Old and video games don't mesh well in the minds of most human beings. At least those humans thirty years or beyond. To be honest, old and video game are still two things that don't sit well in a sentence with me, because I realize how far away from childhood I've gotten. I'm certainly not claiming I am old, should some truly elderly geezer start shaking his or her fist at their computer screen and shrieking about how they wish they could rewind the clock to where I am at now.
However, it occurs to me that my first days of playing Duck Hunt and the original Mario Bros. have receded nearly two decades into the past. I was about 5 when my dad bought a Nintendo and started to teach me the hidden areas in the home land of Mario and Luigi. By then, it was 1992 and the game had been out for near ten years (released in 1983.) But it was the most amazing thing in the world to me. It was new to me, and wasn't considered old by people of that time. I'm sure Mario Bros. seems like an archaic piece of cave art to kids in their pre-teens. In todays blog, I am going to go through some of the games I obsessed over while growing u
p. I spent my entire childhood vidding, with what was then "cutting edge" technology. This list may bore you to death, but you also may decide to try out my aged list of suggestions. You can easily download emulators for NES, SNES and Gameboys and then download the games (called ROMS), to play on them.
Nintendo
These were the four games that I played obsessively on our Nintendo console. Scarily enough, I still have the console and the games, and they all still work. Sometimes the screen will blink between orange and black, and I'll have to blow the dust out of the cartridges and restart five times, but it still functions well. Maybe, one day, it will be a priceless antique and I can become wealthy in my old age and buy an entire set of golden dentures.
-MARIO BROS.-
The worst thing in Mario Bros., for me, were the hatchet throwing turtles. I hated those guys. Facing all the castles sucked too, when all of them contained mushrooms instead of the Princess. So much deceit! So many lies! Why is the world inhabited by killers turtles! Why must a humble plumber rise to save the day, and why can he shoot fireballs out of his ass when he picks psychedelic flowers?! This entire game was probably based on the visions some substance abuser saw in acid trips. I mean, think about the structure. I always skipped ahead several worlds at a time, because I knew the secret passages to get to the world portals. I never actually beat the game. Mostly because you only had so many lives and no save option. When you died, you had to start all over. The suck.
-DUCK HUNT-
I so cheated at Duck Hunt. Forgive me, but I was a little kid. I would often get frustrated and put the little orange laser gun directly on the screen. I can still hear the little sound effects from this game in my head. I had the Mario Bros. game cassette that came with Duck Hunt. Mindless fun. I did hate the clay shooting part. That was rather boring. And when you missed, that damn dog always laughed at you. What a poor self esteem builder for small children. Some of them probably developed a fear of their real dogs. They probably lied in bed at night and looked at Fido as he panted and stared innocently up at them before screaming, "Quit judging me!"
~Bastard....~
-ICE CLIMBERS-
I don't know how many people even know this game exists... You played as a little Eskimo, and had to ascend to the top of the ...whatever you are in. A cave? You jumped up and bashed the blocks above your head and then jumped through the opening. You had to avoid furry little yetis, pterodactyls, falling icicles and the occasional polar bear with sunglasses. He was also wearing tropical print swim trunks. He was apparently a polar bear with "Who am I?" issues, who dreamed of chillin' in the tropics. You could bash all of these various baddies with your hammer. The yetis would keep trying to fill your holes so you couldn't jump up, and you sometimes had to deal with pieces that would shoot you forward if you stepped on them (usually straight into enemies), or have to try and jump on moving platforms. When you got to the top, you entered a bonus round where you had to jump on slippery platforms and collect fruits and veggies. At the very top, there was a giant pterodactyl that you were supposed to try and jump to. If you succeeded, he carried you away and you got mucho points. I hardly every succeeded during the bonus round. I usually never made it to the bird, and if I did I ran out of time or jumped off the edge. Even if you successfully cleared the entire level, but fudged up the bonus round, your little character would weep uncontrollably during the points tally. I guess it was a game about prehistoric, emo Eskimos fighting their way up an icy mountain for no particular reason. Apparently their entire food supply grew at the top of the mountain. I guess if I had to scale enormous snow covered summits every day just to eat a nasty egg plant, I would be depressed as well.
-ADVENTURE ISLAND II-
Another game that was extremely frustrating because of the lack of a save capability. Luckily, there were cheats codes that would allow you to go back to the island you were working on when you died, rather than having to start all the way from the beginning. The under water levels were awful, but then under water levels are horrid on pretty much any game. Your main weapon was a hatchet you could throw at people, but you were able to break open eggs and ride fire breathing dinosaurs, flying dinosaurs, etc. A really fun game. Don't ever get the damn skateboard. It will cause you to die. And the red dinosaur can jump in the lava. This a game that should be played on an emulator because of the ability to save states. By the way, the cheat code is Left, Right, Left, Right, A, B, A, B. You have to do it as fast as you can at the start screen before the little guy gets whacked in the head with the coconut. If you fail, just restart and try again and again. Its sad that I remember that code from when I was probably 8-10 years old. I think its interesting that the main character wears a tiny skirt made of leaves as his main article of clothing, but can pull off the creation of a baseball cap. Priorities?
Super Nintendo
I know I played more games than this on the good old SNES, but these are the ones I played the most. I beat Lion King a zillion times, and it is still one of my favorite SNES games.
-SUPER MARIO WORLD-
This game is still fun to play. Most Mario games are a pretty good choice. My baby sitter taught me most of the secrets in this game. She showed us how to get to the "star world", where you could get special Yoshis that were different colors and could do things like fly. I beat this game several times. Usually I used secret short cuts to get to the final boss, however. I hated the under water levels, but doesn't every one? The cave ones weren't very easy either. And what the heck was with all the mean football players?! They seemed like completely random characters.
-THE LION KING-
I think I may bust out the SNES tonight and play this game. It has a good amount of challenge to it, and is a better movie based game than most that come out today. You played half of the levels as a cub and half as an adult. You got to play every major part of the movie. For instance, you have to outrun the stampede, and you get to jump all over the jungle animals just like in the "I Can't Wait to Be King" part of the movie. You have a level in the elephant graveyard, and a Hakuna Matata level. You get to fight Scar in a final battle at the end, where your goal is to throw him off the top of Pride Rock. You have a roar meter, and using it startles some creatures so that they flip over and you can kill them. You used "swipe" and "pounce" as your attacks. There was allot of the game dedicated to puzzles and to acrobatics. The level where you have to run on the ostriches and get thrown by monkeys is a good one if you want to give your brain a work out. I may have liked this game so much because I was obsessed with The Lion King movie for awhile. I could literally tell you all the lines in the movie. I really didn't have many friends as a child. I must have frightened them away.
-DONKEY KONG COUNTRY-
Everyone who had a SNES just HAD to have this game. Its still a ton of fun to play. I have Donkey Kong Country 1, 2, and 3 for SNES. My favorite thing was to break the crates with the animals. The rhino was super helpful. I absolutely detested the damn wasps, and the levels with the barrel cannons. I still remember having to throw eggs at a giant vulture during a boss level. In the second game, you are Diddy Kong and you team up with Dixie, who can use her ponytail to sort of fly. In the third one you have a damn baby....an enormous baby, that you drag around with you. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be Diddy and Dixie's love child or not. Even if he was simply a little brother, he was of the entirely wrong species. Maybe they were just into swiping toddlers to sell on the black market.
Playstation 1
-LOST WORLD : JURASSIC PARK-
Whats sad is that I know we had probably twenty or so games for the original Playstation, but these are the only ones I can remember playing obsessively. You played through as various species of dinosaurs, and as a human in a few instances. The most fun was arguably the velociraptor. You pounced on people and eviscerated them, feeding happily on their entrails. How fun! The T-Rex was awesome, simply due to the ease in which you could stomp and chomp people. However, the level was insanely difficult because the humans had an enormous amount of fire power. I remember the humans in the Jurassic Park movies getting owned by the T-Rexes in almost every instance. Yet in the game, they have grenades, rocket launchers, and enormous laser traps. Who knew that pixel people are far more intelligent and well armed than real ones. By far the most difficult part was being human. Taking down a three ton animal all by yourself is a bit difficult, especially one with teeth two times longer than your entire body. You didn't stand much of a chance against a Tyrannosaurus all by your lonesome. It was a very hard game, but for a little girl who went through a dinosaur phase in which I ran around the house pretending I was a vicious man eater, this game was awesome.
-TEKKEN 2-
I LOVED this game! I was in such awe with the graphics at the time. Its amazing how crappy they look to me now. I would invite my friends over and whip them again and again. All the little boys I was friends with would get mad that a girl was beating them at a fighting game. My secret? I memorized the combos for several of the characters. Everyone else just mashed buttons. These were long combos that took practice to get down. One mistake and you ruined it. Ah, the free time of child hood. I remember playing through every character in the game just so I could unlock their final cut scenes. The only character names I remember are Law, the guy in the orange suit in this screenshot, and Jun. I liked the Indian girl. There was also a leopard man and a dude made out of steel. At the end, you fought a purple guy with demon wings. I don't even know why. I also remember fighting a tropical kangaroo at some point......Or maybe I just imagined that the day my mom gave me fermented peaches.
~Bask in the glory of the cut scene! Yes, her cut scene was to walk out in the forest and commune with the animals like Snow freaking White. Come to think of it, was there even a comprehensive story line to this game?~
-SPYRO THE DRAGON-
This game was ingenious. It had a very original story line. It was cute as a button but not so easy and boring that it was kids only. You had to go around freeing the adult dragons from their crystal prisons. You could glide, breathe fire, and charge at things. This entire blog piece is making me want to go out and find an old PS1. My brother traded ours for an N64 quite along time ago, along with all the games. There are a million sequels for this game, but I've only played the first two titles. This is worth going back and playing, even if the graphics are extremely angular.
Gameboy
-SUPER OFF ROAD-
Super Off Road! This game was the go to on a long and boring road trip. There was also an arcade version in dozens of pizza places across the country for some reason. It was surprisingly difficult for a hand held racing game. There were only a scant few tracks, and little variety, but it still entertained the pants off of me. Then again, a ten year old is easily entertained. You could upgrade your tires and engine, etc. and buy NOS boosts. Mine was never in color.
-SNOW BROS.-
I couldn't even find an image for the version of this game that I used to play. I had one of the big, grey Gameboys. Everything it played was green. I don't even know why I liked this game so much. You were a snowman, and you threw snowballs at your enemies until they themselves were a giant ball of snow, which you then sent rolling around trying to flatten other enemies. The Snow Bros. actually looked a bit like plump little ghosts mixed with walking skeletons. I think they tried to rip off the popularity of the Mario Bros. characters. I can't imagine that business meeting. "Hey, Mario Bros. are the most popular video game characters! We should have some kind of "Bros."!...Lets make them SNOWMEN!..*giggles incoherently*.." I can completely see why someone would come up with that random idea.
I'm not even going to add Tetris to the list, or the original Pokemon Red and Blue. Too many people played those, including me. :)
