This is the second of a series of posts where I interview some of the people that are helping me testing Starminer.

Today things are going to be a bit different. The person I’m interviewing is a friend from my teen years, who prefers to not use their real name. They asked to be referred to as Bardalopius Maximus, and as so shall they be known henceforth.

The interview also took a bit of a different format, with a more conversational tone and reminiscing about our gaming experiences together, rather than direct replies to questions as it happened with others.

Here’s the interview:

Marco Lopes: Tell me about some games which you have fond memories of?

Bardalopius Maximus: Wait… did the intreview start already? (pauses) I remember playing Dynablaster with you, with inverted keys, invisible walls… in 50 game rounds. (laughs)

ML: I should probably explain this here for the people who don’t know what you’re talking about. There was this bug in Dynablaster where if you planted a bomb exactly 3 seconds before the round ended, the walls from the next round would be removed from the screen, but it was as if they were still there, in the sense that you couldn’t walk through those squares, so in the sense it was as if there were invisible walls. We used to go near the spawn point of the other towards the end of the round and plant bombs there, so that the other one would hit an invisible wall when trying to run from a spot where they had planted a bomb, and kill themselves. Fun.

BM: There was also that time you panicked while playing Duke Nukem 3D… (laughs) The lights went out, and you had tunnel vision and everything.

ML: That’s a mix of two memories, if I recall correctly. There was this time we were playing Duke Nukem 3D via local network, fighting a boss and I panicked. And there was a time you were playing Unreal, I was just watching, and you were at the end of this U shape room, and the lights started going out, and there was this ominous low noise, and you just froze looking at the screen.

BM: There was some race game that we were playing once, and we both finished in first place in our own local computers. We just put that game down and never touched it again.

ML: I don’t remember that one, but I remember us exchanging 4D Stunts tracks.

BM: It was common knowledge that after a long straight road there would be a huge up slope and an elbow turn. (laughs)

ML: Which game would you take to a desert island, and why?

BM: Minecraft because of its huge replayability and possibility for infinite creation… I don’t think I would ever get tired of it… Unlike with any other game…

Such ancient memories… Spectrum… Android One… getting to the end and going back. Used to play Chuckie Egg but not a lot. Grand Theft Auto which was called Lotus Turbo Esprit. There was this one game something like Starcitizen but for spectrum… I can’t recall the name. You’d travel through space, land on planets and trade goods. I remember how hard it was to land. The planets were these spheres delimited by 20 or 30 pixels, and the landing strips were some doted lines with about 10 pixels, left and right. You had to land in the middle.

ML: I think Lotus Turbo was another game. Grand Theft Auto was Race’n’Chase.

BM: I remember us playing Rollercage with Edi as well. You and him were fighting for the 1st place, kicking each other’s butts really hard. We could see the finish line and I was in 3rd place. Suddenly an explosion, you both get thrown to the sides, I pass you both and win. All of this in less than a second.