The Burnzo Diaries

Saturday, August 3, 2024

My Childhood Obsession with Rambo

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When I was a kid, I rarely watched any “Kids movies” unless they were on the Disney Channel, which was the only paid “movie station” my family ever had when I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s. No HBO. No Cinemax. No Showtime. No “Movie Channel,” either. Remember The Movie Channel? Whatever happened to The Movie Channel and also why did they not come up with a more creative name for that channel? Oh woops, just looked it up and The Movie Channel still exists. Boy, I’m off to a great start here, aren’t I? Maybe next time I should do a little research before I start writing an article like this. Of course, I could always edit out the fact that I didn’t know The Movie Channel still existed, but then I would also have to edit out the fact that I just said I would edit out that I didn’t know the Movie Channel still existed. I might as well cut my losses, quietly move on with this article and pretend the last few sentences never happened.

So … uh … anyway … when I went to the local video store as a child—Video Paradise was its name—I don’t remember ever renting one single Disney movie or any Family movie for that matter. In fact, I never knew where the Kids and Family section even was until many years later. Video Paradise was actually two floors and the Family section was in the creepy basement that had the buzzing fluorescent lights. Why put the Family section in the basement? Seems like an odd choice, but that’s where it was. Granted, the basement was a bright basement, certainly not dark, but it creeped me out nevertheless, mainly because it was quiet and deserted down there. You know, it was one of those basements that got you nervous in your belly and would even make you have to run to the bathroom. There is something about being alone in a deserted section of a building with buzzing fluorescent lights; for some reason, it makes you have to go to the bathroom. Same thing happens in the “stacks” section of libraries that are quiet and deserted with buzzing fluorescent lights. Talk about a natural laxative, folks. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. Oh, stop playing dumb with me.

Where was I, though? I’m sort of rambling here. Sorry.

I guess what I was trying to communicate is that, no, I never rented any Kids or Family movies from the local Video Paradise video store. Whenever I went there to rent movies, usually with my dad, we would automatically go to one section of the video store and one section only:

The ‘Action’ section.

In fact, for a long time, I don’t think I even realized there were other kinds of movies out there, like comedies or horror films. I thought all movies were Action by default since those were all I was exposed to as a child. I was maybe about four or five years old at this time and, despite my young age, there was no type of action film that was deemed by my parents (or at least by my dad) to be too violent for me. Whether it be Arnold Schwarzenegger movies (Commando comes to mind as a frequent rental of ours), Jean-Claude Van Damme movies (Double Impact was a favorite), Chuck Norris movies (Delta Force made multiple appearances in our VCR), Steven Seagal movies (Marked for Death and Under Siege were the best of his movies, in my opinion), Sylvester Stallone movies (Cobra was a go-to rental of ours)—no action film was off the table.

There was, however, an issue if there was sex in the movie and especially nudity. Violence? Totally fine. But sex and nudity? Well, that was when I would have to close my eyes and my dad would fast-forward through the sex scene, which was usually brief and usually towards the end of the second Act of the film, maybe around the 60-70-minute mark. This was, of course, if my dad hadn’t screened the movie ahead of time. Oftentimes, he would have already determined that a movie had too much sex in it for me to watch. But sometimes he would be caught off guard and have to do the fast-forward trick.

One action film that we rented frequently, mainly because there was plenty of great action and no sex whatsoever (there is only one brief and tasteful kissing scene in it) was the movie First Blood: Part 2, aka Rambo 2, starring, of course, Sylvester Stallone as Rambo. I was too young at the time to understand the backstory of John Rambo, how he was this elite, Congressional-Medal-of-Honor-winning, ex-Green Beret haunted by PTSD from his time doing special forces missions in Nam. All I knew was that Rambo was jacked—and I mean really ripped, especially in First Blood: Part 2—looked so badass, and the film had some great action in it, including tons of machine guns and, even better, fireball-like explosions.

First Blood: Part 2 movie poster

Now, I should note that I never saw the first Rambo, i.e. First Blood, until several years later when I saw it on TV and was somewhat turned off because it was more of a drama—a psychological film about Vietnam veteran PTSD—than it was an action film, although there was still plenty of action in it. Today, however, I have great respect for First Blood. I think it’s probably the best film in the Rambo franchise, not in terms of action, but in terms of story. In the movie, Rambo is an ex-Vietnam-vet-turned drifter who finds himself in a small town in Washington State, searching for an old friend of his from the war. He learns, however, that his friend has died from cancer due to being exposed to Agent Orange. As Rambo continues to drift through town in a state of despondency, a cop thinks Rambo is nothing but a filthy drifter and he starts harassing him. Rambo gets upset. The cop subsequently arrests him. Then, the cops in the town jail beat on Rambo, this aggression triggers Rambo to have PTSD-type flashbacks and he essentially thinks he is back fighting in a war again … only now the enemy is the cops, not the Viet Cong. Action ensues …

I especially like the scene at the end of the movie where Rambo basically has a psychological meltdown and tells Colonel Trautman of all the horror he witnessed during his time in Vietnam. Most of what comes out of Rambo’s mouth are mere fragments of incohesive sentences, something about his fellow Green Beret buddy being blown to pieces. It’s hard to understand exactly what Rambo witnessed, but we get the general idea and it sounds horrible.

Rambo's nervous breakdown scene in First Blood

So, yes, today I give many a kudos to First Blood.

As a child, however, I was all about First Blood: Part 2.

This movie opens with Rambo in a prison work camp hammering away at rocks in a quarry. Colonel Trautman pays him a visit and asks if Rambo would be interested in doing a covert mission for the United States military, possibly in exchange for a presidential pardon of Rambo’s remaining prison sentence. The mission is to see if any American POWs are still being held in a Vietnam prison camp that Rambo himself had once escaped from during the war. Rambo agrees to the mission, not necessarily because he’ll get a pardon from his prison sentence, but mostly because he’s interested in saving POWs. Although he’s only supposed to take pictures of the POWs in these camps and not engage with the enemy, Rambo has every intention of saving the POWs if/when he finds them. As it turns out, POWs ARE found in the camp, Rambo tries to help them, he is spotted by the enemy, plenty of action ensues …

I don’t remember how many times we rented First Blood: Part 2 at the Video Paradise video store, but I do know that, at some point, I managed to tape the movie off of TV via our new and trusty Mitsubishi-brand VCR and this meant the movie was effectively mine to own and I could therefore watch it at any time. Actually, now that I think of it, I believe what happened is we had free Showtime or HBO for a weekend, First Blood: Part Two was on and, boom, I popped a VHS tape into my VCR and hit ‘record’. Remember how they used to do those free promotional weekends of HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Movie Channel etc.? Sometimes you would have all four of the movie channels free or maybe even five, including Disney, but my family of course already paid to have the Disney channel. You felt like you hit the jackpot whenever you stumbled upon this promotion. You would be flipping through the channels and then, all of a sudden, you realized you had HBO … and then Showtime … and then Cinemax … and, yes, The Movie Channel! … and you would then procure as many blank VHS tapes as possible and get ready to record movie after movie … after movie …

Anyway, yes, I had First Blood: Part 2 recorded on a VHS tape in its entirety—even sans commercials—and I watched this movie obsessively. And I mean obsessively. Now that I reflect upon it, I guess I have an obsessive personality, because I tend to get obsessive about many things. For example, in the year 2006, I became obsessed with the album “Appetite for Destruction” by Guns N’ Roses (you can actually read about this obsession in my book Jungle F’ng Fever: My 30-Year Love Affair with Guns N’ Roses). Also, in late middle school and high school, I became obsessive about the Beastie Boys and bought every Beastie Boys T-shirt I could find (read about my Beastie Boys obsession in my book My Raging Case of Beastie Fever). Same thing happened with the band The Misfits during the summer between my senior year of high school and freshman year of college (read about this obsession in my Kindle single book I Turned into a Misfit!). I also tend to get obsessive about songs; if I like a particular song, I will listen to it over and over again, basically on a loop. There have been other times when I have become obsessive about collecting cassette tapes. Or DVDs. I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that I apparently had this obsessive personality, pretty much since I was a child, because watching First Blood: Part 2 literally became an obsession of mine.

In fact, I remember, sometime in the late-1980s, my sister went off to camp in New Hampshire for the summer and when she came back, she found me on the couch in our finished basement downstairs, watching First Blood: Part 2. I specifically remember her saying, “I see that not much has changed with you.”

Why did I like the movie so much? Well, I think I liked it because it was a simple, straight-forward action film with lots of gun battles and explosions. Rambo was also a very heroic character and, just like any little boy out there, I liked stories about heroes. Why is that? I mean, why do boys like these kinds of stories? I guess it’s in the little-boy DNA—I can’t intellectualize any other answer to such a question. For better or for worse, most boys like action, war, military stuff, explosions, guns and heroes. Rambo 2 had all of that and mostly that and that only. In other words, it was light on story, heavy on action.

My obsession with Rambo went beyond merely watching the movie over and over again. I acquired multiple Rambo action figures at the local Kay Bee Toys store and got a few others for birthday or Christmas gifts.

This is the Rambo action figure I had

I also specifically remember stumbling upon a Rambo toy kit in, of all places, a Christmas Tree Shop located in Dennis, Massachusetts (i.e. on Cape Cod). This kit included a plastic replica of Rambo’s badass survival knife, a red bandana, a replica of the jade Buddha choker necklace that Rambo wears in the movie for good luck, but it also came with this extremely authentic-looking pistol that made a popping sound when you pulled its trigger. This was the late-1980s, my friends, so these were the days when toy guns could still legally look like real guns. By 1992, a federal law was passed that said you had to put bright orange tips on toy guns so that they wouldn’t be mistaken for real guns.[i] If I remember correctly, I believe this law came about after an incident where a child in California got shot by a cop because the cop mistook the kid’s laser tag gun for a real gun.[ii] Remember laser tag? That game was pretty big in the ‘80s, but I’ll stop talking about laser tag before I go off on another tangent.

1980s Laser Tag commercial

Anyway, for better or for worse, the Rambo pistol that came with the toy kit looked so real and I loved that gun and I mean LOVED that gun. I had a lot of toy guns as a child (what boy didn’t back in the 1980s?), but that one Rambo pistol was definitely my favorite and I remember having that thing forever, well into the 1990s. As the years went by, the popping function stopped working and the gun also got significantly damaged. I remember the plastic breaking off in parts, I could eventually see into the innards of the gun, and I saw that the clicking of the trigger functioned via some sort of rubber-band elastic on the inside. I don’t ever remember getting rid of that gun, but I basically kept it until it was unusable.

With the help of all my action figures and other Rambo toys, I would often recreate scenes from the First Blood: Part 2 movie, at least to the best of my ability. Actually, I think I would also use toys from my G.I. Joe collection, especially for the purposes of replicating aircraft. If you’re familiar with G.I. Joes, you may remember the “Tiger Force” series of the toys. This was a special subset of G.I. Joe toys, maybe even a limited-edition series, but maybe I’m wrong about that latter part. There were a few different Tiger Force military vehicles you could get and I had at least three of these that I can remember: one was a plane (called the Tiger Rat), the other a helicopter (called the Tiger Fly) and the third was a fan boat (the Tiger Shark). I think the fourth vehicle you could get, which I didn’t have, was some sort of armored land vehicle.

The Tiger Rat

The Tiger Shark

The Tiger Fly

The "Tiger Fly" Box

I thought the Tiger Force helicopter I had looked a lot like the helicopter featured in First Blood: Part 2—you know, the one that the villainous Russian commando flies in the movie—so I would use this G.I. Joe Tiger Force helicopter and my official Rambo action figure to recreate the scenes where Rambo is being chased down by the Russian helicopter. I would make a lot of explosion sounds with my mouth, as well as gunfire sounds, the latter of which was accomplished with a talented roll of the tongue against the roof of my mouth. Making gunfire noises with your mouth was an art, man, especially machine gunfire. Do kids even do this anymore? I don’t have kids but I have nephews and I’ve spent a lot of time babysitting various children over the years and, come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve heard them ever make any gunfire noises with their mouth. Is it politically incorrect for kids to do this now? Are boys encouraged to “play guns” as much as they used to be back in the 1980s? In fact, you don’t really see many toy guns being sold in stores anymore, unless they’re of the Nerf variety. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying this is a bad thing or necessarily a good thing. Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe playing with toy guns would be seen today as something that leads to “toxic masculinity,” but I guess another argument can be made that men have become too soft over the recent decades and less masculine. I’m not taking any stance here; I just thought it was something worth thinking about. Maybe I’m simply out of touch. Maybe the kids of today still “play guns” and “play war,” just as much as they used to in the 1980s, and I once again haven’t done my research.

As for me? Well, I played Rambo quite a bit and I’m not just talking with toys and action figures, either. I have a vivid memory of being on the school playground during recess when I was in the 1st grade, probably in the 1988 area, and I distinctly remember fantasizing that I was Rambo doing a covert mission and I was being shot at by enemies and I was also even making gun noises with my mouth but not overly loud because I was old enough to know that I would look like a weirdo if I was really obvious about it. No, the fantasy was mostly taking place in my head. Unfortunately, this resulted in a bad “conduct” grade on my school report card, not because I was a bad kid, but because I wasn’t socializing well with others. In fact, I think during parent-teacher conferences, my teacher had to speak to my mother about me not playing with the other kids during recess. Little did the teacher know that I was actually deep in Rambo fantasyland inhabited by me, myself and I. I had no interest in playing with other kids during recess because I wanted to be alone in my world of Rambo. I did eventually “conform,” however, and start playing with the other kids on the playground, mainly to appease my teacher and parents. Playing Rambo by myself was seen as antisocial behavior and, since I lived to please, I had no choice but to properly “socialize myself” and limit Rambo fantasizing to something I did during my at-home playtime but not during school recess. If I were left to my own devices, however, I probably never would have stopped playing Rambo by myself out in public. Maybe I’d still be playing it all the way up to the present day …

In May of 1988, Rambo 3 was released. In this third installment of the franchise, Rambo is asked to join a mission where Colonel Trautman and a United States special ops team are providing “Stinger” missiles to Afghan rebels. The missiles will help the rebels fight against the Russians who are imperialistically trying to occupy Afghanistan. Rambo turns the gig down, Colonel Trautman does the mission without him, but Trautman is captured by the Russians and now Rambo needs to rescue him from a Russian base in Afghanistan. Rambo is discovered by the Russians during the rescue. Action ensues …

Rambo 3 movie poster

I’m pretty sure I never saw Rambo 3 in the theater, I think we most likely rented the movie from Video Paradise when it came out on video, but I also know that I must have recorded Rambo 3 off the TV at some point because I remember watching this movie just as obsessively as First Blood: Part 2. I recently was talking about the Rambo franchise with a clerk at a music/video store called FYE (i.e. “For Your Entertainment”) and he said he liked the Rambo movies but that the franchise started going downhill with Rambo 3. Upon doing research on the Internet, it seems as though this is a common consensus, that Rambo 3 is inferior to the first two movies of the franchise.

As for me?

Well, I LOVED Rambo 3.

As a matter of fact, I think the more I watched Rambo 3, the more I eventually started to like the movie more than its predecessor.

I recently rewatched both Rambo 3 and First Blood: Part Two and I was somewhat surprised to find that they still hold up as good movies, at least in my opinion, which may of course be very subjective since I had such an obsession with Rambo as a child. I think what stuck out the most about the movies and what impressed me the most about the movies were the action sequences. When I was young, I took all the action for granted. I had no idea what kind of work went into creating such elaborate action sequences—all the squibs and pyrotechnics, fireballs, helicopter stunts etc. You have to keep in mind that these movies were made well before any CGI, so everything you see is the product of non-digital stunt coordination. The explosions and fireballs are real. The smoking helicopters are real. The gunshots are real. The squibs are real. It’s really quite impressive and it’s crazy to think of all the planning that had to go into such great action scenes. I don’t know if there are any good “making-of” documentaries out there, but I would love to see an extensive behind-the-scenes look at how they created these action sequences in both Rambo 2 and 3.

What also stood out about the films, especially First Blood: Part 2, was the soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith. It’s a fantastic soundtrack, especially the opening theme that features this distorted-sounding bass guitar, something that I don’t think was all that common to hear in the 1980s. It reminds me of the distorted bass you hear a lot in early-1990s Beastie Boys music, particularly in their Check Your Head and Ill Communication albums. Think about the song “Sabotage” and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Goldsmith’s distorted bass motif has a menacing and, frankly, badass sound to it. Again, I’m pretty sure this sound was unique for its time (circa 1985), maybe even unprecedented.

Jerry Goldsmith's First Blood: Part 2 soundtrack

The third thing that stood out to me, especially when it came to First Blood: Part 2, was the simplicity of the story. There is a brief setup to the movie within the first few minutes and we immediately know where the story is going, so when the opening titles begin about three minutes in, we know EXACTLY where we’re headed and feel super-pumped when we hear the aforementioned distorted bass sound of the Rambo theme. It’s almost fair to say that the first Act of the story is done within the first few minutes of the movie, basically within the pre-titles sequence. Everything is simple and to-the-point, not much fluff and razzle dazzle. In fact, while I was watching the movie, I was saying to myself that it doesn’t feel like a normal movie to me. It’s so to-the-point that it almost feels like a military documentary or something kind of ‘official’. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s almost as though you are bearing witness to an actual covert military operation and you’re going along for the ride. Does this make sense to anybody? Am I the only one who feels this way?

The fourth thing that stood out to me when I rewatched the Rambo movies was how much I remembered the movies, almost shot by shot. In fact, I almost knew what shot was coming before it even happened. Watching the films over and over again at such a young, impressionable age really etched the movies into my memory and they’re apparently still etched into my brain to this day.

Along the same lines, I also noticed that, while I was watching the films, I suddenly had this urge to go and play with action figures. I think this “urge” can be explained as both Freudian and Pavlovian. On a psychological level, watching the Rambo movies stimulated the inner child that is still somewhere in my subconscious and this inner child suddenly wanted to go recreate Rambo scenes with action figures. In other words, I don’t think “I” wanted to go play with the toys; rather, it was my inner child that was literally awoken from hibernation through the stimulus that was the Rambo movie. Pavlov’s dogs salivated for treats when they heard a bell because this was how they were mentally conditioned to respond to such a neutral stimulus. Well, the Rambo movies were my bell (i.e. my neutral stimulus) that didn’t make me salivate for treats but they made my inner child want to go play with action figures. Do you understand? It’s a fascinating psychological phenomenon.

But, yes, the Rambo movies have certainly held their own as solid action movies after all these years and are all the more impressive when viewed today knowing that they were all made well before the digital era. For budgetary purposes, no studio in their right mind would allow such an action film to be made in this “analog” manner because it would be way too expensive. Why not use CGI and save a few bucks? No general audience knows the difference or cares, right? Action is action, whether done digitally or for real in the analog world, right?

WRONG!!!

Sorry, didn’t mean to get so angry there.

I think the bottom line is that the Rambo films, along with other action films of this era, represent the peak of the action film genre, the high-water mark, the high bar, the … well, that’s all I got. Not that they are the best action films ever made but because of how they were made (i.e. non-digitally). Films started going the way of the digital in the 1990s (thanks, Jurassic Park, way to ruin everything—just kidding, JP is incredible) and I don’t think any action film these days is made in a similar manner to how the Rambo movies were made due to the aforementioned budgetary reasons.

As for me, I certainly acknowledge that the Rambo movies are not the best films ever made, but there will always be a place in my heart for them, especially for First Blood: Part 2. Having rewatched the films recently, I was struck by how enjoyable and “into them” I actually was. I was afraid that they wouldn’t entertain me as much as they did when I was a child, but they were actually still VERY entertaining, if not more so, since I was now able to understand Rambo’s backstory a little better than before.

Just two days ago from when I’m currently writing this, I went out and bought Rambo 2 and Rambo 3, on DVD, at the aforementioned FYE store. Perhaps I should have gotten Blu-ray or ultra-HD 4K super-DVD or whatever the heck the latest technology is, but I went with the DVDs because a) they weren’t too expensive (only about five bucks for each) and b) they had cool ‘extras’ on them. More than anything else, I simply wanted to make sure that I had a copy of First Blood: Part 2 and Rambo 3 on me at all times so I could watch the movies whenever I had the urge. Sometimes, when the going gets rough in life, all you want to do is watch your favorite film from your childhood, one that is essentially mindless but full of amazing visual action. I guess it’s comfort food for the soul. A guilty pleasure. Who knows, maybe I’ll even stop suppressing my inner child and start fantasizing about being Rambo again. If you see me out anywhere in public and I have a red bandana on and/or I’m creeping around like I’m in the middle of a covert operation and/or I’m making machine gun noises with my mouth, don’t think I’m crazy. Just give me a salute or at least an approving nod—Colonel-Trautman-stye—and then just please go about your business.

…

MATT BURNS is the author of several novels, including Weird Monster, Supermarket Zombies! and Johnny Cruise. He’s also written numerous memoirs, including GARAGE MOVIE: My Adventures Making Weird Films, MY RAGING CASE OF BEASTIE FEVER, JUNGLE F’NG FEVER: MY 30-YEAR LOVE AFFAIR W/ GUNS N’ ROSES and I TURNED INTO A MISFIT! Check out these books (and many more) on his Amazon author page HERE.

Other trending articles by Matt Burns that may be of interest to you:

Video Store Memories

Revisiting the Blair Witch Project

A Love Letter to the Emerald Square Mall (about the death of the shopping mall age)

NEVER FORGET the Fun-O-Rama (a traveling carnival memoir)

Some Wicked Good Times: A Love Letter to Newbury Comics

I Dream of Dream Machine (a memoir of the local video arcade)

Skateboarding in the 1990s

PROXOS IN THE PLEX: A Goldeneye 007 N64 Retrospective

100 DAYS of ZELDA: Revisiting Ocarina of Time

I USED TO BE A GAMER: The 8-bit Nintendo Years

WAAF Goes Off the Air

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s Charlie (a story about Burns’ recurring nightmares featuring Charlie Chaplin)

Remembering That Time I Tried to Stop a Shoplifter at the Wrentham Outlets

The Strange, Surreal Moment of Being Called a DILF Inside a Panera Bread Restaurant on a Wednesday Afternoon

Weird Times en la Weirdioteca

RIP PowerBook G3

Getting Your Novel Done

Getting Your Screenplay Done

Making Your Good Writing Great

Writing the Sequel

Writing the Trilogy

No-No, Learn to Love the Rejection: Some Sage Advice for Writers in Search of an Agent or Publisher

The Story Behind Supermarket Zombies!

The Story Behind The Woman and the Dragon

SOURCES:

[i] “Toy Gun.” Wikipedia, 16 July 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_gun#:~:text=In%201992%2C%20the%20Department%20of,or%20are%20entirely%20brightly%20colored.

[ii] Sahagun, Louis and Peter H. King. “Deputy Slays Teen-ager Wielding Toy Laser Gun.” LA Times, 9 April 1987, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-04-09-mn-363-story.html.

Monday, July 8, 2024

The 8-Bit Nintendo Years (Burnzo Cast Podcast Episode #8)

Enjoy this new podcast episode of mine: "The 8-Bit Nintendo Years." Listen below or read the full episode transcript (also below).

Burnzo Cast Episode #8 “The 8-Bit Nintendo Years” – Transcript

Air Date: 7/1/2024

INTRO

Welcome everybody to Episode #8 of THE BURNZO CAST. I am your host Matt Burns speaking. So, the last two episodes of THE BURNZO CAST have been video-game-related, the first one was about the Nintendo 64 and the second one was about a favorite video arcade from my childhood called THE DREAM MACHINE. In this episode, we’re going to stick to this video game theme, make a trilogy if you will, and talk about the very first video game system my family ever owned, which was the 8-bit Nintendo.

But before we get into that, yep, you guessed it, we’re going to take a quick break so we can hear a word from our sponsor. Don’t worry, it’ll be quick. Promise. Psyyyyyyche.

[COMMERCIAL]

Ok, welcome back to THE BURNZO CAST. Again, this is Episode #8: The 8-bit Nintendo Years, and let’s doo-doo-doo-doo do this. Doo-doo-doo-doo do this. Doo-doo-doo-doo- doo doo doo…Ok, I’ll stop.

So, before I talk about the 8-bit Nintendo, I want to take you back a little bit, to the early-to-late 1980s, and talk about my earlier video gaming years, pre-Nintendo. In the early 1980s, my family had this strange computer, I don’t even know what it was called, but it was basically a keyboard that you plugged into a television set and I think there was a joystick you could use as well. The keyboard functioned as a small hardrive and there were two or three games that you could play on this thing. The first game was a rip-off of Space Invaders and I remember the aliens were made out of square pixels but they somehow managed to scare the crap out of me. The second game was a rip-off of Pac-Man and consisted of a mouse-like icon running through a maze eating cheese. There may have been other games on this poor-excuse-for-a-computer, but the Aliens game and mouse game are the only ones I remember. Again, I was probably about three or four years old at this time, but I do remember my siblings playing these games a lot. I probably watched more than I played. But we would plug this computer into a small black and white television set that we had. This wasn’t the main TV of the house, but more like the back-up TV that was usually in my parents’ bedroom but was small enough to be carried into other rooms if need be.

At some point, maybe around 1985 or 1986, I remember going over to my cousins’ house and they had an Atari, not sure which version of Atari—possibly the 7800, but I remember them showing my siblings and I the game Joust, which to me, basically looked like this guy riding an ostrich, going around killing other ostriches. The sound effects in that game gave me the willies, especially the sounds of the ostriches or whatever those things were that got born out of those pits. Yeah, I was definitely creeped out by that game in the same way I was creeped out by the Space Invaders type-game we had. Again, I was very young so it doesn’t take much to scare a three or four-year-old. I mean, I was scared of Maria on Sesame Street when she dressed up as Charlie Chaplin. Something about that square mustache. Maybe I was in a Concentration Camp in my past life and the square mustache reminded me of Hitler.

Anyway…

My cousins also showed us the game Breakout. And for that game you would switch from the joystick Atari controllers to the paddle controllers, those were the controllers that had the dial on them that could turn clockwise and counterclockwise. Breakout, if you don’t know, was the game where you essentially bounced a ball back and forth against a wall of bricks with a small bar that moved back and forth with the paddle controller. You would clear a level as soon as you broke a hole through the wall and got the ball to go through to the other side. It was basically like playing tennis with the wall.

Now, I should mention that, at one point, I did own an Atari myself, but this came later, after I already had a Nintendo Entertainment System. I was maybe 10 years old or so at the time and there was a yard sale in my neighborhood. At the yard sale I saw that they were selling an Atari that was in great condition, multiple joysticks included, both the actual joysticks and the paddle controllers, and, even better, 50 Atari Games were included, and all of this was being sold for 20 dollars. But even 20 dollars at the time was too expensive for me, or maybe my parents thought it was too expensive for me. Either way, I think the person running the yard sale agreed that if nobody came and bought the Atari by the end of the day, they would sell the console and games to me, along with the controllers, all for only ten bucks. Fortunately, at the end of the day, nobody had purchased the Atari, so I did end up getting everything for ten bucks. The only slight disappointment was that somebody had come and bought a few of the 50 games earlier in the day and the game I had my eye on the most (which was Pitfall) was gone. I couldn’t complain, though. Getting an Atari and tons of games, maybe 40-plus games, controllers etc. for only ten bucks was certainly nothing to complain about. I really got a good deal there.

I did end up playing the Atari quite a bit, but as the years went by, the console got more and more difficult to hook up to the more modern 1990s-era televisions. I remember the Atari had this coaxial hook-up thing that looked like crab claws. I probably could have gotten an adapter at Radio Shack that would have made it easier to hook up the Atari to the more modern televisions, but I never made this effort. As the 1990s went forward, I played the Atari less and less and eventually I think it ended up in my attic. In 2006, I sold the Atari and all the games to this place called “Play N Trade” in the Walpole Mall and oh man, I got so ripped off. I think the games sold for 30 cents each and the actual Atari console sold for only a few dollars. I think selling my Sega Game Gear to “Play N Trade” was my biggest regret in life, but selling the Atari is up there as well. Oof. I cringe just thinking about it now.

Anyway, going back to the 1980s again…

Eventually, in 1986, the Nintendo Entertainment System was officially released in America. I remember seeing a demo of the NES in the Lechmere store located in Dedham, MA. which no longer exists, God rest its soul (if you want to learn a bit about Lechmere, check out episode #2 of my podcast “A Love Letter to the Emerald Square Mall”). I specifically remember that the demo showed World 1-2 in Super Mario Bros., the first underground level in the game. I was still very young, about four years old, so I don’t remember my exact emotions when seeing this, but I do know I was somewhat entranced. I knew that what I was looking at was really new, different and cool.

But the NES was too expensive at this point, probably around $200. We needed to wait for the price to go down before we – we mainly meaning my brother and I – even began a conversation with our parents about buying one.

[MUSIC BREAK]

By the Spring of 1987, the Nintendo Entertainment System had dropped in price. I think the console alone was about 100 bucks by this point. I’m not sure if I played any part in convincing my dad to purchase the Nintendo because I was still only about five years old at this time. So I’ll give all the credit to my brother here and say that he convinced my dad to finally buy a Nintendo Entertainment System at Lechmere, and I think this was sometime around the Spring of 1987 and I’m pretty sure it was around this time because we bought the Game Rush N Attack as our first game and I know Rush N Attack was a new game around this time and when you look up the release date for Rush N Attack, it’s April of 1987. Also, I should probably put on the record that (I think) my brother paid for at least half of the Nintendo or maybe even all of it, using money he had made as a Patriot Ledger and Boston Globe paperboy. So, at the most, I think my dad only paid about 50 bucks, maybe that was the deal they made with each other, although it’s possible this was all purchased by my brother.

But, again, the catch was that, yes, the console was only about one hundred dollars, but it didn’t come with Super Mario Bros or Duck Hunt, nor did it come with the Zapper gun. In other words, it wasn’t the Nintendo Entertainment System Action Set. It was just the console, no games.

I’m not sure if I was present when the NES was purchased, but I do have this vague memory of being in Lechmere browsing through games that were hanging from one of those pegged walls or maybe they were in a display case. I could be making this memory up, but I seem to remember seeing the box art for Rush N Attack and thinking it looked really cool and then my brother and I mutually decided that this should be the first game we own for the NES. Again, I could be making all that up, but, either way, I do know that the very first game we owned for the Nintendo was Rush N Attack, released by Konami in 1987.

Now, I always assumed that “Rush N Attack” was really “Russian Attack” and not “Rush and Attack.” It wasn’t until recently that I looked closely at the title and realized the game was never specifically about Russians attacking. Instead, the game description was vague. You play as an American special operations soldier and try to destroy a “secret enemy weapon” being developed on an “enemy” base. The game’s description is not specific about who this “enemy” is, but, I mean, come on, obviously the “enemy” is the Russians. You start out the game armed with nothing but a knife and start killing as many Russ…er, I mean, as many “enemies” as possible. Later in the game, you can get a missile launcher, a pistol and grenades.

Rush N Attack was a rather difficult game, especially for a five-year-old like myself. It probably would have been better if I started out my NES experience playing Super Mario Bros. or something a little more easy, but then again, now that I think of it, Super Mario Bros. isn’t that easy, either. In fact, most Nintendo games were hard and I think this was because Nintendo and other video game developers in the mid-to-late 1980s were new to making games for home consoles and, instead, were still in video-arcade-game-mode where you needed to make games hard so that gamers didn’t make it far off one quarter alone and had to cough up more quarters in order to reach new levels and especially to beat a game. In short, hard games meant more profits for the game makers. Also, most Nintendo games were “ported” arcade games—that is, they originated as arcade games—and although they may have been watered down a liiiitle bit in terms of their difficulty, they still were often as difficult as their arcade versions. Rush N Attack, after all, WAS initially an arcade game before it was a home NES console game.

But, yes, despite Rush N Attack’s difficulty and despite the fact that I rarely even made it beyond the first level, I still fell in love with Rush N Attack and the NES in general. I mean, it was my very first Nintendo game after all and really my very first video game altogether … that is, if you don’t count those Alien Invader and PacMan rip-offs we had. How could you not fall in love with your first video game ever?

My memory might be hazy, but I don’t think we officially owned a second video game for several months after getting the NES and the Rush N Attack cart (‘cart’ is a fancy and pretentious way of saying game). I’m sure we rented several games from the local Video Paradise video store. And probably borrowed a lot of games from friends and kids around the neighborhood. But I don’t think it was until that next Christmas of 1987 that we owned a second video game and if my memory serves me correctly I think this game was a little game called…Ghosts and Goblins, released by Capcom in November of 1986.

Like Rush N Attack, Ghosts and Goblins was also originally an arcade game and (also like Rush N Attack) it was hard but actually even harder than Rush N Attack. I mean, we’re talking SUPER hard.

In Ghosts N Goblins, you are some kind of knight, I believe, and I’m saying this without even looking up the game on Wikipedia because I think my memory of the game is probably more interesting than the reality of the game itself. But I’m pretty sure you’re a knight in medieval times and you start the game naked in a graveyard hanging out with a princess or you’re at least in your boxer shorts, I guess not completely naked. I don’t know if the implication is that you just did the dirty things with the princess or what. But then a demon comes flying down from the skies, kidnaps the princess, you the knight is pissed off, you put on some armor and then you start your quest to save the princess. In this quest, there are many Ghosts and Goblins, demons and ghouls and such. Maybe I was just a big wuss, but this game creeped me out just like fake Alien Invaders did and how Joust for the Atari did. I was maybe six years old by the time I started playing Ghosts and Goblins, but it was kind of creepy in a 8-bit pixels kind of way. The music and sound effects alone game me the heebie jeebies.

But, yeah the game was so hard. The controls were so…what’s the word…unflexible or blocky or something, especially if you were used to playing a game like Super Mario Bros. I just remember that you had to be a lot more precise about jumping over a cliff, much more so than in Super Mario Bros. You had to jump right at the last minute in order to make it over the cliff. Up was up and down was down but it was harder to move in a 45-degree angle if you know what I mean. And the game was very unforgiving. I think if you got hit by an enemy once, you lost your armor and were naked but were still in the game. Get hit twice, though, and game over. Maybe you could start back at the beginning of the level, but I feel like you only had a couple continues. There wasn’t much grace.

In fact, the game was so hard that for a while I actually thought there was something wrong with it … that, you know, it was flawed and had glitches and bugs in it. I soon learned this wasn’t the case, though, when I was on the bus one day and this kid named Dan told me he not only beat the game but beat it with not much of a problem. I had great respect for this Dan. He was a few years older than me and sat in the special one-seater (or was it a two-seater?) way in the back of the bus by the emergency exit. For whatever reason, that seat was basically reserved for the coolest kid on the bus and Dan was the coolest kid on the bus so that’s where he sat, no questions asked. I mean, nobody dared sit in this seat ever until Dan moved on to high school.

But, yeah, Dan claimed to have beaten Ghosts and Goblins, pretty much with not much of a big problem, and I remember being in such disbelief when I heard this. Again, I literally thought the game was defective and that it was impossible to beat. Guess not, though. Many years later, I would learn that Ghosts and Goblinswas not only NOT defective and carelessly thrown together but it’s actually considered to be one of the best games for Nintendo, despite its tough controls and overall level of difficulty.

Part of the reason why Ghosts and Goblins was so frustrating was that there weren’t any codes you could use for the game, or at least I don’t think there were any. I liked Konami games the best because they, of course, had that famous up-up-down-down code that would give you about 30 lives or so.

One of these games that you could use the code for was Contra.

Although I never officially owned Contra, I vividly remember being introduced to the game, probably somewhere in the area of the summer of 1988. I had this neighbor named Lee and I remember going over his house where he and some other neighborhood kids would be playing the game. I don’t even know if I played the game at all, I may have tried it out here and there, but this was one game that I remember being totally content to just watch it being played. In fact, I think I enjoyed watching others playing the game more than I did playing it myself.

In the game, you play as an American special-operations soldier, but you’re not fighting the Russians in this one; you’re fighting an evil army known as the “Red Falcon Organization” … so, yeah, basically a bunch of “red” commies and wait, yeah, basically the Russians. The year is 2633, though, and the Red Falcon Organization is under the influence of an evil alien entity. Your mission is to destroy the Russians…er, I mean, the Red Falcons. And also destroy that pesky alien entity.

Contra was a super-fun game, hard to play without the code, but if you had that code, it was a ton of fun and you could usually beat the game. The only problem, though, was that I usually had a lot of trouble doing the code. A year or two after seeing the game be played at Lee’s house, I somehow acquired a copy of Contra (I think I borrowed it from a friend and never returned it—this happened a lot), but I remember having a hell of a time typing in the code. The timing had to be perfect. There was this brief intro with four notes of music and then an explosion sound. You had to type the code in during this intro and, I think, you had to finish it before the explosion sound? Maybe? Not sure. All I know is I had a lot of trouble pulling that code off unless I had some help from Lee or another neighborhood friend who knew what they were doing.

I had better luck, however, with another Konami game, one that was very similar to Contra. That game was called Life Force.

Life Force was a lot like Contra except, instead of you being a special-ops soldier, you were a spaceship flying through a giant alien’s body. And instead of battling members of the “Red Falcon Army”, you were battling, well, various smaller alien lifeforms within the larger alien. The aliens, of course, were basically symbolic of the Russians, but that goes without saying, right?

It was a lot easier, for whatever reason, to pull off the code in Life Force. This game I did actually own at some point. With the code, I was able to beat the game and had a ton of fun doing so. On a random note, I remember one alien life form in the game looked like beets. You know, like the vegetable beets. Just thought I would mention that.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Life Force wasn’t a game I owned until later, maybe even close to the 1990 area.

I think my third Nintendo game that I officially owned after Ghosts and Goblins was RC Pro Am and this may have been a Christmas gift as well, sometime around the 1988 area. RC Pro Am was one of two main racing games that were available for the Nintendo, the other being Rad Racer. Rad Racer had the behind-the-car third person view but RC Pro Am had the overhead view and the cars in the game weren’t race cars but they were actually remote-control cars. Rad Racer was a fun game, but I think I definitely liked RC Pro Am better. I remember there were a lot of levels in RC Pro Am, but at one point in the game, if you were playing against the computer, the orange car would go absolutely berserk, go three times as fast as normal and absolutely destroy you—I mean, there was no beating it at that point. I always thought this was a glitch in the game but I don’t think it was. I basically just learned to accept the fact that, at around level 12 or so, the orange car would eat a can of turbo spinach and go absolutely berserk, drive around the track three times as fast, and leave everyone in the dust. In fact, the orange car going berserk was usually an indication that I had been playing the game too long, it was time to shut it off and go do my homework.

Oh, but one other thing I should mention about RC Pro Am is that around the same time that I got this game we also got an NES Advantage Joystick, which was this really cool-looking arcade-like controller you could use in place of your normal NES controller. It had a joystick instead of a D pad and bigger A and B buttons. It also had these “turbo” buttons but as far as I can remember I don’t think those buttons ever did anything. The controller wasn’t that practical for games like Super Mario Bros. and Rush N Attack, but it worked great for RC Pro Am. The NES Advantage joystick truly did give you an Advantage over everyone else when it came to RC Pro Am.

Ok, so I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that also around this time when I was playing RC Pro Am, Rush N Attack, Contra etc. I was also introduced to the game The Legend of Zelda. I never owned this game until about 1992 when I was in the fifth grade but I’ll get to that in a second. My first exposure to the game was definitely at my cousins’ house and these were the same cousins who had first exposed me to the Atari. I remember playing the game at their house but I also think they would bring the game over to our house when they came over for dinner or for a Christmas party or something and then we would all play as a group. One person would man the controls (it was never me) but everyone in the group would offer their input as to where they think Link should go, what bush to burn, what rock to bomb, what stone to push etc. I’m pretty sure I mainly watched them play over anything else, but I remember thinking it was such a fun game. That being said, however, I should mention that I of course thought this game was spooky as well. Yeah, I was a wuss, apparently scared by many video games. Each labyrinth in the game gave me the willies, mainly because of the mysterious-sounding music that was featured in these levels. I also got scared when you were one room over from the labyrinth boss and you would start hearing his dragon-like noises. You know what I mean: it kind of sounded like a digital-like sneeze. This let you know you were close to the boss. Other things that scared me in the game were the old man and woman who would give you clues, letters, medicine and such. They were comprised of just a few 8-bit pixels but for some reason those old men and women who lived like hermits in the caves gave me the major creeps.

But, yeah, I never actually owned The Legend of Zelda until much later. I think I already had a Super Nintendo at this point, but during the summer between fifth and sixth grade, I went to Kay Bee Toys in the local mall and bought The Legend of Zelda, probably for a really good price at that point since NES was old news and Super Nintendo was all the rage. My mission for that summer was to beat the game, but I didn’t end up beating it, probably only got to level 6 or something.

Many years later, and I’m talking MANY years later, like only a few years ago in 2021, I got a Nintendo 3DS, which had the virtual console where you could download old-school NES games. I decided to download and beat The Legend of Zelda once and for all. Well, not only did I beat it once but I beat it twice, guys. Hm? Are you impressed? Do you want my autograph? It was super-fun. Definitely got hard towards the last few levels, but I really had a fun time beating it.

But, yeah, for the most part, we only owned a handful of games for the NES. Most of these games were either given to me or my brother for birthdays or Christmas.

There, is however, one exception.

And that would be a game called Rampage, which stands out in my memory as the only game I ever got for no reason, no birthday, no Christmas or anything like that. Here’s the story behind Rampage. I was at this mall called the Braintree Mall (now called the South Shore Plaza), right outside Boston one Saturday with my dad. I’m not sure what we were after that day. There was a sports store called Hermann’s there that I know we went to a lot, so that may have been the reason we went to the mall (to get some baseball mitts or something). But I remember going into Kay Bee Toys in the Braintree Mall and seeing this brand-new game called Rampage hanging on the wall behind the front counter. I think there was a lot of buzz surrounding the game or maybe the Kay Bee toys clerk was raving about how popular the game was—whatever it was, I thought I needed to have the game. My dad didn’t like the looks of the price, it was about 60 or maybe even 80 dollars, something crazy like that. He said he would think about it and we went off to do some other shopping.

Well, for the next hour or so, I think I pulled out every subtle manipulation tactic I had in my arsenal. “Dad, I’ll never ask you for anything ever again. Dad, did you know playing video games help boost brain cells? Dad, my teacher at school wants me to play Rampage for extra credit.” Ok, I didn’t say that latter part, but I know I kept bothering him about Rampage. Eventually, he did cave and he bought the game on the condition that I would never tell my mom about this extremely frivolous purchase. I told him that I love him so much. I literally thought that I would be happy for the rest of my days. I went home, popped the game into my NES and…

The game wasn’t that great. The “plot” basically involved you playing as either a Godzilla-like monster or King-Kong-like monster and you destroyed city buildings while the military shot at you in tanks. You literally just climbed buildings, punched at them, ate an occasional person or snack, and you did this until the building was so weak it crumbled to the ground. Then you proceeded to the next level and did the same thing to another group of buildings. You kept on doing this in level after level upon level … after level. There were about 100 levels in the game. By about level 20, the game got old and pretty soon you would just want to quit and shut it off. I don’t think you could even save your progress in the game. If you quit, you would have to start at level-one the next time.

So, yeah, unfortunately, the game didn’t live up to its hype, but I never dared tell my dad that the game was not as great as I thought it would be. It would have broken his heart because, again, I think he spent about 80 dollars on it.

Nevertheless, Rampage will forever go down as the one game I got randomly at the mall one day, NOT for a birthday present. NOT for a Christmas present and NOT for an Easter present.

Wait, Easter present? That’s right, you heard me correctly. I remember one year for Easter I was pleasantly surprised to find a Nintendo game in my Easter basket. This was a one-time-deal. I don’t think I ever got such a big-ticket item in my Easter basket ever again, but I did get one that year for whatever reason (maybe I was getting good grades in school?). What game was it, you may be asking??

It was this game called Jackal.

Jackal was another Konami game, originally an arcade game (no surprise there) and released for the Nintendo in October of 1988. This was an overhead angle game, much like RC Pro Am. You are in a special-forces Army jeep that gets dropped off in “enemy territory” (code for Russia, of course). Your mission is to pick up POWS and ultimately destroy a “secret enemy weapon.” Boy, we were really conditioned to hate the Russians in the 1980s, weren’t we? This was military industrial complex propaganda in action, man.

Wait, I don’t think there’s much more to say about Jackal except that I loved it and it was a really fun game to play. I don’t think there was an up-up-down-down code you could use on this, but I’m not sure. I just know that Konami always made awesome games and Jackal was no exception.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 was no exception, either. That’s right, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: THE ARCADE GAME probably was my favorite Nintendo game of all time. My first exposure to the game was not on the NES but in a random outlet mall right by the Bourne Bridge on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. My family was at Old Silver Beach in Falmouth for the day, maybe even with my aforementioned cousins, and on the way home we went to this outlet mall for something to eat and also to do a little shopping at the Bass shoe outlet (Bass shoes were popular in the 1990s for whatever reason but that’s not important right now). I remember there was some small food court in the mall and in this food court was a video arcade game that absolutely blew me away: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2. In the game, you play as one of the four ninja turtles and try to save both April and Splinter after they’ve been kidnapped by the evil Shredder. In your (New York City) travels, you battle foot soldiers, robots, Bebop and even Rocksteady!

At the time, I was already a huge fan of both the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series and especially the 1990 live action movie and I really want to emphasize that I was a huge fan of the movie; in fact, I could probably do a whole ‘nother podcast episode on my love for that movie. But, yeah, the video game was like taking the cartoon and turning it into a video game. In fact, that’s what it felt like: that you were playing the cartoon and interactively engaging with the cartoon.

The arcade game was eventually ported to the Nintendo in December of 1990 and I think I may have gotten it for my birthday just a few weeks later in January of 1991. It quickly turned into my favorite video game to play, I’m pretty sure you could do the Konami code for it or maybe it was just easier to play than other games because I know that I did eventually end up beating the entire game and I don’t remember it being an overly difficult feat to accomplish. My favorite level in the game was by far the one where you skateboarded and now that I think of it there may have even been more than one level that you skateboarded in. Oh man I had so much fun playing that game. I think I played as Raphael a lot and maybe Donatello, but, come to think of it, I don’t think there was necessarily a turtle I liked more than the others. I think I played with them almost in equal amounts. Little Michelangelo, little Leonardo etc.

Also, on a side note, I remember that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 game came with a coupon for a free personal pan pizza at Pizza Hut. I never ended up using that coupon, mainly because I never went to Pizza Hut as a child. I was more of a Papa Gino’s kind of a kid. Went there all the time. Never once went to Pizza Hut, actually. I wonder if I still have that coupon somewhere. Would they still honor it? Haha, ya know? How cuuuurazy would that be, if I went to Pizza Hut and tried to get a free personal pan pizza with a coupon from 1991. So insane! Nuts!

Around the time that I was playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 in the early 1990s, there were also three other games that were in pretty heavy rotation within my Nintendo Entertainment System. One of these games was definitely…

Mega Man 2, which was released by Capcom in December of 1991, about a full year after Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 was released. This game is considered one of the best 8-bit Nintendo games ever made and I think I agree with that. Although I definitely like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 better, Mega Man 2 was a super-fun game to play.

In the game, you play as a heroic robot named Mega-Man and your mission is to defeat the evil Dr. Wily who has made eight evil robots you must battle first. This means there are eight levels to beat, one for each robot. When you start the game, there is a menu where you actually get to choose which level and which robot you want to take on first. There is Metal Man, Air Man, Bubble Man, Quick Man, Crash Man, Flash Man, Heat Man, and Wood Man. I think Wind Man and Heat Man were my favorites. Wood Man was a fun one as well if I remember correctly.

Another game I played a lot around this time was Tetris, which was released in 1989 by Nintendo but developed by a Russian named Alexey Pajitnov. Tetris was seemingly such a simple game, but also addicting and you could play it for hours and hours. There was something about the music that would almost put you into a trance and, as soon as you knew it, you could be sitting on your living room rug for hours playing the game when it only seemed like minutes. Seriously, it was like entering some sort of time warp.

The other strange phenomenon about Tetris was that, if you played the game a lot, you could never get your mind off of it. You would literally be lying in your bed, trying to go to sleep, but you would still be seeing Tetris pieces in your mind’s eye and still be trying to fit all the puzzle pieces together. Not a great thing if you already suffered from anxiety or insomnia.

During the early 1990s, I also spent a lot of time playing Super Mario Bros. 3, but if I’m going to talk about Super Mario Bros. 3, I have to first talk about the movie The Wizard.

The Wizard features a boy named Corey played by Fred Savage and his little gaming-wizard brother Jimmy (played by Luke Edwards), the latter of whom is suffering from PTSD and he may even be borderline autistic. The two boys hitch their way across America so Jimmy can play in a world video game championship in California. Well, the real reason why Jimmy wants to go to California is because he has this pleasant memory of being there with his twin sister who died tragically when she was young, hence why Jimmy has PTSD. But, along the way to California, Corey discovers Jimmy is a video gaming wizard and he coaxes his little brother into entering the video game championship so they can win money and also prove Jimmy is smart and doesn’t belong in an institution. In their travels, they meet a runaway girl named Haley (played by Jenny Lewis) who tags along with them and she too likes the idea of winning some money to solve her own personal problems. The movie also stars Beau Bridges as the father of Corey and Jimmy and a lot of people forget Christian Slater was in this, too. He plays the older brother of both Corey and Jimmy.

The movie is filled with all sorts of product placement by Nintendo. It features games like Double Dragon, Ninja Gaidan, Rad Racer and the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Power Glove also makes an appearance, worn by Jimmy’s main video gamer rival named Lucas. Lucas has this famous line where he says, “I love the Power Glove. It’s so bad.”

More importantly, however, at the end of the movie, during the big climactic third act where Jimmy plays in the big video game competition at Universal Studios California, the not-yet-released Super Mario Bros. 3 is unveiled. This was literally the world premiere of the game and it got people super excited about it. It was going to essentially be a bigger, better, faster version of the first Super Mario Bros. with all sorts of new levels, basically pretending that Super Mario Bros. 2 never existed. Not that Super Mario 2 was bad, at least not in my opinion. It was just strange and different. This was mainly because it was a modified version of another Japanese game called Yume kojo: Doki Doki Panic. They basically took that game, deleted the characters in it, added Mario characters and, voila, you got Super Mario Bros. 2. This was why you didn’t have any Koopas or Bowsers in the game. Instead, you had Birdos, Mousers and a Frog named Wart.

Super Mario 3, however, was a completely original game (that is, not a modified version of a pre-existing Japanese game like Doki Doki Panic). The game definitely felt like the actual sequel to the first Super Mario Bros. where Super Mario 2 felt more like … an experiment. But, again, I like Super Mario Bros. 2 and a lot of other people do as well.

Anyway, you have to understand how big of a deal it was when The Wizard unveiled Super Mario Bros. 3. Everyone was shocked. I, for one, thought it was fake, that they made the game up for the movie’s sake. Of course, there was no Internet back then so you couldn’t look anything up to see what was real or what was fake. You just went by rumors and word of mouth. I guess I eventually realized it was a real game because it was officially released in February of 1990, just a few months after The Wizard had come out. Although I never bought the game, this was another cart that I borrowed from a friend and I never returned. Sorry about that, Tim.

I looooooved Super Mario Bros. 3. There were better graphics, a lot smoother game play, funner levels—including a giant level where all the enemies and question boxes are enormous—and the coolest thing of all was that…you could fly. With the Super Leaf, that is, which turned you into a racoon. Not sure why it turned you into a racoon as opposed to a bird since racoons can’t fly, but let’s not ask too many questions about that.

All I have to do is hear the music from Super Mario Bros. 3 and I’m brought back to Saturday mornings, sitting on my family room carpet in my jammies playing the game, probably before I even ate breakfast or certainly before I brushed my teeth.

Up until the Christmas of 1992, I was playing A LOT of Super Mario Bros. 3. There was only one thing that got me to stop playing this game and really the Nintendo Entertainment System in general and that one thing was:

THE SUPER NINTENDO.

Duh duh duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.

On Christmas morning of 1992, I woke up and received what-was-perhaps my favorite Christmas present of all time. The Super Nintendo. Along with two games. Mario Kart. And Final Fight. Well, really three games, since Super Mario World came with the system as well.

Although I would certainly pop in an 8-bit Nintendo game here and there, especially when it came to that aforementioned summer vacation when I tried to beat The Legend of Zelda, the years of me doing any hardcore playing of the 8-bit NES were officially over. They were so fun while they lasted, but it was time to move on to 16-bit graphics games. Games like Super Mario Kart and Final Fight, not to mention Super Mario World, and then later Star Fox and especially Donkey Kong Country, were just too good to make me want to keep playing the original NES. Although the years of me playing 8-bit Nintendo were short-lived in the great scheme of things, the memories … are forever.

OUTRO

All right, thank you very much for listening to that episode of THE BURNZO CAST. I hope you enjoyed that, hope it brought back some pleasant memories for you, made you feel all warm and nostalgic inside. If you did like this episode, you may like my article I USED TO BE A GAMER: THE 8-BIT NINTENDO YEARS, available on my website theburnzodiaries.com and also available as an eBook Kindle single on Amazon.com. Most of what I covered in this podcast is in that article, but if you’re really interested in 8-bit Nintendo or maybe you’re doing research for a book or an article, you may want to give my eBook a read to reiterate some of the points I made in this podcast episode.

Ok, I think that’s it. Thanks again for listening. Hopefully more episodes will be on the way and can you do me a fre-fre-fre-fre flavah? Be well and also do me one more fre fre fre flavah. Take care of yourself. Until next time, BURNZO NATION!

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MATT BURNS is the author of several books, including his bestselling Kindle singles I Used to be a Gamer and I Dream of Dream Machine. He’s also written several novels, including his ‘punk novel’ Supermarket Zombies! as well as Weird Monster, Johnny Cruise and The Woman and the Dragon. Check out these books (and many more) on his Amazon author page HERE.