I’ve spent hours on the Nintendo 64, PS2, XBox360, and Wii; but the NES will always have a special place in my heart. Growing up my parents were very much against having video games in the house. My brother and sister and I were allowed to play at our relatives homes, but a console in the house was considered a distraction from our studies. It was not until one fateful Christmas gift from my brother’s godfather, the very first PlayStation, that a gaming console of any sort entered our house and changed the way my parents viewed video games forever. But that is a story for another time.
Before the serendipitous arrival of the PlayStation One, I could only play video games in all their 8 bit splendor when I visited my grandparents in Los Angeles. However those visits did not guarantee game play. The NES was a special treat reserved for days when it was either too hot or too cold for the adults to kick us outside to play.
Gaming at my grandparents house was never a solitary activity. All the kids in the house would gather around the second the power button was pushed to see who among us was the superior gamer. It wasn’t just about being competitive either. The cheering and laughter, the teasing and booing were what initially drew me into the gaming world. Playing video games together with my cousins created a common bond that brought us together.
I remember a surge of excitement the very first moment I picked up a controller. Ah, the lovely NES brick controller with its five famous buttons called to me whenever they were brought out of storage. Never again would Pong be enough to sustain me. I was hooked.
NES let me run and jump as fast as I dared through worlds in order to save Princess Toadstool countless times. It never got old despite only being able to jump on Koopa Tropa’s and Goomba’s for large portions of the game, and when power ups were found, oh yeah, it was on!
Then there was the sense of accomplishment I felt when I grabbed that flag at the end of a level. I had done it. I cleared a world of bad guys on my own and was one step closer to saving the Mushroom Kingdom. I had never saved a world before, and what were the chances that I could save the world in real live? Zero. So I found solace in the fact that in the virtual world at least, I could be a hero.
Of course the NES wasn’t perfect. How could I forget having to blow into the cartridges when games became finicky. I know. I know. That’s the worst thing you could do and it damages the game, but no one didn’t know that at the time. Plus nothing else seemed to work. Gaming has certainly come a long way. I will never again have to devise the perfect ritual in order to play one game. Yet, in a way I kinda miss it. The silliness of it all. It was part of the package.
Over the years gaming, for me, has become a social event. There are very few games that I play alone, mostly because I need space to think straight and solve a series of puzzles. In general though, I enjoy gaming the most when I have other people to beat down-erhm I mean play with. Which is probably why I continue to root for Nintendo even though their latest console venture, the Wii U, is doing so poorly compared to current gaming juggernauts Sony and Microsoft.
Nintendo has set its sights set primarily on gaming that involves groups of people working with or against each other. The Wii and Wii U might not be as decked out as the PS4 or XBox One, but at least Nintendo’s game consoles focus on gaming first and bonus features second.
NES may be long gone, but I will never forget the days of gaming it gave me. What was your first console experience? How has it shaped the way you play today?