Nintendo Memories

I pur­chased Super Mario Bros. 3 [watch some­one beat the game in 11 min­utes], The Leg­end of Zel­da and Ice Hock­ey yes­ter­day for my 8 bit Nin­ten­do Enter­tain­ment Sys­tem. I first played a Nin­ten­do soon after it hit the mar­ket, on our fam­i­ly trip to Orlan­do Flori­da for Dis­ney World and Sea World. I was prob­a­bly 5 or 6. I remem­ber stop­ping at an uncle’s house, some sort of kin, maybe a great uncle, I’m not quite sure. Any­way he had a Nin­ten­do. I’d nev­er heard of the Nin­ten­do, and I don’t think I even knew what a video game was. I remem­ber play­ing Duck Hunt and maybe a lit­tle Excite­bike and absolute­ly lov­ing it.

I nev­er had video games grow­ing up, until I saved enough mon­ey to buy a Game­boy in Junior High. I did man­age to mooch off of my cousins and my bud­dy Mario [no, real­ly.] who had all kinds of games. The rule was, you got to play the game until you had a game over and then you had to pass it on. This was frus­trat­ing for me because the peo­ple who actu­al­ly owned the games were much bet­ter and thus got to play much longer. I remem­ber watch­ing my cousin Chris play Super Mario Bros. 3 for 3 hours before he ran out of lives, and lit­tle old me would play Tetris for 20 min­utes and have to pass the con­troller.

Even­tu­al­ly I moved into the realms of Playsta­tion, again pur­chas­ing it myself, as I’ve done with all my com­put­er games, but the love for Nin­ten­do was still there. My junior year of col­lege, I nabbed a Nin­ten­do and a few games on Ebay and have been slow­ly build­ing the car­tridge col­lec­tion since. One of my team­mate’s hous­es off cam­pus had an old school Nin­ten­do and Super Mario 3 bat­tles on a reg­u­lar basis. I even man­aged to impress them with my amaz­ing jump­ing abil­i­ties. I did man­age to acquire a mod­icum of skill at 8 bit Nin­ten­do over the years, even though I’m no Wiz­ard. Now, I have a bunch of stu­pid sports games, but I do have Super Mario/Duck Hunt, Metroid [thanks Patrick!], Tetris, Sec­tion Z and the afore­men­tioned games. I still need a few key ones though. Dou­ble Drag­on, Excite­bike, Con­tra, 10 Yard Fight, Final Fan­ta­sy and Bub­ble Bob­ble. They will be mine, oh yes, they will be mine.

What is your favorite line-up for Ice Hock­ey? I pre­fer one fat guy, one nor­mal guy and two skin­nies.