Retro Review: Maplestory

2007.

I’ve conditioned my body to wake up at 4:00am to play games before school. Do I need to do this? Yes. I have three younger siblings, all of whom want the computer. They don’t yet know how to maximize the secret extra time baked into the early morning, special time reserved for unscrupulous things and copying math homework to or from friends.

“Oh come on. You’re the oldest. You’ll get more time than anyone anyway.” Yeah, okay sounds like something a not-oldest sibling would say.

Somehow my grades have not started slipping yet. I’m your average high school freshperson.

I run downstairs, climb into a leather chair that wants to be put out of its misery, and hoist myself over a godless computer. My dad scrapped it together out of donated parts from his fellow library volunteers. As far as computers go, it is horror incarnate. There’s dust everywhere. The panels are falling off. The ports die and come back to life so often you’d think they were made by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. It is awesome.

“Can it run Crysis?” It would make Crysis’ dick shrivel into a cold raisin at the threat of even installing on it, forget running. I’m pretty sure it would randomly turn off at least once a day. But it was still dependable where it counted. It never failed me for Runescape, Neopets, talking to my friends on AIM, other necessities.

This would’ve been the year my parents started separating. Not like the last however many times. No, this was the…