A gamers' 6th sense

I saw this box with "Bare Knuckle III" in front, having a macho guy flexing his over packed muscles, a babe posing in a typical "hot" suit, a black youngster with rollerskates doing tricks in the air and a tall bald guy with mustache and robotic arms in the background. The back cover was Terminator 2 Arcade, you know, the lightgun game. The cart had both games on it so I picked it from the many.

And I lucked into Streets of Rage 3. And not just any kind of Streets of Rage 3, but the unbutchered Japanese edition which quickly became a multiplayer classic over here in place of SOR2, because it was way faster (remember, PAL versions) and had more variety and coop moves, and a freaking Kangaroo to play as who always turned up randomly as a total kickas hidden character.

This was before I knew the concept of "bootleg" or that Streets of Rage = Bare Knuckle (even though my SOR2 cart was a bootleg too - with European Streets of Rage 2 art, and Bare Knuckle II written on the top of the cart with small letters). Or that Victy (Roo in usa) was a total wuss, or how to pick the hidden characters or secret menus, and so on. Boy was I surprised when I played the USA version on an emulator ages later.

Aside from that, I got addicted to Disgaea based on character art only (well, that wasn't too hard) and got all of the soundtracks, art books and art cds, before I even had a chance to play the game.

Jam it back in, in the dark.