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A Bit of Clearing Out II

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A Bit of Clearing Out II

Parents were rummaging through my room for some stuff they stored away long ago which meant I had to move everything out despite tidying up since the last clear out. So, I decided to see what else I could clear out once again.

In the end I found a mix of other bits and pieces like ten year old school jotters as well as more magazines stowed away. This particular issue was a little bit more special though and I remember being quite surprised when I was flipping through it at the newsagents...

What's so special about this?

About seven years ago I decided to write to a computer magazine named "PC Answers" over here. I bought magazines at the time to learn various bits of tricks with computers but, I found their articles were a bit lacking and often repeated the same content so I wrote a letter to them (Yes letter, no emails).

It ended up being chosen as the Star Letter and I received a copy of the WordPerfect Suite which is packaged inside a box more than double the size of all the old games.

Reading back, I sounded pretty harsh. At least I was giving constructive criticism instead of what trolls would usually post on message boards like, "This sucks!"

Will be keeping this of course.

The Star Letter

Probably spent well over £300 on all these computing and gaming magazines including the last bunch I threw out. Using the internet was expensive back then and I remember getting into some serious trouble for running up huge phone bills at the time. Magazines provided the know-how not taught in class.

These days, it's much more convenient with cheap broadband internet but that doesn't mean abandoning these or books completely. Devil Survivor was just reminding players how there's actually a lot of misinformation on the internet and it's true.

There were many times such as when articles on the popular Wikipedia was edited to benefit a certain party and ended up being exposed. With books, the content has to be approved first before publishing so you have some guarantee as to how genuine the text is. With magazines, it means one doesn't have to go trawling the web to look for content.

More old mags.

Whole bunch of old school jotters that date back to as far as my first year of high school. We were made to cover our jotters with whatever we could besides newspapers because the teachers were getting fed up of students replacing messed up jotters and graffiti being put on the covers. This way, they could just change the cover when it got too messed up. Thus you see why I used some travel brochures back then.

Forgotten all my high school French now. The other language offered was Italian but I never got a chance to pick which language.

My handwriting's changed quite a bit since then. Tinier and messier now!

Handwriting's changed now.

And er, came across some stationary my aunt used to send my brothers and I. As you can see, I never ended up using them.

Also had a number of certificates I earned from taking part in various activities.

Oh no! It's pink!

More gifts from aunts. Pretty cool models at the time costing HK$20 each.

Wooden car models.

Press out the pieces and assemble them together with the included mini stick of PVC glue. I assembled one of them but don't know where the model went. Think it broke!

Takes patience to glue together.

And more giant boxed games I bought by saving up pocket money during the early years of high school. Not exactly sure what I'm going to do with these. They obviously take up quite a bit of space.

Shogo!

These were as close to "JRPGs" I could get with no console at home. Of course, these were made by Western developers.

Not really JRPGs but... Close enough.

Shogo had some cool looking mechas...

The mecha of Shogo.

But most of the character art were very ugly.

The Shogo cast.

Remember I spent a while trying to find the theme song. Didn't know Japanese at the time so I had no idea what she was singing. Just found the tune catchy!

Got this headset from the Easy internet cafe which I used to visit a lot with my friends to use the broadband connections there and download stuff. It was £1 per hour I think and people were given these headsets for free.

Free headset.

Unfortunately they're not USB headsets and the sound quality is poor.

  • Power Handling Capacity: 100mW
  • Impedance: 32 Ohms
  • Sensitivity: 104 dB/mW
  • Frequency Response: 20 - 20,000Hz

It's a very noisy headset. A lot of fuzzy background sounds can be heard. The sound isn't particularly great either when listening to music but it was free! Doesn't matter, now that I have a pair of Sony MDR-V300.

The specs.

Well, got a bit more room to fill up with new junk now!

Why not take a break?

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#1

Xcomp Author


I've seen these places around in town and it's not a bad idea... Not so sure about renting space but, thanks for the suggestion.

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#2

BigYellow


How exciting! I love stumbling upon old stuff I had almost forgotten I had - like my school books and the poems I used to write thinking I could outdo Milton, but reading back they are really, really bad. oh well... :-) I do feel for you though because my parents have ALWAYS used my bedroom as a glorified storage room and it annoyed me to no end. Since I now work at Big Yellow Storage, it gave me the idea one day while they were away to clear out all their junk and put it in storage!! Now I have my bedroom back, and if they want something they can go to the storage unit and get it. Very convenient all around :-) So if that gave you an idea, check us out: bigyellow.co.uk
Steph

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#3

Cubed2D


It still plays well too! managed to find it again second had a few months back at a local independant game shop for £2. bargin. im not much of a halo fan either, next gen Oni? yes please.

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#4

Xcomp Author


@Cubed2D
Yes, I played it. Oni was another game I tried to get a hold of but never did. It was a fun game though with better Anime art and, I just realised it's from the same developers as Halo! Not that I'm a fan of the series...

@Maaya
They still do come with discs but of course, most people have broadband internet now. Still got some more cover discs to throw out just now ^^;

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#5

Maaya


I remember those huge box set games =)I remember my mom buying me my first computer in late 90s and there was a whole shelf of those huge boxes in the store! I was so curious what they were, with their anime artwork and huge kanji titles! I hope the story compensated for the not so nice artwork of the games @_@!

Good ol' gaming magazines, I remember early 2000s they'd come with dvd previews of games to come.. or add ons to existing games e.g. alternate costumes

Precut wooden small models is pretty cool!! It's balsa wood, I think. The texture is kind of like foam board right? They're so much fun =D!

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#6

Cubed2D


thats cool! i wrote in to a magazine once or twice but never got published.

i never did get round to playing Shogo, but have heard good things. Did you play Oni? its another anime inspired game i have fond memorys of.

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