But, then, later that night I saw the same story on the evening
news. Yes way? Really? Are you for freggen’ real? Surely the evening news
doesn’t lie…well, at least not about this kind of stuff. This was all very,
very interesting. No, not interesting. It was exciting. No, not exciting. It
was fregging awesome!
Nintendo was due to release a “Classic Nintendo” plug-n-play
system for the 2016 holiday season. This “Classic Nintendo” would look exactly
like the classic 8-bit Nintendo only a little smaller; plus, it would have 30
classic pre-loaded games, some of the best games ever to have come out on
Nintendo! We’re talking all three “Super Mario Bros.”, the original
“Mario Bros.” “The Legend of Zelda”, “Mega Man 2”, “Castlevania”, “Metroid”, “Punch Out”, “Ninja Gaiden”, “Dr. Mario” and, oh, so many more! As for the controllers, they would be exactly the same as classic Nintendo’s controllers and if you already owned some of those controllers they would work just as well.
“Mario Bros.” “The Legend of Zelda”, “Mega Man 2”, “Castlevania”, “Metroid”, “Punch Out”, “Ninja Gaiden”, “Dr. Mario” and, oh, so many more! As for the controllers, they would be exactly the same as classic Nintendo’s controllers and if you already owned some of those controllers they would work just as well.
The release date?
November 11, 2016.
Holy crap! This was such exciting news. All my favorite games
(with some exceptions) were said to be among those that were pre-loaded. I
really needed to get this Classic Nintendo machine. To heck with finding a
soulmate or meeting one of the two remaining Beastie Boys; owning this Classic
Nintendo was what I needed to fill the one last remaining void in my life.
Man, the only problem was that November was just too damn far away.
I could not wait five whole months for this Classic Nintendo thing to come out!
The Yobo. |
I didn’t want to accept all this, though. I was in denial about
potentially, possibly—MAYBE—not being a gamer anymore. This denial stuck with
me and, every once in a while, I would be out at a GameStop and I would decide
to treat myself to a video game, usually for my most current consul: the Playstation
2. As delusional as I may have been, I would genuinely have the feeling that THIS
game would be the one, the one last game to fill that void inside of me and make me happy
for the rest of my days. But then I would take the game home to play and, well,
I would get that same feeling of emptiness and anxiety. After about 20 minutes,
I’d have to stop. I was like some drug addict who kept chasing an evasive high
that he was never going to catch.
So would buying this new “Classic Nintendo” plug-n-play consul
be any different? I so wanted to believe it would be different, but I knew the
reality was that I would play a game or two for about 20 minutes—maybe a half
hour tops—and then I would get that same anxious feeling that I needed to be
doing something else.
Damn! Why did things have to be this way? Something in me had
changed because, when I was young, I LOVED video games. I couldn’t play enough of
them and they actually gave me that feeling of pure stimulation and
satisfaction. When I beat levels, I felt accomplished, like I was actually
doing something productive in life. Why couldn’t I feel that way anymore?! What
happened?
Oh yeah. I grew up. That’s what happened.
Indeed, I did grow up and, no matter how hard I try to escape into
the world of a video game today, 20 minutes go by and I feel so anxious I
literally kind of feel nauseous. Even just the other day I watched a new
trailer for the new “Zelda” game that will be released on the Wii U. It’s
called “Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild”. I watched the trailer and said to
myself, “Oh that looks so siiick, dude” and although I didn’t explicitly say to
myself, “If only I had that game, I would be happy” that’s still what I was
thinking in my head, at least initially. But then logic kicked in and I
realized it would be the same old story: I’d play the game for 20 minutes, feel
sick and stop.
Crap, it’s kind of like being that Alex character in the movie A Clockwork Orange where they literally
recondition his mind to get physically sick when he’s exposed to violence or
even having violent thoughts. In my case, it wasn’t violence that made me sick;
it was video games! O misery! Lost, lost, lost were the days where I could play
video games for a normal amount of time and actually enjoy doing so!
But at least I had the opportunity to enjoy video games when I
did. I’ll always have the memories, I suppose, which actually leads me to the
point of why I’m writing all this right now: since it’s impossible for me to
enjoy playing video games anymore like I used to, I shall attempt to go back in
time and relive my gaming days via the process of writing about them.
So come on my fellow ex-gamers! Current gamers are welcome, too! Come
one, come all, come hop down a giant green pipe with me and enter a warp zone called video game memory...uh...world.
THE PRE-NINTENDO
YEARS
My very first memory of a video game was from when I was very
young. Well, duh, I would hope it was from when I was young; otherwise I should
probably go get a brain scan to check for some lesions in the hippocampus (insert nerdy laughter here).
But, yes, my first memory of a video game was in the early 80s. My
dad had bought one of those cheap computers that you could plug into the back
of your television. Actually, if I remember correctly, I don’t even think there
was much of a hard drive, basically just a keyboard that we somehow plugged
into the back of our small, black-and-white television and, whala, we had an
instant computer.
It’s very possible that this computer had all sorts of
capabilities, but the only thing I remember is that the hard drive had
at least two games loaded on it, both of which were essentially knock-offs of
games that were popular on Atari at the time. The first game was a knock-off
of “Space Invaders” called “Alien Invaders” and it used to freak me out, even
though it basically consisted of very unidentifiable “aliens” made out of a few
blocks of pixels. I think it was just the word “alien” that gave me a really
creepy feeling, but I was genuinely scared of the game. That’s right: a few
blocky pixels arranged into a formation that loosely represented an alien
actually had the power to scare me. Talk about suspension of disbelief. That’s
pretty amazing if you think about it.
The other game that was on the computer was a knock-off of “Pac-Man”
and I think it was called “Mouse” or “Cheese Hunt” or maybe it was even called
“Mouse Eats Cheese” because that’s basically what the game consisted of: i.e. a
mouse eating cheese. The mouse character was represented by a greater than/less
than shape and you traveled around a maze-like structure eating small
rectangles that represented cheese. There may have even been little pixelated
cats chasing you in the maze that you had to avoid, kind of like the ghosts in “Pac-Man”.
My parents thought the “Alien Invaders” and “Cheese Hunt” computer
sufficed for a game system and they didn’t see any need to get anything better,
mainly like an Atari. In fact, my only exposure to Atari was through my cousins
who were lucky enough to own one. Every once in a while, my siblings and I would go over their
house and I would watch them play one particular game that, for whatever
reason, also creeped me out.
This game was called “Joust”.
“Joust” was a simple game where I guess you were some knight-like
character riding a bird-like creature that resembled an ostrich. You would fly
around on this ostrich and joust enemy jousters.
I was mesmerized by “Joust” and, yes, somewhat creeped-out by it.
The sound fx especially gave me the willies; I can still hear the sound of
enemy jousters growing out of those breeding pits and I guess it was a sound
that made me nervous because I knew I'd suddenly be overwhelmed by new enemies.
Or maybe there was nothing creepy about the game and I was just a wuss.
Oh, and there was also “Breakout” where you had to unplug your
joystick controllers and plug in the "paddle" controllers with the rotating
dial. “Breakout”, for those of you who don’t remember, was a simple game where you
bounce a ball at a wall of brick-like rectangles. Each time the ball hits the
wall, a rectangle breaks and you beat a level when all the bricks have been
broken. Of course, the ball starts bouncing faster as the levels get harder and
you have to keep bouncing it back at the wall with a rectangular cursor you
move back and forth with your controller. Oh, what am I doing describing Breakout to you?! Everybody knows Breakout!
Although most of my exposure to Atari games occurred at my
cousins’ house, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that I did end up
purchasing a used Atari several years later, well after I had a Nintendo and
probably even after I had a Super Nintendo. See, a house in my neighborhood was
having a yard sale and it was selling a fully-functional Atari with about 50
games and several different controllers—both joysticks and Breakout-friendly paddle controllers. All they were asking for was 20 bucks! Well, 20 bucks was damn
cheap for an Atari and 50 games but all I had was a paper route at the time and
10 bucks was all I had to spend. I haggled with my neighbor a bit, flashed her my dimples, batted my eyelashes and she eventually said the Atari
was all mine for 10 bucks...IF it didn’t sell by the end of the day. Amazingly, the Atari never sold so, late in the afternoon, I returned to the yard sale with my 10 bucks and walked away with a new video game
system!
I took my new baby right on home and unloaded the box on my living room carpet. I couldn't help but immediately notice that some games were missing, especially one game I particularly had my eye on called “Pitfall”. I later learned that a nephew had come and taken some games he wanted before my neighbor sold the system to me. Blast that nephew! I really wanted “Pitfall”.
I took my new baby right on home and unloaded the box on my living room carpet. I couldn't help but immediately notice that some games were missing, especially one game I particularly had my eye on called “Pitfall”. I later learned that a nephew had come and taken some games he wanted before my neighbor sold the system to me. Blast that nephew! I really wanted “Pitfall”.
It was all good, though. Beggars can’t be choosey. I walked away
with an Atari, several controllers and ALMOST 50 games…all for ten bucks. You really
couldn’t beat that.
Over the years, I played the Atari here and there but, overall, I
never played it that much. The problem was that the game consul got more and
more difficult to hook up to newer televisions what with its crab-like, non-coaxial
hookery thingamajigs and I eventually threw the Atari up in the attic—well, I
didn’t throw it up there; I boxed it first. Lol.
In 2006, I needed some extra cash and I ended up selling the Atari
to a used game store called “Play ‘N Trade”. Well, correction: “Play ‘N Trade”
didn’t want the actual system but they did
want the games. I ended up selling the games for 30 cents each. I know: it was
kind of a crackhead move and what I mean by that is only a crackhead would sell original Atari games for 30 cents each. I wasn’t using the 30 cents for crack, though;
in fact, I probably should have been, because my actions probably would’ve been
better justified if I was at least a drug addict looking for some quick cash.
Not the case, though. I actually just made a rather dumb sale and, spoiler
alert, it wouldn’t be the last dumb sale I made at “Play N’ Trade”. But I’ll
talk about that a little later. I won’t get ahead of myself just yet.
THE 8-BIT NINTENDO
YEARS
To no surprise, my siblings and I eventually grew tired of playing
“Cheese Hunt” and “Alien Invaders” all the time and we started bothering our
dad about getting us an actual video game system. Since Atari was already several
years old, he figured it would be better to buy a newer video game consul that
everybody was talking about.
That system was called the “Nintendo Entertainment System”. Code name: the NES.
This "NES", however, was still pretty new and expensive so he wanted
to wait a little bit--maybe like a year or so--for the price to go down.
In the meantime, my brother and I amused ourselves with a “new”
computer in the house and I put quotes around “new” because it was really just an
IBM computer that my dad had brought home from work one day and never brought
back. This computer was quite primitive and it kind of resembled a briefcase
with a small, black-and-green (not black-and-white) monitor built right
into it. For the most part, the only thing this computer was really good for
was word processing. However, this computer had a secret. A dirty, naughty
little secret…
If you typed the command “Run Larry” into the computer, a secret
game would start booting up. This game was called “Leisure Suit Larry”.
“Leisure Suit Larry” was a video game for adults; in fact, you
were supposed to be at least 18 years of age in order to play it. The computer
confirmed the gamer was 18 by asking three questions that apparently nobody
under 18 would be wise enough to answer. They were random history or
geography-related questions. I was certainly not over 18. Neither was my
brother nor any of his friends that used to come over and play this game with
us. We could easily figure out the answers to the questions, though…well,
mainly my brother knew them because he was pretty smart, but we also had a house
full of “World Almanacs” with the super-small print that had a bunch of
random information crammed into them. If we didn’t know
the answers to the questions, the almanacs did! Oh, I still remember how
exciting it felt after answering the third question correctly and you could see
that the computer was now booting up the game for you. It was like hacking a
code. We were in!
Now, “Leisure Suit Larry” has gone through several evolutions over
the years—it’s even an App you can get on your smartphone today—but the one version
we played was, I think, the very first version of “Larry” ever. The game, if
you don’t know, featured a character named Larry who existed in a virtual
world. You would type commands into the computer and Larry would act out at
least some of these commands. Well, okay, he would probably do only about
five-percent of the commands because a very finite amount of commands were
programmed into the game. You learned pretty early on what commands Larry would
respond to and then you would basically type the same commands each time you
played the game. From what I can remember, I know there was a “go to bar”
command and also a “call a cab”, “go to store” or “go to casino” command,
things like that.
A color version of "Leisure Suit Larry". |
Yes, that’s right: this game was on an office computer. To
this day, I’m not even sure what my dad did for a job (the word ‘purchasing’
comes to mind) but I’m pretty sure “Leisure Suit Larry” had nothing to do with
it. Maybe his work programmed the game into the computer so fellas in the
office could take a break from work, decompress and de-stress via Larry if they
wanted to. But I’m almost positive my dad had no idea this game was even on the
computer. I think he was pretty oblivious to its existence and I’m not even
sure how we discovered it was on there but we did and the memories we made
playing “Leisure Suit Larry” were priceless. At the young age of five or six
years old I learned what a rubber was and that you should never wear it in
public lest you get arrested by the police.
Hmm, or maybe my dad did know of Larry’s existence and perhaps this explains why he suddenly seemed
ready to go out and buy a NES for us. It wasn’t even Christmas and he suddenly
said to us, “Okay, it is time.” Maybe him getting an NES was his way of getting
us to stop messing around on his computer. Maybe he knew we were playing Larry but
never confronted us about it.
Then again, I think it was a sale on the NES that my dad wanted to
take advantage of. I think a good deal was what inspired him.
Either way, it finally happened in the summer of 1987. Our dad
purchased a Nintendo Entertainment System from a New England-based department
store named “Lechmere” that no longer exists. In fact, only the ghost of
Lechmere exists, as there is a subway station named Lechmere just outside of
Boston in Cambridge. Well, it’s not really a subway station, more like a
trolley station for the Green Line. I’m just trying to oversimplify things
for non-Bostonians. This is all irrelevant information, though. Sorry.
Indeed, the Nintendo was on sale for a great price, but the catch
was that it didn’t come with any games, not even Super Mario Bros., which
usually came packaged with the system. So we never had Super Mario Bros. until
much later, but I don’t think we even officially “owned it”. I think it was one
of those games we borrowed from somebody and just never ended up giving back.
That happened a lot. We ended up with several games that we “borrowed” from
friends.
But, yes, my dad was happy that he got a good deal on the NES,
though he realized that he would also need to buy a game for us to play on it,
so maybe he didn’t end up getting that great of a deal in the long run anyway. As far as the games went, my brother and I had quickly browsed through some titles at the store and we
decided that the first game we wanted to own for our brand new Nintendo
Entertainment System was a game called “Rush’n Attack”. And that’s what we
ended up getting. Indeed, “Rush’n Attack” was the very first Nintendo game I ever owned
and was really the very first official video game I ever owned.
“Rush’n Attack” was actually a brand new game for Nintendo at the time and
it was made by the power-house Japanese video game company Konami. The game was
pretty simple. You play as an American special operations soldier and try to
destroy a “secret enemy weapon” being developed on an “enemy” base, but I mean,
come on, obviously this “enemy” was the Russians. You’re armed with a knife throughout
the whole game but you’re able to pick up other weapons throughout the levels,
such as a missile launcher, a pistol and also hand grenades.
“Rush’n Attack” was known by NES gamers to be one of the best games
on the market at the time. I liked it well enough but I was young when we bought
it and I found the game difficult. I probably would have been better off
getting Super Mario Bros. as a first game. In fact, there were probably loads
of better choices out there for first games but we were ignorant and the
artwork on the “Rush’n Attack” game package looked so badass.
If I had to do it all over again, the game we should have bought
first was another Konami creation: “Contra”. No doubt about it. Contra, man.
Contra!
I think “Contra” was probably my favorite game for Nintendo or at
least it was among the top five. “Contra” was a kickass war science fiction
game best played with two players and also best played with the famous Konami
code that gave you 30 whole lives; you know the one—up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right…I
don’t have to finish, you know it.
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…um, I mean, the Red Falcons. And also destroy that pesky
alien entity!
My first exposure to “Contra” was at my friend’s house who lived
right up the street from me. His name was Lee and, one day, he had a bunch of
kids from the neighborhood over his house because he wanted to show us this new
video game his dad bought for him called “Contra”. I was absolutely mesmerized
by the game and I didn’t even want to play it. I was perfectly content just
watching the other neighborhood kids play and this was actually a very common
thing for me: that is, I often enjoyed watching video games be played more than
actually playing them myself.
Despite my love for “Contra”, I never actually ended up owning the
game, though I borrowed it from friends (and perhaps rented it from the local
“Video Paradise” video store) on several occasions. My only problem was that I
could never get the damn up-up-down-down code to work right. You had to time it
just perfectly as the intro screen played but I could never do it. I think you
had to finish the code by the time the explosion sound effect happened in the
intro and, no matter how perfect I got the timing down, the
code still never worked. Seemed to work fine for everybody else, though. I was
cursed.
I had much better luck with Contra’s (unofficial) sequel “Life Force”
which was just like “Contra”, except, instead of you being soldiers, you were
two spaceships 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. Aliens were really big in the 1980s
apparently. I think they were mostly symbolic representations of the Russians.
But, yes, “Life Force” was an incredibly fun game and I somehow
managed to nail the Konami code every time. Thirty lives were all mine and I
beat “Life Force” without a problem. Did I ever beat the game without using the
code? Y'know, now that I think of it, no. I didn’t. And, actually, this makes me kind
of sad. Or ashamed. At the end of the day, I’m really kind of a cheater. I beat
that game unfairly.
I’ve gotten a little bit ahead of myself, though. “Life Force” was
a game I didn’t really own until a tad later into the 1980s. Let’s take things
back about a year to the first “Nintendo Christmas”, which is what I call the
first Christmas I had after first owning an NES.
I won’t go on the record and say for sure that we didn’t purchase
any games between the time we acquired “Rush’n Attack” and that next Christmas,
but I don’t really remember that we did. I think we mainly borrowed games from
friends and rented games from the local “Video Paradise” store. Yes, I’m pretty
sure it wasn’t until Christmas 1987 or 1988 that—thanks to Santa Claus—we officially
owned our second AND third Nintendo games.
Those games were “Ghosts ‘n Goblins”…
And “R.C. Pro-Am”.
“Ghosts ‘n Goblins” was an adventure game taking place in, I
believe, somewhat medieval times. You play as a knight in shining armor but you
start the game off in your underwear, hanging out with a princess in a
graveyard. Then, a devil-like entity flies down from a castle in the sky and
takes the princess away from you. Pretty cool way to start a game, right? Then you
jump in your armor and go try to find the princess whom you apparently just made love to in a graveyard. During your quest, you
encounter zombies, ghouls and, of course, ghosts and goblins.
The problem with “Ghosts ‘n Goblins” was that it was REALLY fregging
hard. From what I remember, I was lucky if I could get past the first level and
I’m pretty sure I never got beyond the second level. If you got damaged by a
ghost or goblin once, you would lose your armor and suddenly be back in your
underwear (this was essentially the equivalent of Mario shrinking from large to
small when he gets damaged). Then, when you get hurt again, you die and have to
start over from the beginning of the level or the halfway point if you made it that far. I think you only had a few lives to work with, too. Maybe there was
a code out there somewhere, but—if there was—I didn’t know about it, that’s for
sure.
The controls were a little difficult as well. For example, it was
much harder to jump over a pit than it was in, say, “Super Mario Bros”. Up was
up, down was down, left was left, right was right etc. In other words, there
wasn’t much flexibility, so jumping in a 45-degree angle was rather difficult.
For a while, I was almost convinced that “Ghosts ‘n Goblins” was a
flawed game and wasn’t even beatable because it was so hard. I was proven wrong,
however, when I was riding the bus home from school one day (I was in the 1st or maybe 2nd grade) and an older kid
named Dan told me that he had beaten the game no problem. Dan was one of the
cool kids and he always rode in that small seat in the very back of the bus
next to the emergency exit. Although this seat was basically only big enough
for one person, it was technically a two-seater. In fact, this particular seat
was considered like a throne and whoever sat in it was basically king of the
entire school bus. Dan sat in this seat all the time. Nobody dared take it from
him. Therefore he was king of the entire school bus.
Anyway, what I’m getting at here is that, when Dan said he had
beat “Ghosts ‘n Goblins” without a problem, not only did I NOT question him but
I actually definitely believed him. There was an aura of confidence that Dan
emitted. He wasn’t the kind of person that needed to lie in order to make
himself look cool. He was just cool by nature, right down to the core. Now that
I think about it, I guess Dan was my first man-crush.
So, yes, “Ghosts ‘n Goblins”—although rather difficult—was a beatable game. Where I had thought the game was lazily thrown together by
careless video game programmers, I later learned that “Ghosts ‘n Goblins” was
considered one of the best Nintendo games ever made and was actually designed
with the utmost effort and care. The game is a favorite amongst hardcore NES
gamers, yet—to this day—I’ve never really gotten beyond the second level.
Rad Racer. |
“R.C. Pro-Am” was fun as hell and my brother and I—along with some
neighborhood friends—got a lot of use out of that game. Playing two-player mode
was great fun, but, for the most part, I remember racing against the computer
and the courses got harder and harder the longer you played. At some point deep
into the levels, one of the cars you raced against—usually the orange car, I
believe—would start blinking, go berserk and then start going about three times
as fast as the fastest speed you were able to go. I’m not sure if it was a
glitch in the game but this car was insane and was basically unbeatable so
there was really no point in trying to beat him. Basically the orange
car going berserk was an indication that you were playing too long and it was
time to start doing your homework.
Also, I should probably mention that it was around the time of
“R.C. Pro-Am” that my brother and I acquired a new controller for the Nintendo
called the “NES Advantage Joystick”. This was a controller that essentially
looked like the controls you would use on an arcade video game, complete with
spring-loaded joystick and extra-large buttons. It also had additional buttons
that said “turbo” on them, but these buttons never seemed to do anything, at
least not for any of the games that I played. Supposedly maybe they worked for
“Rad Racer”? Or maybe that’s just an old wives’ tale straight out of ancient
Nintendo lore.
Overall, the “NES Advantage Joystick” didn’t give you much of an
“advantage” over the computer or other players, but it was really effective
when playing a game like “R.C. Pro-Am” because it was much easier to steer the
car with the joystick. Plus, it was a really durable, well-constructed
controller that just felt really good in your hands. I liked that controller a
whole lot, actually, and I’m pretty sure I still have it somewhere…well, I
think I had it up until recently. It may be gone now, I’m not sure. Yep, gone,
forget I ever mentioned it.
“R.C. Pro-Am” did, indeed, keep me busy for much of the 1988 area.
“Ghosts ‘n Goblins”? Not so much…
But it was also around this time when I was being exposed to “The
Legend of Zelda” and I say “exposed” because I never actually owned the game
until much later in the early 90s. My cousins would bring the game over and I
would basically watch my cousins, my brother, and even my sister try and guide
Link through wilderness and labyrinths in his quest to rescue Princess Zelda
from the evil warlock Gannon.
Zelda was another one of those video games that I initially enjoyed
watching more than I did actually playing it. I could literally just sit back
on the couch and watch it be played for hours. I wasn’t the only one who did
this, either; even though one person was actually operating the controls,
everybody shared their ideas and thoughts as to which way they thought Link
should go, whether he should try a bomb here or there, move a rock etc. The
game had so many puzzles and secrets that everybody’s input was welcomed and
needed.
I should also say that “Zelda” was yet another game that creeped
me out in a significant way, particularly the labyrinth parts of the game. Not
to be overly specific, but I can still hear the sound of the “dragon roar” you
would hear when you were getting close to the room with a final labyrinth boss.
Man, that sound would just give you a nervous feeling because you weren’t
positive which room exactly the boss was in but you knew you were close. It
didn’t even sound like a dragon roar, though. Due to Nintendo's 8-bit technical
constraints, it sounded more like a creepy sneeze coming from a robotic ghost.
In fact, if it had sounded like a real dragon’s roar, it would have been less
creepy. The technical limitations actually worked to Zelda’s advantage and made
the limited sound fx all the creepier.
But, yes, the Zelda game was overall very mysterious, strange and
eerie. Even the old medicine man who gave you the map to give to the (even
creepier) old woman was creepy. Playing the labyrinth levels with that same
music on a loop kind of put you into a weird trance and it was a strange
but extremely fun experience playing the Zelda game. But, yes, creepy as hell.
Or at least to me it was.
Like I said, I never owned Zelda until much later. The summer
between fifth grade and sixth grade I decided to buy it at the local “Kay Bee Toys”
store. I already owned a Super Nintendo at this point, but I thought playing
Zelda would keep me occupied for my summer vacation and prevent me from getting
bored and driving my mom nuts, which was known to happen. I ended up playing the game for several
hours of summer vacation, but I never ended up beating it.
Having brought up “Kay Bee Toys”, though, I’m suddenly reminded of
another memorable video game that I ended up owning for the NES. I guess I’m
done talking about Zelda so I will abruptly make the transition to talking
about this game.
The game was called “Rampage”.
There was tons of buzz about “Rampage” when it first came out. It
was a hot item that was supposedly THE game to own, a must-have. I happened to
be at the Braintree Mall (just outside of Boston) with my dad one day and we
paid a visit to the Kay Bee Toys there. I had no interest in toys at that point
in my life so I went straight to the front counter and perused the display of
video games hanging on the pegged wall behind it. Holy crap! There it was:
“Rampage”.
I was convinced that owning “Rampage” would bring instant
happiness and satisfaction to me for the rest of my life. I begged my dad to
buy it for me. I told him I would never ask for anything ever, ever again. He
would never have to buy me another Christmas or birthday present for the rest
of my life. “Rampage” was what would make my life complete.
My dad wasn’t instantly sold on the game because it cost about 60
dollars! He told me he would think about it a bit and then we went off to do
some dull errands within the mall. For the next hour or so I pulled out every
subtle manipulation tactic I could come up with. “You know, dad, we recently
learned in school that playing video games boosts brain cells.” I also went on
to tell him that I would do any chore he wanted me to do around the house. I
just really wanted “Rampage” so, so bad.
In the end, my dad gave in and bought the game before we left the
mall. I said, thank you, thank you, I love you so much, dad! He also told me
not to make a big deal about it with my mom and especially don’t mention how
much it cost!
I brought “Rampage” home, slid the game cartridge gently into the mouth of my Nintendo Entertainment
System, AND…
It wasn’t all that great of a game. 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.
In fact, “Rampage” literally had hundreds of levels. But it was
the same thing over and over again: punching buildings until they crumbled to
the ground. And it was pretty hard to get killed, at least to the point of a
GAME OVER. Nope, you just kept going and going and going. “Rampage” was
probably the only game I ever played that was just too easy and too boring.
So, yes, unfortunately “Rampage” didn’t quite live up to its
reputation, but I never admitted this to my dad. I wanted him to believe that
his money was well spent and I was the happiest kid in the world. Besides, it
wasn’t THAT bad of a game. I got a lot of use out of it. I enjoyed destroying
building after building for probably too many hours, but, man, the game did get old by, like,
level 25.
Bart skateboarding along the Great Wall. |
But, yes, Christmas and birthdays: this was when my collection of
Nintendo games would grow a little larger. There was, however, one Easter when
I was delightfully surprised to find a Nintendo game in my Easter basket. This
was very unexpected because I usually only got a couple action figures in my
Easter basket or a maybe a Hot Wheels if I was lucky. As for candy, I never got
any candy because I was allergic to it (or so my mother told me). Perhaps my
parents felt bad that I couldn’t get candy like most normal children and they
made up for this by getting me a video game instead. That may have been the
reason or maybe I was just doing well in school and they thought I deserved a
prize. Whatever the reasons were, I woke up on Easter morning (1988 or 1989 I
believe?) and found a video game in my Easter basket called “Jackal”.
“Jackal” was another war-related game from Konami, kind of like
“Contra” and “Life Force”, but you played from an overhead angle like with
“R.C. 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”—gee, where have we heard the
term “secret enemy weapon” before? Oh, that’s right: “Rush’n Attack”. Man, we
were really conditioned to fear those Russians, weren’t we?
The overhead view of "Jackal". |
To my surprise, I later learned that “Jackal” was an arcade game
before it was an NES game. In fact, most games I owned had previous incarnations
as arcade games (“Rush’n Attack”, “Ghosts ‘n Goblins”, “R.C. Pro-Am”, “Rampage”
and others). What I never realized is that most
Nintendo games existed as arcade games before anything else. I
guess the game designers figured, well, if it worked for the arcade, it
will work for the NES.
My ignorance in the area of arcade games was mainly due to the
fact that there just wasn’t a video arcade around me for the first part of my
childhood (one came later but I’ll talk more about that in a bit). I would
probably only go to a bona fide arcade about once a year, usually while on
vacation down on Cape Cod. A family amusement center named “Barn of Fun” in
Dennis, MA. comes to mind. It was a miniature-golf place but it also had a
sweet arcade with Skee ball and TONS of video games. It no longer exists but I just thought I would mention it in the
rare case that somebody out there knows what I’m talking about.
Other than the good old “Barn O’ Fun”, my arcade game exposure was
limited. However, every once in a while, you would encounter a video game
machine in a random place, like in a restaurant or bowling alley, or even
inside a mall.
One time, I was at the beach with my family and my cousins down on
Cape Cod for just the day. After the beach, we headed to a nearby outlet mall
right near the Bourne Bridge for dinner or to do some shopping—whatever it was.
The only thing I remember about this mall was that it had one—just one—video
game…and it was the coolest video game I had ever laid my eyes upon.
That video game was called “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The
Arcade Game”.
“TMNT: The arcade game” was a kick-ass four-player Konami title
(are we starting to see a pattern here?). You play as the 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!
I loved the ninja turtles growing up and this game was essentially taking the cartoon and enabling you to play it as a video game. In other words, you were kind of interactively engaging with the cartoon. That’s how good the graphics were!
I loved the ninja turtles growing up and this game was essentially taking the cartoon and enabling you to play it as a video game. In other words, you were kind of interactively engaging with the cartoon. That’s how good the graphics were!
I played the crap out of TMNT and what I remember is
that I was pretty good at it. Usually arcade games were super hard so it could
gobble your quarters, but the difficulty level for this particular game was
reasonable.
To my delight, “TMNT: The Arcade Game” got released for the
Nintendo in 1990 and, to no surprise, it was the number-one item on my
Christmas wish-list that year. I didn’t get it for Christmas, though, and I was
bummed...but then I got it for my birthday—January 5th, only a couple weeks
after XMAS—and I was thrilled. The game even came with a Pizza Hut coupon for a
free personal pan pizza! I never used that coupon.
As the 1990s kicked into high gear, I continued to play TMNT in
ridiculous amounts. But there were also three other key games that I was
playing around this time as well:
“Mega Man 2”, “Tetris”, and, well, the last one’s a surprise. Can
you guess it, baby? It’s known as the number-one Nintendo game to ever come down the pipeline and, yes, I just gave you a hint there, baby. I’ll let you
think a minute while I talk about the former two games:
The opening menu screen for "Mega Man 2". |
Then, there was Tetris, which I spent many an hour playing. If
you’ve been living on Mars for the past few decades and just returned, Tetris
is a puzzle game where you try to fit pieces together of different sizes and
shapes. They keep falling from the top of the screen and you have to arrange
them in an order so they fit together. Once you fit one line together, the line
disappears and you get points. Reach a certain number of points and you proceed to a higher level of difficulty. The pieces keep falling faster and faster as the
levels proceed. If they stack up too high, you’re screwed and if they reach the
top? GAME OVER.
I’ve probably played Tetris for way too many hours of my life.
Like with many of the NES games, the music was hypnotizing and, after a few
levels, you fell into a trance so you kind of just kept playing and playing and playing. The only bad part was
trying to fall asleep at night because your brain was still in Tetris-mode. All you
could see in your mind’s eye were Tetris pieces falling from the sky and you
had that stressful feeling that you must hurry and fit them all together.
Okay, now it’s time to talk about the third game I mentioned, the
mystery game, the game known to be the number-one NES video game of all time.
Did you guess it?
We first caught glimpses of this video game in the 1989 movie The
Wizard starring Fred Savage of “Wonder Years” fame. The movie is about Savage
and his little gaming-wizard brother Jimmy (played by Luke Edwards) hitching their
way across America so Jimmy can play in a world video game championship in
California.
The Wizard, by the way, also starred Beau Bridges and even
Christian Slater! It was a fun little movie that was crammed with Nintendo
product placement and all sorts of actual Nintendo games like “Double Dragon”, “Ninja
Gaidan”, “Rad Racer” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (i.e. the first and far
more inferior TMNT, not the aforementioned arcade game sequel). Overall, the
movie was basically a giant advertisement for Nintendo but, in particular, it
was an advertisement for a brand new game that had yet to be released. You know
the one. The game was…
Super Mario Bros. 3!
“Super Mario Bros. 3” is, indeed, known to be the number-one NES
video game of all time. The game was a follow-up to Super Mario Bros. and Super
Mario Bros. 2, the latter of which was also a great game, though admittedly a
little…um…strange. The reason why Super Mario Bros. 2 was “strange” was because
it literally started out as a completely different game in Japan called “Yume
Kojo: Doki Doki Panic”. This game had completely different protagonists that
were later changed to Mario, Luigi, Princess and Toad by Nintendo America, thus
converting the game into a Super Mario Bros. sequel. This kind of explains the
strange enemies (i.e. Birdo, Mouser) that seemed to exist in a world very
different from the Mario Bros. we were used to. I mean, the final enemy isn’t
even Bowser. It’s an evil frog named Wart!
Super Mario Bros. 3 however, marked a return to classic Super
Mario Bros. mythology, though many new features were added to that mythos.
Probably one of the most memorable of these new features was the addition of an item with magical powers. Along with the traditional mushroom, fireflower
and star, there was the now-famous “super leaf” that could turn Mario into a
flying raccoon. There were also other items such as frog suits that enabled you
to jump higher and swim faster. Oh, and there was a Zelda-like flute that
enabled you to magically enter a warp zone.
Overall, Super Mario Bros. 3 graphics were quite impressive with a
three-dimensional background that created more depth in the visuals of the
game. Some levels had hills you could slide down on your fanny. There were also
ice levels where you slipped and slid all over the place. Cool pipe levels.
Water levels. Giant levels where
question-mark boxes—not to mention enemies—were about five times larger than
normal. Flying pirate ship levels, lots of cannons and, oh, all sorts of
goodies.
Indeed, all I have to do is hear two seconds of “Super Mario Bros.
3” music and I’m brought back to Saturday mornings in the very early-90s. I had
a tough week of third or fourth grade behind me, crawled out of bed with eye-crusties impairing my vision and played a bunch of Super Mario Bros. 3 while still in
my jammies. I played a TON of that game and it was really hard to get me to
stop. In fact, there was only ONE thing that actually possessed the power to
stop me:
A whole other video game system…a new system everybody was talking
about. This system was called:
The SUPER Nintendo Entertainment system. Code name: the SNES.
To be continued...
To be continued...
...
Other trending articles by Matt Burns that may be of interest to you:
I Dream of Dream Machine (a memoir of the local video arcade)
NEVER FORGET the Fun-O-Rama (a traveling carnival memoir)
A Love Letter to the Emerald Square Mall (about the death of the shopping mall age)
…
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. Find these books and many more at his Amazon Author page.