8-bit Fun
It’s amazing how a nearly 20 year old gaming console can make you so happy. Suddenly feeling nostalgic on a Sunday afternoon, I decided to break out my NES, complete with 7 whole games. A very sad and unimpressive collection, I know, but don’t judge a gamer by their gaming collection. Games were pretty expensive back then! I mean, can you believe I still paid almost $30 for Caveman Games in 1990?? But just like how I completed Tomb Raider for a mere $4 using Redbox, I played most of my games from borrowing or renting them at my local video store. After reading my monthly EGM, I would pick out a few games, rent one on a Friday and beat it by Sunday. I may not have played everything, but everything I played was memorable.
My small and sad collection
So when I busted out my NES, I had no idea if it was even going to work or not or if I would be able to hook it up to an HDTV, especially since I already knew I was missing cables for it. Luckily, we had one video cable lying around, but no audio cable. I thought it was just going to be a day without any 8-bit sound, but as I was fumbling around our receiver, I decided to try plugging in the standard audio cable into the red audio connector slot. It didn’t truly fit, but OH MY GOD, there was sound!
Thrilled, I grabbed the controller, grabbed my husband, and announced we were going to have to play Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers co-op. Even though I remember single player being a breeze for me, playing co-op can one of the most frustrated things, especially in a game where you’re throwing boxes left and right and climbing towers, easily knocking the other player off the screen!
After lots of frustration and many deaths, we then moved on to Thunder & Lightning, a fancy Breakout style game, which was always one of the most difficult games for me to beat. 30 levels of sheer madness, this game is extremely hard to beat for one player and nearly impossible to beat playing co-op. Each of you pretty much has to have eagle eyes to keep track of the fast moving ball while also coordinating movement with each other. And as expected, we didn’t make it far, but it didn’t matter because I had such a blast.
And finally, it was time to play… wait for it… The Legend of Zelda!! You may want to sit down for this, but… I have never played this game. Crazy, right? I had no one to borrow it from, didn’t know much about it, and just never got the chance to play it! So I figure better late than never, right?
Thanks, Kim, for letting me borrow all your “cool” games.
And who knows, maybe my NES will now have a permanent spot on the shelf!
9 Comments
Tali
My Sega: Genesis is hooked up to our HD tv. So many memories. There’s an awesome store in LA called World-8 in LA that’s got all the modern stuff but plenty of the good old stuff as well. Played Jurassic Park the other day after watching the movie in 3D. Aladdin for Genesis is still one of my favorite video games of all time and I will forget all my future children’s names one day and still be able to recite off that cheat code.
emilyo
I never had a Genesis, but LOVED Altered BEAST!!
Mariko
Your collection is more than double what I had as a kid. No wonder Bubble Bobble is still my favourite game of all time, haha.
Apparently, when Rick was little his parents bought him and his brother an NES for Xmas, but couldn’t resist playing it themselves. After the kids went to bed, then would unwrap it and play Zelda together (his dad would control the game and his mom would draw a map to keep track of all the areas they had discovered), then wrap it back up before the kids woke up. His mom even used to grind for his dad while he was a work!
emilyo
haha that is so awesome! Bubble Bobble is one of my all time favorite NES games too (all 200+ crazy levels!). I actually think only 5 of those games are actually mine. I have a feeling a couple were borrowed and never returned. My friend brought over the second pile of games so I can’t even claim those are mine either.
That is such a cool story. I wonder if we’ll be like that when we have kids. Yeah, now that I’ve played a few hours of Zelda, I started drawing a map too! I decided to try not to use the internet and do it the old fashioned way by paper and pencil.
omegacarotene
ah, the original The Legend of Zelda~
i actually played it for the first time (a few years back) and beat it on the GameBoy Advance; it was one of the releases among the GBA’s NES Classics line. not quite the same as pulling out a dusty ol’ NES-that-i’ve-never owned, but at least it was an NES-themed GBA. :)
now the game, to the best of my knowledge, was faithful to original…meaning it was HARD, like hit-your-head-100-times-against-a-red-tektite’s-crabby-carapace hard. oh, memories…
so, have you found the one Old Man who actually disapproves of your explosive entry into his humble cave?
good times! >[:)
emilyo
oh my gosh, yes, I seriously don’t understand how one can play that game without some sort of guide. I broke down and finally had to look online because seriously – who has time to go around burning pushes and finding secret holes on the side of the mountain?! I was almost going to do the 2nd quest too, but then gave up pretty quickly. haha.
omegacarotene
no kidding, eh? what would we do w/o the vast troves of info on the interwebz?
of course, one could attempt to push every block and burn every bush, plus bust out the graph paper… ha~
yeah, 2nd Quest ended for me at the dungeon2 boss…
love the blogs, btw >[:)
Chimmy
I used to borrow games from Albertsons. Man, i totally forgot that i used to love playing Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers.
emilyo
Haha. Yeah, I used to rent games from my local video store on weekends. Good times!