Adventure Island Revisited

This is probably the first time I write a post asking my fellow bloggers for (technical) help.

Fractal00's latest post got me thinking. I'm not at all into modern day video games of any sort. My gaming identity ends with Namco's Galaga and Nintendo's Adventure Island, both of which my sisters and I used to play in the 80s on one of those old school Nintendo consoles. Of course there was also lots of Pacman, Super Mario Bros., and Tetris (and in the earlier years, Atari). But Galaga and Adventure Island were our favourites. In DC there is a pool hall called Georgetown Billiards that has an old vintage Galaga arcade machine. When I first discovered it, I went nuts. My friends and I used to go there quite often to play pool (which I also love), and I would change like $5 into quarters and just sit there for hours playing Galaga (OK, so sometimes it was $10). To be honest, there were even some days when I would be shopping or running errands around Georgetown alone, and would wander in there and just play for over an hour. Then a couple of years ago I was back in DC visiting friends and I found a dream-come-true in Urban Outfitters. Some company (don't know if it was actually Namco and Atari or some third party) had released a series of joysticks with built-in vintage games that you can just plug into your TV and play. I bought a Namco one that had Galaga, Ms. Pacman, and a car racing game, and an Atari one with a bunch of old Atari games.

Now, to show you just how out-of-date I am when it comes to these things, I have never once in my entire life touched a PlayStation or Xbox. Ever. I don't know why, but I just don't find the idea of modern games as fun as those old two-dimensional games. (Oh wait, there was brief period of my life when I used to play Street Fighter all the time at an arcade in Italy. But anyway...)

Two years ago I mentioned to Stallion that I used to love playing Adventure Island. Then one day he shows up with his laptop and the game downloaded for me to play. I was ecstatic! I hadn't played it since I was a kid, and it brought back so many memories. I started to remember where all the hidden eggs were, when something would shoot out at you from nowhere, where the hidden passageways were, etc. I remember asking him how he got it and he began explaining it to me, but I started to get lost so just decided to play on his computer instead. But now, after reading fractal00's latest post, it got me thinking about Adventure Island again. I would love to get it to play on my PowerBook. So here's where my request for help comes in.

I consider myself to be pretty technologically savvy. When I need to learn something new, I feel lost at first, but once I throw myself into it (with a bit of guidance at the beginning), I pick it up fine. So anyway, is there anyone out there who would like to take a bit of time to explain to me how I can go about downloading Adventure Island onto my Mac (preferably for free but we'll see)? I know I could just do a bit of research online myself and figure it out but in this instance I'm going to be lazy and hope that someone wants to help me out! Also, once I do download it, is it possible to get some sort of (simple!) joystick to plug into my PowerBook to play from? Am I sounding like a total idiot to those of you who know what you're doing?