Renting games as a kid was frequently the only way I could play many new games.
The competition involved in acquiring the game I was after.
That was the case with not-quite-Zelda-clone-but-it-is-basically Story of Thor on the Mega Drive.
My local Blockbuster (remember those?
Oh) had two copies.
On the one hand, that meant that the game would have superior graphics and other bits and pieces.
The challenge didn’t end there though.
The game was one of those ‘fancy’ games that enabled you to store your progress on the cartridge.
Of course, remember there were two copies?
But hey, I was a kid who clearly could only solve in-game puzzles, not real ones.
So, I replayed the start of Story of Thor.
Having played it again recently, I think I actually prefer the early stages compared to later on anyway.
Initially, Story of Thor seems very Zelda-esque.
You play a hero called Ali who conveniently washes up on strange shores in a veryLink’s Awakening-like turn.
Very early on, you have to defeat a huge scorpion-throw in beast in a fairly squashed dungeon room.
There’s a knack, of course.
There’s always a knack with these things, but it took me a while to figure out.
From there, you unlock a water spirit that proves invaluable throughout the game.
Not that I’d see much more of the game very often.
There was always that sense that I never quite got to the meat of the game though.
That was the trend with Story of Thor.
I was a fairly active kid and also wasn’t very good at action RPGs.
And that’s even before someone wiped out my save file the following week.
So, I worked on perfecting the areas I participated in before.
I sought out every piece of meat in the game.
I also worked on defeating each enemy in some kind of flawless fashion.
Instead, I’d run out of time and the game would go back.
The time loop would continue once more, maybe the following weekend or maybe a bit later.
I’d never finish the game.
It’s far easier than I remember now and probably not as good.
Still, it’s the fondest memory I have of renting games in Blockbuster during that era.
Probably slowly fading the cover of the game.
It wasn’t there.
If I had been, I bet it wouldn’t have had my save file on it.
