It was my 10th birthday, and among the gifts on that table was something truly out of this world…
Any guesses? No?
That year, I received what was arguably the coolest, most futuristic thing I had ever laid my hands on: the Space Chaser electromechanical tabletop game, made by Toy Town.
To anyone born after 1995, it probably looks like a clunky plastic relic from the Stone Age of gaming. But to me, back then? It was nothing short of a NASA-grade space simulator.
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| Pic: YouTube |
The game had a bright, colourful galactic battlefield printed right on its surface, complete with space fighters, laser blasts, and planet Earth looking dangerously vulnerable in the background. There was a big red dial in the middle, which I was convinced was some kind of highly classified navigation system. You twisted it to move your crosshairs, lined it up with the blinking enemy, and then BOOM! -- if you timed it right, you'd hear that glorious “peeeeeet” sound that meant you just saved humanity again.
The graphics? Non-existent by today’s standards -- it was just blinking lights pretending to be spaceships. But back then, with a bit of imagination, it felt like you were dogfighting in deep space, dodging alien lasers, and outsmarting evil empires. George Lucas would've been proud.
I played it until the batteries ran out (which, sadly, was often), and I learned that D-size batteries cost a fortune and always mysteriously disappeared into the back of the family radio.
Eventually, as all childhood toys do, it disappeared into the abyss, maybe forgotten at the bottom of a gerobok, or maybe it just flew off on its final mission to save another galaxy. But the memories stuck.
These days, when I see kids with tablets and VR headsets, I smile and think, “You’ve never known the pure joy of chasing blinking dots across a plastic galaxy with a red dial and your imagination.”
And that, my peeps, was the day I became a space hero. At least in my head.
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