A couple of years ago I was a poor college student. One fateful afternoon, I was uploading a paper to one of my professor's dropboxes when I noticed my computer being slow as crap. It took forever uploading a small file, and then everything just stopped working altogether. So I did what I would normally do in case of a freeze, and i rebooted that sucker. Now, instead of being greeted by the friendly neighborhood "starting Windows" screen, there was a brief flicker of something bright followed by a looping pattern of rebooting and said bright flashing screen. After some finagling, I got it to stop rebooting, and turns out the flash I kept missing was one of these beauties:
Considering I had very little money at the time, I had to budget a way to fix my computer using less than $150 that was in my bank account at the time. I was weary of buying things online at the time and none of the stores in my town sold internal hard drives, so I did the best I could and sunk about $90 of those dollars into an external hard drive, because, as it turns out, the BSOD was caused by hard drive failure and there was no way to recover any of my stuff without some other drive to put them on, let alone some other drive to re-install Windows on.
Because I wasn't going to have the money to buy Windows for awhile, and I couldn't install it on an external drive anyway, I was left with an unexpected alternative. In a tutorial for migrating files, I read about making a USB with the Ubuntu OS installed on it. As I did that, it wasn't the same as my familiar desktop, but it was still comforting to see my computer "alive" once again. Unfortunately, I was unable to save too much of my data before the drive went completely kaput.
Now, what does this have to do with Gundam? Well, I ended up moving the grand total of 20 Megabytes of salvagable data (it still hurts) to the same USB and ended up installing Ubuntu on my external drive. Turns out you can totally do that with Linux. Upon trying to fill the void left by my 500 GB of lost data, I began searching the Webs for Linux-compatible games. As it turned out, there's a lot of crap Linux can't do because of its lack of support from certain companies and communities. It's nice for something you get free, but the gaming compatibility department is sadly lacking. I discovered amongst the games I actually COULD play was a little game known as Gundam Capsule Fighter.
Because I wasn't going to have the money to buy Windows for awhile, and I couldn't install it on an external drive anyway, I was left with an unexpected alternative. In a tutorial for migrating files, I read about making a USB with the Ubuntu OS installed on it. As I did that, it wasn't the same as my familiar desktop, but it was still comforting to see my computer "alive" once again. Unfortunately, I was unable to save too much of my data before the drive went completely kaput.
Now, what does this have to do with Gundam? Well, I ended up moving the grand total of 20 Megabytes of salvagable data (it still hurts) to the same USB and ended up installing Ubuntu on my external drive. Turns out you can totally do that with Linux. Upon trying to fill the void left by my 500 GB of lost data, I began searching the Webs for Linux-compatible games. As it turned out, there's a lot of crap Linux can't do because of its lack of support from certain companies and communities. It's nice for something you get free, but the gaming compatibility department is sadly lacking. I discovered amongst the games I actually COULD play was a little game known as Gundam Capsule Fighter.
Holy crap, look at this game! I was blown away at how it looked and played. I blew away hours of my young adult life on this game. And to think, all it took me to discover it was a horrible accident that cost me 2 years of un-backed up data. If only the Universe didn't hate me so much.
This game was pretty cathartic for my situation, but it also piqued my curiosity for more Gundam games. Upon which, I discovered the amazing world of Japanese arcades. Behold:
This game was pretty cathartic for my situation, but it also piqued my curiosity for more Gundam games. Upon which, I discovered the amazing world of Japanese arcades. Behold:
Sheez, now that I have more money, I should buy one of these!
*Checks Ebay*
Nope, still not enough money. But at least I can afford Windows now. :')
*Checks Ebay*
Nope, still not enough money. But at least I can afford Windows now. :')