Getting Caught Up Part III: 8-bit Bliss

So here we are, week 3 and the final week of catching up. The topic at hand, of course, is video games. They've played an important role in my life and I have fairly strong opinions as far as the benefits video games offer to children and their development, not only as far as hand-eye coordination, but also important life skills, such as problem solving and logical thinking, not to mention how if you break bricks with your head, they may contain money!

Though we had an Atari when I was very young, and I did enjoy some of the games that it offered--Pitfall, Venture, ET (okay, not ET, but everybody hated that game...they literally had to dump all of the cartridges into a landfill, it bombed so hard...seriously, look it up)--my true passion for gaming started with Nintendo. And much of that was due to a man by the name of Shigeru Miyamoto, who created such games as Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., and The Legend of Zelda to name a few.

A game like the original Super Mario Bros. seems simple in design by today's standards, but it must be kept in mind that with that game, Miyamoto invented the 2-D side-scrolling platformer...something that is still imitated to this day! Nobody had, before then, imagined a game progressing sideways. Seems silly but it's ingenious when you stop to think about it. He also created the lovable Link and his adventures in Hyrule, creating a formula still used today in the action/adventure genre--many dungeons hidden in a hub world, each containing items integral to completing the next one.

I doubt any game I play for the remainder of my life will compare to those first experiences, in part because the gaming industry has become a money-making behemoth catering to a much broader audience that often favors rehashes or pretty graphics over innovation in gameplay, and in part because Miyamoto, having been promoted within Nintendo, no longer directs games but rather oversees production. It's why the best Zelda game (or fan favorite anyways, since I consider "A Link to the Past"--also a Miyamoto title--to be the best one) is "Ocarina of Time" and not "Twilight Princess". It's why "Super Mario Bros. 3", "Super Mario World", and "Super Mario 64" are all still superior to newer titles in the series such as "Super Mario Sunshine" and "Super Mario Galaxy". Miyamoto's presence, or more so the lack thereof, is painfully noticeable. He brought a sense of child-like wonder to the titles he created, and part of me still hopes that one day he'll resume his former role and give us a truly new Mario and/or Zelda game. He has enough fans out there that if ever such an occurrence were announced, sales of those games would go through the roof. To a great many people, he is the creator of modern video games.

Okay, got that fanboy rant out of me, now moving along...my cousin had a Nintendo first. I would say I was so jealous, but I really wasn't, because we were always together anyways, so I played it plenty! It's one of the things that caused my cousin and I to bond so strongly as children. We got to experience "Mike Tyson's Punch Out!" together, "Megaman" (and even more so "Megaman 2") and somewhat more obscure titles such as "Milon's Secret Castle." Though the very first game I remember him having was "Ghostbusters". We spent hours playing that game, and to be honest, there was nothing that particularly fun about it, other than reaching the end to try and climb all of those damn stairs to get to the roof. I don't remember if we ever beat it, but we sure as hell had fun trying.

And then it happened. I don't recall if it was one or two years later, but it was Christmas morning (yes, Christmas, not holiday, or whatever other politically correct term gets used nowadays. I'm extremely non-religious, but come on, why ruin something so innocent with verbal bureaucracy?) Anyways, my brothers and I all opened our presents. There was no Nintendo under the tree, nor did I expect one to be there...it just seemed too expensive! But there was one little present left under the tree and it was for me and my two brothers. We all tore parts of the paper off, and inside was a little box containing an even littler note, which indicated that we should look in the closet next to the stairs. We did as instructed and emerged with a large wrapped box. My brother ripped off a corner of it and that was it...I had seen enough. The little white stars on the black backdrop were all I needed to see to know exactly what was inside. This had never happened to me before, nor has it happened to me since, but I quite literally fell over. I was so stupidly excited that my knees gave out. It was like a Christmas miracle. It's so wonderful to receive something that you always perceived as being just too good, too expensive, too much. There was no part of my innocent little mind that even suspected my parents would buy us a Nintendo. It came with "Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt" and my parents had also purchased another game, "1943." I don't like war. I don't like war games. I don't like flying games. None of that mattered; I played the crap out of that game and I loved every minute of it because I played it on MY (okay, our) Nintendo.

And thus began my lifelong fascination. I made my way through all of the iconic NES titles, besting near-impossible games such as "Battletoads" and games that I could beat in a half-hour, such as "Ducktales". A few years later, 1991 to be precise, the Super Nintendo was released. I played it a few times at a neighborhood kid's place and decided it had to be mine. The problem was that I was still quite a few years away from working, so I had very little money. My parents gave us a $2 weekly allowance which I had sometimes (if I hadn't spent it on candy at the corner store) deposited into an account, along with birthday money. My younger brother was worse off than me. My older brother, however, had just recently started delivering newspapers. I couldn't do it alone. I needed to sell them on the idea that we had to have an SNES! So I crunched the numbers and figured out that we could split it three ways...my older brother would pay $75, I would pay $50, and my younger brother would pay $25. The system was a bit more than that but if I recall, my older brother agreed to cover the extra $20 or so. And that was that; I got them to agree, called the store to check the stock, and talked my parents into driving us to the store, all in one evening.

In 1996, a somewhat similar situation came up--the Nintendo 64 was released. That Christmas, rather than buy us any large gifts, my parents took my brothers and I to San Antonio, Texas to visit my cousin who lived there, and still does. While there, I decided I wanted a Nintendo 64 (I had a job delivering fliers by then, so I had some money.) My older brother wasn't interested, but my little brother decided to split the cost with me. I started calling all of the Super K-Marts but it was a hot ticket item. Again, my extremely kind parents agreed to take us to the store, even though it meant we had to go to 2-3 different stores just to gather the system, an extra controller, and a game. We couldn't find "Mario 64" anywhere in town, so we picked up "Waverace" instead and to this day it's one of my favorite racing games, and arguably one of the best water racing games ever. My little brother was acting up on the way back, so my parents instilled the ultimate punishment: he couldn't play the Nintendo 64 that evening. Poor kid...he sat there watching me play it by myself for hours. I felt terrible, though he was a good sport and just tried to get into it without playing it, as an active bystander. He would get to play it the next day, after all.


If you can't tell by now, I have been and likely will always be a die-hard Nintendo fan. Though Miyamoto's presence is lacking from the games now being released, Nintendo still makes the best platforming games and the best action/adventure games out there. I also own a Playstation 3 and have a close friend who owns an Xbox 360, so I get to dabble in all of the major platforms. I was skeptical at first about picking up a Playstation 3, but a couple key features sold me on it. First off, the one I bought is the original 60GB model...the only one with true Playstation 2 backwards compatibility. Not having ever owned a Playstation 2 but loving some of the titles, this was important. It's really unfortunate that Sony has since discontinued this valuable feature...shame on them for that one. I hope mine never breaks! Second and most importantly though, the PS3 is a fairly efficient media server, meaning I can stream movies, TV shows, pictures, and music from my computer right to my TV. I've done exactly what Sony would want me to do; I have made the PS3 the center hub of my entire media setup. It's my video game console, my stereo, my photo viewer, and my DVD/Blu-ray player. If it breaks, I'll have virtually no choice but to replace it. So kudos to Sony, you've made a whore out of me! In their defense, however, they have had some amazing first-party titles, such as "Little Big Planet" and "Heavy Rain".

So though this little recap skipped a generation (ahem...Gamecube...ahem), I hope it has provided a slightly better understanding of how video games have given me one more reason to be passionate. Roger Ebert has apparently dismissed video games, implying that they cannot be considered true art along side of literature and film. My guess is that he must not play them. I can't believe that anyone who genuinely plays these games (whether old or new) would make such a ludicrous argument. Though at first, film was not considered art either, so maybe his opinion will change over time, just like the stuffy old men of that previous generation had to eventually change theirs. Anyone else who thinks that video games do not belong in the realm of art, dish out $10-$15 and play Braid, one of my favorite games of the past decade.

See you next week.