For my fourth and final column every month, (well most months) I actually found I didn’t have a real great idea. I thought I might do something like Tyler’s rants on the videogames he’s playing. I play a lot fewer videogames than he does, but there’s still more then one a month I want to talk about, as our “what have you been playing?” section proves every week. But we’ve never gone as in depth in these sections as I’d like and really talked about the things we play. That’s my fault as much as anyone else involved in the show, especially since some weeks all I play is League of Legends. For my last column, I’ve decided to just talk about the games I love, modern and old, and why. And since I just shared how I got into Table Top RPGs, I figured I’d also share how I got into videogames and what they’ve meant to me.
The story of how I first got into videogames is pretty short. I had an aunt when I was much younger who was born a generation too early, in that it was kind of hard to pirate stuff in the 80s and 90s. That didn’t stop her though, and I owned hundreds of movies when I was a kid, because she’d record everything they owned or rented and send it to us, usually three movies per tape. Batman, Batman Returns, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, hundreds of movies I watched on tapes that were technically pirated. Something seemed off to me about it, but I was too young to get that it was illegal and simply enjoyed my bounty. Then, when I turned 4, movies lost that place in my heart. She sent me something far better an NES and a huge collection of games. I honestly don’t remember how many there were now, fewer than 20 probably, but it seemed gigantic. I was instantly aware of Super Mario, probably from the terrible cartoon, as I remember thinking the only thing that was missing from my collection was Sonic.
That said, Super Mario Bros. Excitebike and Super Mario Bros. 3 were the only Nintendo classics in the bunch. I’d heard of Mega Man, but just the cartoon, I didn’t know he was a Nintendo game. A friend of mine had Metroid as I mentioned in that podcast, but Kirby and The Legend of Zelda were completely unknown to me. That said, a lot of the games I had were licensed games and back then, licensed games could some times be good, even great. On the podcast I’ve talked about Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers the first game I ever beat, a surprisingly good platformer made by Capcom. Another game deep in my memory is GI Joe The Atlantis Factor another Capcom game that I loved. My favorite game at the time though was probably one made by Knoammi; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II, a port of the arcade game that would eventually be succeeded by the beloved SNES classic, Turtles in Time.
I could just list the games I had as a kid and the fond memories as an entire series of articles, but those are the ones that stand out the most for whatever reason. There were plenty of games I didn’t like, or that were more mid range in my mind, and especially so when I found out about a place called Game Force. Game Force was a second hand videogame chain, very similar to GameStop now, although it was a far more local chain. They currently have four stores in the Colorado area, they used to have a lot more, but I don’t know if they ever got out of the state. Anyway, I found a place where I could trade in all the games I didn’t like for one that I wanted! My mom told me that it was a rip off, but I didn’t listen, and the first game I ever got for myself was Super Mario Bros. 2.
More importantly though, the guy at Game Force had a weird shaped cartridge with writing that was in Japanese. He told me it was a game for the Nintendo 64, a new console that was out in Japan and was coming to America soon. I had to have one. I begged my mom. They cost $400. She told me it was too much. I begged more. She told me if, by my birthday, I could save up $200, half the cost, she’d cover the rest. I saved like mad, and managed to meet the mark, and ended up getting Super Mario 64, Wave Race, and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire as a birthday bonus.
As an important aside here, I suck at videogames. This was even more true as a kid. The only game I could beat on my NES was Chip and Dale, a game that’s major flaw, in the eyes of most critics, was that it was too easy. The N64 was not much kinder to me, Wave Race wasn’t hard, but it was kind of boring. Relaxing might be a better word, I enjoyed the game, but never felt compelled to win races or unlock new content. I could beat the first few levels of Shadows of the Empire, but level 5 was huge by the standards of the time, and I couldn’t commit to beating it in a single sitting. To be fair, the game is only ten levels long. And Mario 64… well it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to find my first star. I can beat it in under two hours now though, so showed it!
Then, one day when my mom dragged me to King Supers and I was extra bored, and as we went through the magazine isle, something stood out to me. An issue of Nintendo Power. It had a list of what games were the best, with Super Mario 64 on top of course, and cheats, and previews of new games coming out, and guides about how to beat the games that were out already. I absolutely had to have it. My mom wasn’t the sort who would buy me something to shut me up in the store, but for whatever reason, she agreed to get me that, and it changed my life.
I was constantly saving my money for new issues of Nintendo Power after that, and each time we went to the store I eagerly looked to see if there was a new one. At some point, I convinced my mom to let me pay her for a check so I could get a subscription to Nintendo Power, and they’d bring it right to my mail box, weeks before it made it to the store. It was amazing, and it introduced me to games I’d never even think of playing, games like Goldeneye, which my mom wouldn’t let me buy, and Mystical Ninja’s Starring Gomen. But in the back of an issue one month, was something that may have introduced me to the most important game of my life. A smaller magazine, named Pokemon Power. It looked like the stupidest thing I’d ever seen, and I left it attached.
A few weeks later though, something unexpected came in the mail. A VHS tape. One I’ve tried to find on youtube many times since, and have succeeded only in finding videos talking about it, or copy write notices that say it’s been taken down. And what was on this mythical tape? I’ll tell you in a month.
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