This past weekend I unearthed the Atari 2600 to finally play the Immortal John Hancock-produced "Catacombs of Chaos". And it was chaotic, to say the least. The rooms you travel through and their contents are randomly generated (hence the "chaos", though the last room you came from seems to be remembered), so you don't know what to expect. To put it bluntly, the game is basic wandering filled with hope that what you need will appear. You could get lucky and stairs appear quickly to get you down to the treasure's level or it's just an exercise in tedium. At worst, the game gets you stuck between to rooms with only one exit. This happened to me twice-I exited a two direction room from the left and I landed in a cul-de-sac. I turned back and the last area I was in got reset into its own cul-de-sac. After going back and forth with no change, I had to reset the game and start over. Losing all your life sends you into a dark world where you wander in the void though the same room setups until stairs are found. After a while, I just flipped the power off.

I then got in some Pitfall 2 and H.E.R.O. until I had to shut it off for a bit. Later on I decided to play some Genesis Mini and I decided to play Phantasy Star IV. It's been probably a good decade since I played a classic style JRPG (Pier Solar was the last game of that style I played). I had a great time playing it! It was strangely zen getting into a rhythm of assigning tasks to my team. I made it to Tanoe and am now trying to make my way into the basement of a storage building to get this herb (?) to help at another town. Hahn keeps getting slapped to near death that forces me to go back to the surface after a while. I could do a save state but the thrill of collecting Meseta to get equipment prevents me from doing that. I almost have everyone who can wear it have titanium protection. After my session I looked up the manual so I can better plan the use of Techniques.