Just the way grues like it
It’s all about the computer games of the 90’s…
So I have this media studies class…I think I’ve mentioned it a few times…you know the class where the teacher called me out because she thought I was talking on the phone? Yeah that one.
Instead of having a final, we were to write papers on some type of media… I wrote mine on the legacy of the Zork adventure game series. Some of you fellow computer nerds may have heard of it. It’s one of the oldest game series in existence. Basically it’s about the history of the Great Underground Empire which is a magic land full of evil and all kinds of things like that. The game had evolved from a text adventure to a graphical one from 1976 to about 1998…
Anyway, The interesting thing about it is back around 1992, my father gave us the game Return to Zork. We were all big into adventure games back then and so we were pretty excited. Mostly my sister played and we watched…sometimes I would…but let me tell you all…this game had a profound effect on me because of something called a grue.
A grue was this monster you could encounter in the game. The danger about it was that it only came around when you were in complete darkness. So there is a part in the game where you have to stay in a hotel room. It’s supposed to be that you place a glowing rock on the nightstand before taking a nap, but us not knowing exactly how to play the game, we didn’t put that safety net there. So we were like…yeah, let’s take a nap…
And the screen went black…
And a phrase written in blood red text appears:
“Just the way grues like it…”
And a few seconds later, the most evil laugh fills the speakers
And this picture of a stain glass version of a grue appears
To my seven year old eyes, that thing looked like the scariest since I don’t even know
It gave me nightmares…
It made me have a nightlight for like a month,
I remember, I was scared to walk down the stairs by the computer room at night…I used always run from there to the kitchen…
My mother even banned me from playing any computer game that you could be killed on (which was like every game we had…we were pretty violent girls…)
It was a traumatic experience.
So while writing this paper the other day, I wanted to play the Zork games I had just for old times sake…
It was pretty late at night or early depending on how you look at it…
And I was kind of tired…
But stupidly, I wanted to look at the grue and find other pictures on the internet…
Found this one (go look really fast and come back)
Why did I get freaked out again?
Why I did turn on all the lights in the apartment?
Why did I wait until sunrise to go to sleep?
Those childhood experiences last throughout life. Let me tell you.
But I think in general, things that look unnatural bother me. Like those eyes look kind of human, but they’re too close together and too tilted….
I have the same issues with fish floating around the room and cars that talk…
i kind of like the blink effect i added though…since I spent a little while looking at them bastages I think I might be a little desensitized now. Maybe one day I’ll make them look around too…
