I just nailed the cheat on that–“Fast Animation”–you have to beat the level on Secret Agent difficulty in 3:15. Did you ever pull this one off? You have to strafe all the way through the level blindly siding your way into things and then all the way back after getting it down to a fucking split second so that neither Valentin nor Trevelyan keep you waiting too long with their blather. And then the goddamn flight recorder’s randomly placed at the end, I had remembered that. You start to memorize how close you are to getting it by lining up the dialogue with the music cues. I knew it was hard but I don’t remember trying it 50 times back in 1998 like I did this time.

This doesn’t bode too well for the game’s other super-hard challenges (the Facility, Archives, Depot and Train cheats; the Aztec Temple level on 00 Agent difficulty). I may have been an immature little twerp in a Led Zeppelin T-shirt back then but I would have been up for it. Now at age 42 I felt like, who gives a fuck, and almost gave up. Ffffffffuuuuuuu!!!!!!!!

I’d also like to have all this shit over with by the end of 2024; when I was first playing the game, I probably played it nonstop for upwards of 18 months.