“your topic is similar to: videogames were invented by jews”
Anyway… I just returned from a long absence to sometimes playing a video game. I play SNES games on an emulator. I was about 20 when the gaming world shifted to being dominated by 3D environments, which I found, and find borning as my feeling was always why don’t I just go outside and run around there, for real. I’m not interested in mowing down people anyway. So it just bored me. But even the first 3D Zelda game, Ocarina of Time, which I had intensely anticipated end '98, was an unexpected disappointment. To me these games lack the sharpness of the 2D environments - in graphics, in depiction of characters and the play controls. Its more formulaic, more of a trick, less direc, in my experience. Of course that’s entirely subjective.
I started out my console ownership with the Atari 2600, me ans my sister got it for Sinterklaas, but my grandma saw us observe a NES ad on tv, and she gathered that might be even more fun. She helped us very neatly repack the Atari (I remember her using a cloth to polish the box) and walk to the store, where the owner was all too happy to get the Nintendo from the top shelf in the back. He was proud to sell it to us.
Just a few months ago we were pretending to control characters in cartoons with imaginary joysticks. Now we had Super Mario Bros. Its impossible to describe the experience if you grew up immersed in advanced gaming.
The first video game I played, probably about 5 years before that was on a KayPro.
Where all of the graphics consists of Ascii characters. We mostly played “ladder”, basically a primitive Donkey Kong.
After a while we complete world 1-4 of Mario 1, we called the stage ‘the bloodbath’. We thought we had completed the game. But a new world appeared, world 2-1. I remember that number as a very unexpected promise. How far does this game go?
What Im playing now is F-Zero.
I like the physics of this game, like I do of several games of the first generation SNES games, such as Pilotwings. But this game is especially entertaining to me, it is challenging and the challenge even feels slightly meaningful.
The continuing relevance of the SNES shows in the culture of impossible Mario hacks, as well as timeruns of Mario 1, where the records keep being broken by several frames. People are beocming superhumanly skilled. Myself, I was happy, when I started the emulator, to be able to complete Street Fighter Turbo on a decent level with one continue. I used to be a master at it, going to the store to challenge their best player and beating him, and beating top players in the Arcade. After many years, ZN overtook me. I would still win the first one or two matches but then he’d settle into his perfectly timed strategies. I didn’t have strategy, just timing and lust.
My favorite NES game may be Double Dragon II: the Revenge. It’s the best 2 player game on the console, where you can select whether your punches can hurt each other, or ‘accidentally’ super-kneed your friend into the ravine. But it’s the perfect game, with perfect music.
Then there was the culture of game magazines. CVG, Mean Machines, and of course Nintendo Power. My friend with American mother lived in California for a few years, and came home with a NES which then wasn’t out yet in Europe, along with his NTSC tv and the required voltage adaptors which got so hot that they sometimes set things on fire. Id sit next to him watching him complete games like Cobra Command and Bionic Commando, Nintendo Powers and action figures scattered around us, and Iron Maiden posters on the wall, or we’d play Contra, which was later release din Europe as Probotecor.
Super Contra on the SNES was pretty good too, had great weapons, especially nice flamethrower.
Alright my nostalgia is running out of steam, the Sun is coming up here, time for some coffee.
)
