I haven’t posted in a week since I went on holidays to Thailand. Phuket and Phi Phi Island, to be exact. This area was flattened by the tsunami of December 26th, 2004, with significant loss of life, but the tourist industry appears to have bounced right back.

Out in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere on Phi Phi Island, my significant other and I met a guy called “Yaa” who was running a fairly isolated little bar/restaurant at Loh Ba-Koa Bay called “Hippies”. We were the only customers. “Yaa” was a lot of fun .. he did some magic tricks, gave us a personal one-man fire show, and then challenged me to some video games. He had a weird console I’d never seen, a PikaGame by Primaworld, which appears to contain lots of (probably unlicensed) NES roms. “Yaa” obviously wanted to challenge me to his favorite game, which was a Japanese NES release, Battle City (It’s basically like the Tanks game in Wii Play, which in turn is heavily based on the originial Atari 2600 “Combat” game). As you can imagine, with my reflexes a little slow due to the cheap beer, and the fact that “Yaa” had all day to practice with no customers around in the rainy season, he whipped my butt. Still it was great fun and I’m really hoping one day we get a Virtual Console release of Battle City, so I can re-live my holiday gaming experience.