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Achievement
Unlocked:
Paternal Bond
By Khye Lin Tan
Click. Beep, beep.
ScritchascritchascritchaSQUONK SQUONK SQUEAAAAK oof.
The startup sequence paused for half a second too long and I knew at once that a galactic error message was imminent. I’ d tried inserting the disk as it was, dusting it off, polishing it, even washing it, all to no avail. The console had declared its rejection. The game was over before it began.
“ Hey, Over the Hedge doesn’ t work any more,” I yelled, fishing the outstandingly scratched disk out of our battered PlayStation 2.
My father stuck his head into the room.“ Really? That’ s too bad, I liked that game. What about the others?”
“ Haven’ t tried yet, I’ ll let you know.”
We hadn’ t touched the PS2 in five, maybe six years, since the weekend my grandmother took a turn for the worse and my mother rushed down to KL- Kuala Lumpur, about 4 hours’ drive south from my home in Penang, Malaysia- to see her. In this time of much distress and pizza( neither my father nor I can cook to save our lives), my father decided that the best way to keep a twelve-year-old entertained was to have a gaming marathon. Cue button-bashing, joystick-waggling and intense frustration as we worked our way through all 27 levels of Up.
( Yes, Up, the video game based on the movie with the saddest love story montage in Disney-Pixar history. Spoiler alert: the levels with the crocodiles are the ones you have to be careful about.)
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Up wasn’ t our first movie-to-video game obsession; that honor went to Over the Hedge. If you thought the movie was bad, the game is even worse: a raccoon, a turtle, a squirrel and a skunk run around battling mind-