Game Night: Turok 2 Edition

Another Wednesday has come and gone, and that means we've blown through another Game Night... though that's hardly what you could call it. Barry is still without an Xbox, Chuck was out in the bustling metropolis that is Santa Fe, TX for work, and Josh was out of town for work as well. So, that pretty much left game night in my capable hands. I managed to play some more Mass Effect 2. I'm over 35 hours now, and I'm wondering how I got there. It's one of those games where you just kind of lose track of time.

Since we didn't have an actual Game Night, I thought I'd just take a trip in the way-back machine. I listened to the latest episode of IGN's Nintendo Voice Chat Podcast this afternoon. They spent much of the podcast talking about the days of the Nintendo 64. One game that is near and dear to my heart came up: Turok 2.


Many hours were wasted on Friday and Saturday nights playing this amazing piece of 4-player hotness. I never even finished the single player mode. This game was relegated to heave multiplayer action... in a time when split-screen was king.

Typically my buddies and I would gather at my friend Keith's house. Mostly because his parents didn't care how loud we got, how late we stayed up, or what we did. We were actually pretty good kids. The most trouble we got in was getting the occasional evil eye from the security guard at the local Kroger on one of our late night junk food runs. Speaking of which, Planter's PB Crisps and Promised Land Chocolate Milk are a deadly combination. Not just for the consumer, but for all those in the vicinity.

Our multiplayer mode of choice was Frag Tag. This made one player a small monkey. Points were scored by killing the primate, though I doubt we ever really focused on that specifically. If you were the monkey you were pretty defenseless, but you were FAST and could jump really far and really high. This often resulted in a hilarious flying, screaming monkey shooting across your screen in the heat of battle. The monkey's goal was to walk through a glowing area on the map which handed your predicament to one of your opponents and changed you back into a combatant. We often played on a map that had a sort of pit in the middle of the map. This was not a friendly place for the monkey to be. If somehow our little furry friend ended up in the pit, there were scream of "MONKEY'S IN THE PIT" followed by a barrage of grenades. So. Fucking. Fun.

The fact that this game was split-screen also heated things up a bit. If you say you never screen watched, then you're either a fool or a liar. Especially when this bad boy broke out:

That there is the Cerebral motherfucking Bore. There was nothing more terrifying than seeing that reticule pop up in a neighboring screen. It was very distinct, as was the sound the bore made when fired.

TAKE THAT DINOSAUR!

Even if you were trying to not watch other peoples' screens, that reticule drew everybody's attention to that corner of the television to make sure they weren't about to be on the receiving end of a brain splattering skull drilling. Getting hit was, obviously, a one shot kill. It was awesome!

This game more would pretty much continue until the sun started to come up. We rarely switched it up because that monkey was just so damn hilarious and it added something to game that most others didn't have. Insults would be tossed, trash would be talked, frozen lasagna would be consumed, and good times would always be had by all.

So, that was a little taste of my old game nights. Hopefully we can get back to actual game nights soon. I guess it depends on how long Mass Effect 2 keeps us all occupied. In the mean time, I have plenty of other games to cover from back in the day. Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey anyone?