up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-select-start
Written: Aug 29 '00 (Updated Aug 30 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: an everlasting phenomenon
Cons: sometimes games would just flash and flash when you turned them on and you'd have to try for like five minutes to get it to show up right without scrambling
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| bethy's Full Review: Nintendo NES |
First, does this category ("Classic Consoles") exist solely to allow Epinions members to express nostalgia for outdated electronics? I'm not complaining; I enjoy partaking in such self-indulgence. I tend to remember the good things more than the bad things, so my childhood as I look back on it now seems pretty rosy and ideal - a place to which I occasionally wish I could retreat. When I seriously consider what it would be like to be eight again, however, I realize there was a lot I didn't know.
Like where to find the Jumping Boots in Metroid, for example. Or how to get past level five in Ghosts and Goblins without losing all my armor.
I've been reading a lot of highly entertaining opinions of the Atari 2600 system lately, but I can't completely relate to them. I am of the Nintendo generation. Sure, I'd played Atari Baseball and some other forgettable games in my best friend's basement in the early-mid 1980s, but it wasn't until my cousin, who lived next door to my family, brought home a Nintendo that I truly got hooked.
My brother, two years younger than me, used to call the Nintendo hotlines just to talk with other Nintendo enthusiasts. After about ten minutes of him trying to weasel out playing tips and classified info about what new games were being developed, the counselors would tell him he had to hang up so they could deal with other calls.
Indeed, my brother is a truer Nintendo fanatic than I am, and in fact, some of the stuff he did seems pretty insane now. He ate Nintendo cereal ("Nin-ten-do, it's a cereal now/ Nin-ten-do, it's a breakfast, wow!"), he paused games in choice spots so he could record their soundtracks for later audio enjoyment, he wore a Nintendo sweat suit, he watched the ridiculously bad Mario Bros. TV show after school, he read Nintendo Power, he argued fanatically about the benefits of Nintendo over Sega to anyone who questioned Nintendo's future, he refused to let me play Zelda because it was a "gold game" and therefore more special, and, most notably, he competed in the 1989 Nintendo World Championships, making it to the quarter-finals.
But I, too, have many fond Nintendo memories: playing Ice Hockey with my cousin and neighbors; making impossible tracks for others to beat in Excite Bike; spending summer in the basement immersed in the Big Black Book, helping the boys who surrounded me beat Metroid; finding all the Goonies in Goonies II, repeatedly beating 2-player Contra using the secret code (aside: last year in a bar, someone mentioned Contra, and about twelve of the people I was with - including myself - yelled simultaneously, "Up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-select-start!" embarrassingly loudly); obsessing over beating Soda Popinski before my brother did in Mike Tyson's Punchout; almost beating Rad Racer... the list ends, but not here. I'll spare you.
I took the household Nintendo with me to college, but to my disappointment, I found that it hadn't held up. Paperboy and Megaman were the only games I could get to work, and only those after making numerous attempts at the trick of inserting the cartridge as close to being out of the console as possible (it sounds confusing, but you probably know what I'm talking about if you're "experienced"). Does that mean that Nintendo was poorly made? Nah. I mean, it was eleven or twelve years old, and it had gotten banged up innumerably. I know of others whose Nintendos still work normally, which isn't necessarily to say perfectly. Even the best Nintendos still seem to have (had) trouble with some games. It may have been the fault of the games rather than the console.
I appreciate the wonders of the N64, of DreamCast and Playstation, and of Microsoft's soon-to-be Xbox. Earlier this year, I got sucked into the vortex that is N64's Donkey Kong. In it, there's a part where the player (you) must defeat the original version of Donkey Kong. In some ways, it was more challenging than the beautifully-rendered N64 version. Most of all, it made me realize how far games have come in so short a time. I imagine kids today look at the 8-bit games I still love as frightfully archaic. Imagine what their kids will think of their childhood video game entertainment.
Is this enough nostalgia? I think so. But there must be a reason for my passionate feelings towards Nintendo. It's intertwined with my childhood, yes. But it's also something that roots my peers and me in a certain time, a pre-internet age, a Commodore-64/Tandy/Apple II age, and most certainly a Nintendo age, when all the stuff we take for granted now was so very exciting and new, and being the among the first to beat - or maybe just find a warp level in - a new game made you feel kind of special, cheesy as it now sounds.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
bethy
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Member: Beth
Location: NY
Reviews written: 60
Trusted by: 36 members
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