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21-Foot-Tall Robot Baby To Defend People's Republic

One evening, you find yourself wandering the island, full of  a strange restless energy, too tired to concentrate but too wound up to relax.

Walking in twilight, studying the moving shadows within the Savage Garden, you catch sight of a spectre humming to himself, whispering an unearthly melody audible only underneath rustling leaves, only between drops of rain.

As you listen, you hear fragments of a story you will never be quite able to piece together.  Some of it comes in words, some of it appears in your mind as pictures - but each picture you grab ahold of takes you to another place entirely.  Nightfall brings you back from the land of the story just in the nick of time.  The ghost, you realize, is long gone.  

Even under the most life-threatening circumstances, this time traveler never breaks cover.  Learn from his example, agents.

Being an incredibly nerdy kid, I spent a lot of time in bookstores.  And being that I was a kid that lived way out in the sticks, the best the local mall had to offer at the time was a B. Dalton.  Do they still have those?  If I remember correctly, I was wandering amongst the shelves without any particular agenda, probably hunting around for anything by Piers Anthony or Madeleine L'Engle or maybe a guide on how to not get called a girl for wearing an oversized shirt in PE class.

This particular Dalton had a Software Etc. We had a Colecovision console at the house, but actual computer games were still a thing of mystery to me.  So I really didn't have much of an idea what to expect when I pulled a white and green box off of the shelf, with "The Learning Company" featured prominently on it, and a simple-looking premise involving an "Escape from Robotropolis."  It reminded me a little bit of Asimov, and it was dull and inoffensive-looking enough for my folks to cough up the cash for it. Once at home, boxy two-button joystick in hand, I loaded the 5 1/4" floppy into the disk drive and fired up the hardest game I would ever play, though I didn't realize it yet.

That game was Robot Odyssey.