Snow and Nostalgia

We finally got some decent snow in Dundee yesterday, some time after most of the rest of the isles had been covered. I thought we would escape it being sheltered by the Sidlaws on one side and the sea on the other.

Molly, my Black Labrador loves the snow. I'm not so keen myself. Seeing all the kids with their sledges brought back memories of my first snow. I have been living in Scotland for just over 10 years now (Since I was twelve) and I can still remember it quite clearly. The huge expanses of white, the sledging down the slope near the house which terminated on a busy road and even trying to build up enough momentum to actually fly straight down the slope and across the road...
I wonder if I asked to have a shot on one of the kids' sledges if it would bring back the fun and magic. Well I couldn't bring myself to, the closest I came was slipping while walking Molly and sliding down the hill one my ass (with several kids laughing at me - well it was funny.) After the walk I decided to grab the camera and take a couple of photos. Unfortunately the batteries died but there's a couple of good ones:


I could not bring myself to ask for a shot because yesterday while dozens of kids invaded the park, I was having a lazy afternoon and feeling nostalgic. I was thinking of the friends I used to go sledging with and how we used to also play video games. There was one in particular we played on my friend's PC. All I could remember however was a Clown with a van, A character on some sort of mono wheel called Axel and that you went round with your vehicles shooting each other down.Great fun.

So I spent a good bit of yesterday tracking the game down with google and keywords: clown, van, Axel, mono wheel. It took a fair while and I always liked to think I could fine anything with google and the vaguest keywords.
I finally tracked it down on wikipedia's list of Evil Clowns. Turns out that the Clown was called Sweet Tooth and he actually drove an Ice Cream Truck (American of course). The game of course is Twisted Metal and the PC version was Twisted Metal 2 and Axel actually had a "Two-wheeled contraption".

I spend the rest of the evening trying to download a copy of the game, even wading through sponsored type download sites, resorting to torrents and finally even contemplating getting a PSone and the game as the PC version is nearly impossible to find. Finally I stumble across Squakenet.com which directs me to AbandonWare Utopia.com. The site is in french but that's no problem, just another chance to practise my french! A clean download and ten minutes later I'm playing the game inside my XP virtual machine on my Ubuntu rig, no emulator needed.

And here it begins to go wrong, the magic, exhilaration and fun I remember was not there. I play one level as Axel and quit the game.
That was the reason I did not want to have a shot at sledging, just in case the magic was not there. I wanted to preserve the memory.
No, I begin to question that thought, surely this would not apply to all my memories. Are all these things better as a memory and will you always be disappointed when you re-experience them. Surely not!
Well there's only one way to find out, I not missing the next chance I get to sledging.
And I saved Twisted Metal 2 to my USB Portable Drive to play whenever I get a chance and downloaded Golden Axe, and maybe later Streets of Rage...