility" directory!!!

Stunned by such a feature(although i'm still wondering wat the heck again is the need for such a magnifying function), i was tempted to explore and hoped to find even "greater discoveries" on the "Start" menu... then i came across this Space Cadet Pinball...and like pandora's box,memories start to flood my head all out of a sudden.

God, when was the last time u had played this game? i still remember my first time was when my dad had his first notebook and i was still a little kid maybe around primary school, my younger brother and i took turns to play the pathetic game in two player mode,and soon my baby sister was joining us, and we had to wait until dad has finished his work on the laptop. and can you imagine we had ourselves so indulged in that game? well that was our first exposure to pinball anyway.

I never got to understand how a pinball game works. honestly, i've grown to 23 this year and the only thing i know so much about pinball is only this: just flip the flippers and dont let the ball go down the "drain"--or whatever proper term you use to call the "hole down there". isnt it so? well the closest i've ever gotten to a real-life pinball machine is many years back when i was in highschool , i went for a trip to europe with my whole family. and since we always travel without too much of planning, we ended up arriving one late night in the streets of Belgium, as we went in a restaurant to feed our hungry stomachs, me and my brother saw some local kids playing an actual pinball machine, just beside our table. So we went over to watch how they actually played, Obviously we didnt speak Belgian, we just smiled when the 2 kids looked at us, but i guess iether we looked like some poor kids that needed sympathy or maybe they thought they'd just seen some asian monsters(crap, maybe they are just being friendly)...u know what happened? they offered us the rest of the game
and they hurried off.Weird huh? so there we were, actually standing infront of the pinball game machine---it's not that we havent seen the thing before, but try to understand that when we were young, my mother used to be very strict, and OFCOURSE, we've seen the pinball machine many times before in the genting-indoor themepark. BUT we were NEVER allowed to play, maybe because it looks like a gambling machine to mum and if we wanted to play,
we needed to ask mom for the tokens.we we didnt dare. BUT this time it was different~! we didnt have to pay for it!

So ,after the long anticipation, we pulled the trigger and launched the metal ball. and "POP" ,
less than one minute, the ball went down the drain.we didnt even get to flip the flippers for more than 4 times! and by then only we've discovered that THAT was the last ball. So much for all the anticipation, Super anti-climax huh~ yah , that was what we felt, and since that day, i realised that the real pinball game is not an easy game, and the only thing i've learnt until now, about pinballs ,is still,may i say again:just to try to keep the ball off the hole. ...:P and i've never laid my hands on another real-pinball machine ever since...

But we never stopped playing this Space Cadet through our childhood though.
and until 15minutes ago, when i've re-discovered it, i found myself stuck to it, and unbelievably, i had even turned on full-screen with background music too.you know, everyone should really try to play this crap game atleast once, after reading my blog. Trust me, it's sure to bring back some memories, i bet that may be one of the reasons Microsoft didnt kick it out of the Windows package. well, Atleast it brought back to me, some sweet memories.

Well, this might be a proof that i wasnt such a bright kid back then, and i didnt turn out to be a bright guy now iether, since , just like ol' times, i still cant figure out what i have just done when the display message in the game tells me that i've just "re-fueled" my space ship , i've just "upgraded my weapon", or i've just hit a "Reflex Shot Reward" and i had so much fun making up stupid explanations back then , to my younger brother and baby sis when they asked me what did those mean, i would say "Oh look, now i've refueled my ship, it's ready to go" and lucky they didnt ask me " go WHERE?" hahaha.

the best thing i remember is that i cant jerk the table too hard(incase you dont know, jerking is the key"X") or it'll jam my flippers. And sometimes i think the balls make me look like a complete idiot when they seem to have a life of their own bouncing around the top part of the whole map often as long as one whole minute, and all u have to do is watch and do nothing while wondering wat the heck all those messages mean anyway, then just when u least expected, it will fall one straight line into the hole.the gap, the drain. or watever you call it --the monster pit.Its not like theres anything u can do about it. u just sit and watch it go down/ hahah(sounds dirty).ofcourse, normally i'd be flipping my flippers anyways as the ball goes down ,atleast it feels better than not doing anything at all right?


I guess"Space Cadets" is one of the games that you never know wat you're doing and you can suddenly end up with 9 or 10 figured highscores.or you just end up with a super lo-score, you dont even get to type your name,and the game is over.I think its pretty much just like life itself. We may know how many balls are left in the chamber, but We'll never know when we're gonna have our last ball go down the drain, and we cant really control where the ball rolls when it's bouncing around up there.

so?my advice: do your best and enjoy everymoment of Life. cos you never know when it's Game-Over when your ball just drops straight into the gap and theres nothing you can do but stare.
and when the game's over, i think i want my name on the HISCORE. dont you?