Tag me if you can!! Hahaha! It was very random when a friend suddenly said "Let's play laser tag!!". There was only four of us at home that day, and so we all agreed. Laser tag is a new "in" thing in Kuching - having the first ever located in CityOne Megamall called Laser Raiders. 

Laser Raiders feature a 5,000 sq. ft. multilevel arena, and from what I can see, is a successful attempt to introduce a new, fun, and (somewhat) healthy indoor activity to Kuchinglites and visitors alike. According to the info, Laser Raiders Kuching has the best and largest in East Malaysia!! WOW! (then again, it is the only one so far, so yes, they can claim this title until...)

The game in itself in intense - added with special fog and glow effects, laser lighting and dark arena, each game, or mission, lasts roughly 10 minutes depending on the game, or mission type. And apparently, there are plenty to choose from ranging from beginner  to expert, for example basic individual shoot-and-tag with unlimited ammo and life, to Partners, Gladiator, Fugitive, and even Capture the Flag. Great platform for team-building activities. 

Being beginners, we tried the individual shoot-and-tag mission. Since there were only four of us, we were grouped together with about 6 more people to make it a party of 10. A note : it was a bad idea to wear a light-colored long sleeve - I was so easy to spot I ended up being last in the scoreboard. (well that, and I have bad aim AND practically blind in the dark). Still, it was a fun session!

Lemme show you some parts of the arena : (photo's from Groupon) 

I haven't given up totally on the kids of today's generation - nose so deep with their technologies, their iPads and Samsungs, their Facebook and Instagrams, online gaming and such. When I was a kid my mom would practically kick me out of the house to play outside when we wanted to play games on our Nintendo 64 back then. But when I showed my 6 y/o grandson (urghhh.. I feel old) this game I played when I was a kid, he fell in love, dropped his Nintendo DS and entertained himself for a good half an hour trying to pass the levels. 

To the generation that is mine, kids of the 80's, I present you, a blast from the past : FULL SCREEN MARIO! It is THE game on Nintendo 64 back then -  a must have entertainment especially for rainy days (of course we MUST finish our homework and earn a few hour on it. Remember back then? No save points, no memory cards, not even a feature to select the stage! we have to play it from the beginning every single time, yet was never bored by it!

It is what it is, folks, I sh*t you not. A full remake of Super Mario Bros. from Nintendo 65 using HTML5. It's the fifth version of HTML (that's HyperText Markup Language) and provides better multimedia support for browsers on any platform. The aim is to improve the sHTML standard so that it can service more range of multimedia input and output (not only pictures, videos and audios but also animation and interactive media) while maintaining human readability and consistently understood by computers and devices.

I suspect that Full Screen Mario is built to demonstrate the capabilities of HTML5 in handling multimedia support - but regardless of the purpose, it is just simple amazing that someone put up a huge effort in developing it for the web, and best of all, free of charge! You can also choose to donate - say a thank you for their effort. Kudos to the developers!

For those who wanted to reminisce on their childhood memory, or even try to persuade your own kid to play the game you played as a child, give it a go at www.fullscreenmario.com. The game can be played on any browser, does not require any installation and there is no ads or malicious software (think of it as just surfing a site that is interactive). It is possible to play it on your mobile devices given you have a keyboard, but I haven't tested it out yet. If it works, do let me know. If it doesn't, well let me know anyways! Ahahaha!

**P/s : not all kids can appreciate the 8-bit pixelated graphics that is Super Mario. It takes a special breed. My nephews of 10 and 12 both commented "It's like they're not even trying back then."  ~.~"