7. Take Sophie to see the woolly mammoth in Victoria

Ah, the Woolly Mammoth. This is one of those early childhood memories I have that is completely detached from any useful context. I had no idea where I was (the Royal British Columbia Museum), what city I was in (Victoria), why I was there (my parents, and maybe grandparents, took me there), or what exactly was going on (I'm still not sure of this) - all I remember is being face to face with a giant. Or to be more precise, a mammoth. The idea that there could be such a big creature made quite an impression on me. I remember being a little bit scared of it at first, but it quickly became my favourite part of the museum - and remains so to this day.

This is why it was such a treat to take my daughter to the museum and introduce her to the mammoth. She seemed to have a somewhat similar reaction to the one I remember. She was hesitant at first, and quietly said to me, "It's biiig." She didn't want to get too close, but was pretty captivated by it. She was pretty good about posing for pictures, as long as she could check on it every once in a while. I think she came to the conclusion that it was sleeping, although I tried telling her that it was stuffed.



And yes, it did seem a lot smaller to me as an adult than it did as a kid, but I really enjoyed seeing it loom hugely once more, through Sophie's eyes.

P.S. A very big (mammoth, even) thanks to Grandma and Grandpa for taking us all to the museum! A good time was had by all.

34. Beat a computer/video game made before 1990

For this 101 Things task, I chose one of my all-time favourite games, King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human. This was released in 1986, during the golden age of Sierra adventure games - all the great series, King's Quest, Space Quest, Hero's Quest... Ah, what a time to be young and geeky, and to own an Apple IIe/IIc...

I own the King's Quest series on CD, but it seems that 64-bit Windows Vista refuses to install and run the games. Boo, Windows. To get around this, I used AppleWin, an Apple IIe emulator for Windows. (Not only did I download King's Quest III, but I also found Adventureland, a purely text-based computer game - one of the very first I ever played! This'll probably be the subject of another post one day...)

Anyway, King's Quest III was a game I played back in the days before the Internet, when if you got stuck, you were stuck - unless you sent away for the hint book, which I may have had to resort to, I can't quite remember. But if I did succumb to the lure of the hint book, it wasn't until many months (years?) had passed with me trying to figure this game out. As such, many of the tricks and secrets to the game are burned indelibly into my brain. This made it a trip down memory lane, and a distinct pleasure, to play again.

I won't go through the whole plot of the story here, but it's your basic escape from slavery, defeat the dragon, rescue the princess type of deal. Here's me beating the dragon near the end of the game...



And here's the shot of the end of the game, with the adventurer's hat being passed on to one of the children...



You'll notice I only got 205 out of 210 points. I thought I did everything, so I had to go online and find which points I missed. Turns out I missed 5 points for "As a fly, enter hole in the tree." Darn. Now that I think about it, I vaguely remember doing that as a kid. Anyway, as it wasn't strictly necessary to beat the game, I'm okay with letting those 5 points slide.

This brought back so many fun memories that I think I'm going to look into playing a bunch of the other Sierra classics, through emulators if I must. They're just too fun to pass up!