It was late 1996 at then newly installed Microprocessor and Digital Lab (MDL) at the 2nd floor of UIC Annex in Bonifacio. The room was half full. Earl and Cres were at the corner, fixing their malfunctioning device. Veda Joy and Lovella on the other corner fine tuning their project before showing it off to their teacher.
Suddenly a loud shriek of frustration caught everyone’s attention. Somebody was being crowded with curious onlookers. On an old yet functional color monitor the game of Dyna Blaster was on progress. The character hero in the game just got bumped by a quick piggy-faced antagonist, preventing the rescue of a princess. As the last remaining “life” of the hero starts to resume, a collective murmur alarms the player and he immediately presses the Esc key, thereby aborting the game.
Shortly after that disturbance, everybody seemed to go back to fixing, welding, wiring, and programming — the real business in the room — including the one being crowded. An instructor comes in. And with the sight he is seeing, these bunch of Computer Engineer-wannabes seem on track with their stuff, he thinks, and goes out.
Beneath the game faces of students immune to the smell of metallic soldering irons and burnt transistors are worn out brains wary about many things from miscalculated mechanical measurements and locally unavailable chips to simply losing much sleep and money for the devices to work. In the MDL, stress levels are high, and an immediate relief is needed, without the necessity to spend more. With spare 80386 computer used to test assembly language instructions programs available to every group, treating stress with a computer game is likely a welcome antidote for something caused by computers themselves.
Pac Man or Super Mario could easily share the spotlight with Dyna Blaster but the appeal of the latter is also contributed by its lack of hype and fame the other two has achieved over the years. On an individual level of getting rid of stress, the game provides a symbolic scenario. As the hero-miner digs for resources by laying bombs to destroy walls and uncover hidden keys, Batch97 tries to explore new things with such “MDL inventions” which could lead to bigger things.
That being said, there are also other reasons why this is the game of choice:
1. It is light. The whole program fits in one micro floppy disk and can easily run into an old, slow PC with very little virtual memory required. Other games require certain hardware add-ons and portability can be an issue.
2. It is simple. It does not take a lot of time to learn how the game is played. Arrow keys and the space bar basically control the arsenal of the hero character.
3. It is fun. Most importantly the game serves its purpose, to have fun and ease tensions. It easily creates excitement that, if uncontrolled, spawns pandemonium in the MDL that could lead to reprimands from the Dean of Engineering.
There were notable experts who easily reach advanced levels and finish the mission; and trying hards who can’t finish the mission even if they admitted to having dreamt about the game in their short sleeping privileges.
And as the fulfillment of a dream came as UIC Computer Engineering Class of 1997 did the graduation march at the grounds of Davao Convention and Exhibition Center, one tiny game managed to keep everyone his/her sanity at the time when he/she almost lost it.
