I resurrected an old friend today. It's been many years--probably 4 years--since we last interacted. His name is Jezzball.

It's only by odd coincidence that I rediscovered this game. When I first got my computer in 1996, Jezzball was part of the Entertainment Pack. However, when I reformatted my computer, I lost all the games. A friend of mine had it and so she copied it for me. A few days ago, I was looking for a floppy disk because I've been using someone's old laptop. It doesn't have a USB port so I'm stuck transferring files through floppy, which is fine because I'm only dealing with small files. Pulling out my cache of ancient floppy disks, I found the disk.

It immediately brought back many memories. I used to play Jezzball all the time. When I was on the phone, when I needed a break from schoolwork, or just when I didn't want to think about anything in particular, Jezzball was always there for me. I used to be pretty good at it. I think my record, those not extremely impressive, was level 13 or 14. Watching the little balls bouncing across the screen, was mesmerizing. As they changed colours from red to white and back in total synchronization, I could stare at the screen for hours and not realize it. It was just one of those little addictive games whose attraction defies logic.

Apparently, I'm not the only fan. There are scores of knock-offs and websites created by aficionados around the world. Searching online, I've discovered there are people who have made it to level 49. (I tried level 49 using a cheat I found on the internet and it is impossible!). I will admit I'm nowhere near their level of dedication, but I do thoroughly enjoy the game--perhaps already too much.

And all this just as I'm barely recovering from a bout of heavy CivIII gaming. I can't even escape Jezzball going to the lab I work in: There, they have kbounce, its Linux cousin. Uh oh, it's going to be a long couple of weeks coming up. Addiction sucks.