NeoZeedeater
Tektite
I don't know how many people want to read a long self-indulgent thread like this but I figured a personal history topic might be fitting for my first thread here so I'm porting this over from Resetera.
I couldn't tell you the exact month or anything but it was around 40 years ago that I became a Nintendo fan. Donkey Kong was the hottest new arcade game, and back then it was amazing just to control a character jumping and climbing through levels. Everything from the art style to the sound effects and music was super memorable.
One of my uncles bought a ColecoVision in 1982 which had DK as the pack-in title. I had badly wanted a home game system but I felt they were too expensive to ask my parents for. A tech savvy family friend gave me his (not that) old Commodore VIC-20 for my birthday, and this allowed me to properly delve into Donkey Kong at home. The port was made by Atarisoft, and while it didn't have the arcade-like graphics of the ColecoVision version, I felt it surpassed it in terms of responsiveness and speed. To this day, I think it holds up incredibly well.
By this time, Nintendo's Game & Watch had become a popular series of portable games in my elementary school. The ones I spent the most time with were the handheld Fire and the tabletop Mario's Cement Factory. I still vividly remember getting my highest score in Mario's Cement Factory with numb hands after coming inside from playing in snow.
At the end of 1983, Nintendo opened up a Chuck E. Cheese's franchise a short drive from where I lived in the suburbs of Vancouver. It was nice to have access to a more kid-friendly arcade free from scary teenagers in Quiet Riot t-shirts with brass knuckles. This location also housed Nintendo of Canada's first offices, and was quite a small operation compared to their later buildings. Throughout the mid '80s, this arcade became my main source for Nintendo coin-op games. I got to play so much neat stuff, some even before the NES came out domestically. In retrospect, I wonder if Nintendo used it for test marketing.
I had missed the niche light gun games of the '70s so playing stuff like Hogan's Alley and Duck Hunt was a brand new experience for me. Shooting an invisible beam through the air, what magic is this?
I almost got in a real fight over the original Mario Bros. "Why are you killing me?! We're on the same side! You're wasting my money!". Mario vs. Luigi is serious business.
The Punch Out!! games had so much personality with the facial expressions and voices. "Body blow!" Even though later home versions refined the gameplay, they never matched the art style of the arcade games for me.
VS. Slalom stood out for me because of its ski controls. It was a departure from a typical joystick and using your body movements added an extra element of realism. It was also the first game I played developed by Rare. I was later a fan of other Rare games Nintendo would publish like RC Pro-Am and Cobra Triangle.
1986 had the widespread arrival of the NES in my region. I was hyped to play that new game system that has a frickin' robot. TV commercials didn't really convey how R.O.B. worked and that it actually sucked. But it was a great way to get us Tomy robot-loving kids to take notice.
I would soak in checking out the Nintendo system demo units whenever I could, whether it was in Woolco, Compucentre, Eatons, Zellers, or other now extinct retailers. One friend somehow got a Famicom with Ice Climber and Sunsoft's Super Arabian. The microphone on the controller confused me but the games kicked ass.
A lot of people groaned about early NES/black box era stuff being on NES Classic like Donkey Kong Jr., Ice Climber, Excitebike, and Balloon Fight but I'm glad they were there. To me these are timeless and important to NES history.
Super Mario Bros. was the highlight in 1986. Mario was now scrolling and the sliding/brick breaking physics were a step above anything else in the genre.
I loved my Commodore 64 but console gaming was becoming a force again with these new Japanese-made systems from Nintendo and Sega. I was torn on what to get next but as luck would have it, my youngest sister wanted a Nintendo for SMB so our household ended up with both. It feels good to have never had to choose between Nintendo and Sega.
While I adored Nintendo's early arcade-y NES games, I really appreciated then scope and ambition of stuff like The Legend of Zelda and Metroid.
I was already a fan of overhead action-adventures having played games like Atari's Adventure, Mattel's AD&D: Cloudy Mountain, and Epyx's Gateway to Apshai. Zelda took this concept much further with a larger world, more hidden pathways, and intricate dungeon design.
I actually don't remember much backlash against Zelda II. It was fairly common for sequels to depart from the first game back then.
I always loved exploratory platformers (Synapse's Pharaoh's Curse, Activision's Pitfall II, Parker Bros.' Montezuma's Revenge, etc.) so having an even larger one with haunting soundtrack, sci-fi/horror theme, and bad ass character upgrades was awesome. The only comparable game in the sub-genre for me at the time was Exploding Fist 2 on C64 but that scratched a different itch with its fighting combat. And it didn't have a save function.
By 1988 it wasn't just hardcore gamers talking about Nintendo anymore. NES had gone mainstream in North America. The holiday season advertising for Super Mario Bros. 2 was at a level I had never seen before. There were prominent commercials, store displays, and a new magazine called Nintendo Power. It was a big topic of discussion among people my age.
I thought SMB2 was an excellent sequel. The freedom to pick up objects and use them as weapons or climbing tools was a lot of fun as was having a selection of characters with different abilities.
1989 had the Game Boy launch. I remember trying GB Tetris for the first time at The Bay, a department store that didn't usually carry video games. It was addictive and since it had Nintendo's marketing muscle, it was obvious it was going to be a huge success. I got mine in the summer of 1990 at a mall in Washington state. We were down there for my sister's soccer tournament. She got quickly kicked out of the soccer game for fighting. My parents were pissed off but I was just laughing and playing Tetris on the ride home.
Here are some ads from the Vancouver Sun newspaper in late 1989. Canadians might remember Toy City.
I remember playing Super Mario Bros. 3 at a kiosk before the movie The Wizard came out. It initially had less impact on me than the previous NES games but I appreciated its improvements once I delved into more at home.
My primary source for video game info back then was multi-format magazines like Electronic Gaming Monthly, Video Games & Computer Entertainment, Game Players, and Gamepro. I was hyped seeing early prototype pictures of the Super Famicom, and really looked forward to its scaling and rotation abilities.
For some reason, a local specialty store called Encore Video Games where I bought Japanese Mega Drive and Game Boy games didn't have Super Famicom stuff in late 1990/early 1991. I had to wait for the domestic release.
I briefly played it around launch in the summer at a World of Nintendo kiosk in Bellingham, WA. Quite soon after that, a friend rented the system with F-Zero. Holy shit, was that impressive. I was used to console racing games being heavily compromised and choppy compared to arcade games. This was silky smooth and speedy. There were some impressive scaling games on Atari Lynx by that point but their frame rates weren't as high and they weren't as complex for track design.
It wasn't long before I had my own SNES. It was a powerhouse for first-party sequels for years to come. Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Donkey Kong Country, etc. still get talked about frequently on the internet given the advancements they made and how well they have stood the test of time.
Just when it seemed like light gun games were dead for home formats, Nintendo released the Super Scope. I wasn't very impressed with the Super Scope Six pack-in or Yoshi's Safari but Battleclash and Metal Combat made that bulky bazooka worth it. These were intense boss rush shooters with incredible detail. Sega of Japan may have excelled with light gun games in the 8-bit and 32-bit home generations but they opted out of the 16-bit era, and Nintendo cleaned up compared to Sega of America's paltry Menacer gun options.
Star Fox was a highlight for new Nintendo franchises. I was always a big fan of rail shooters and 3d polygon games but I didn't expect one that well made for SNES even with Argonaut's expertise in 3d computer games.
to be continued in my next post...
I couldn't tell you the exact month or anything but it was around 40 years ago that I became a Nintendo fan. Donkey Kong was the hottest new arcade game, and back then it was amazing just to control a character jumping and climbing through levels. Everything from the art style to the sound effects and music was super memorable.
One of my uncles bought a ColecoVision in 1982 which had DK as the pack-in title. I had badly wanted a home game system but I felt they were too expensive to ask my parents for. A tech savvy family friend gave me his (not that) old Commodore VIC-20 for my birthday, and this allowed me to properly delve into Donkey Kong at home. The port was made by Atarisoft, and while it didn't have the arcade-like graphics of the ColecoVision version, I felt it surpassed it in terms of responsiveness and speed. To this day, I think it holds up incredibly well.
By this time, Nintendo's Game & Watch had become a popular series of portable games in my elementary school. The ones I spent the most time with were the handheld Fire and the tabletop Mario's Cement Factory. I still vividly remember getting my highest score in Mario's Cement Factory with numb hands after coming inside from playing in snow.
At the end of 1983, Nintendo opened up a Chuck E. Cheese's franchise a short drive from where I lived in the suburbs of Vancouver. It was nice to have access to a more kid-friendly arcade free from scary teenagers in Quiet Riot t-shirts with brass knuckles. This location also housed Nintendo of Canada's first offices, and was quite a small operation compared to their later buildings. Throughout the mid '80s, this arcade became my main source for Nintendo coin-op games. I got to play so much neat stuff, some even before the NES came out domestically. In retrospect, I wonder if Nintendo used it for test marketing.
I had missed the niche light gun games of the '70s so playing stuff like Hogan's Alley and Duck Hunt was a brand new experience for me. Shooting an invisible beam through the air, what magic is this?
I almost got in a real fight over the original Mario Bros. "Why are you killing me?! We're on the same side! You're wasting my money!". Mario vs. Luigi is serious business.
The Punch Out!! games had so much personality with the facial expressions and voices. "Body blow!" Even though later home versions refined the gameplay, they never matched the art style of the arcade games for me.
VS. Slalom stood out for me because of its ski controls. It was a departure from a typical joystick and using your body movements added an extra element of realism. It was also the first game I played developed by Rare. I was later a fan of other Rare games Nintendo would publish like RC Pro-Am and Cobra Triangle.
1986 had the widespread arrival of the NES in my region. I was hyped to play that new game system that has a frickin' robot. TV commercials didn't really convey how R.O.B. worked and that it actually sucked. But it was a great way to get us Tomy robot-loving kids to take notice.
I would soak in checking out the Nintendo system demo units whenever I could, whether it was in Woolco, Compucentre, Eatons, Zellers, or other now extinct retailers. One friend somehow got a Famicom with Ice Climber and Sunsoft's Super Arabian. The microphone on the controller confused me but the games kicked ass.
A lot of people groaned about early NES/black box era stuff being on NES Classic like Donkey Kong Jr., Ice Climber, Excitebike, and Balloon Fight but I'm glad they were there. To me these are timeless and important to NES history.
Super Mario Bros. was the highlight in 1986. Mario was now scrolling and the sliding/brick breaking physics were a step above anything else in the genre.
I loved my Commodore 64 but console gaming was becoming a force again with these new Japanese-made systems from Nintendo and Sega. I was torn on what to get next but as luck would have it, my youngest sister wanted a Nintendo for SMB so our household ended up with both. It feels good to have never had to choose between Nintendo and Sega.
While I adored Nintendo's early arcade-y NES games, I really appreciated then scope and ambition of stuff like The Legend of Zelda and Metroid.
I was already a fan of overhead action-adventures having played games like Atari's Adventure, Mattel's AD&D: Cloudy Mountain, and Epyx's Gateway to Apshai. Zelda took this concept much further with a larger world, more hidden pathways, and intricate dungeon design.
I actually don't remember much backlash against Zelda II. It was fairly common for sequels to depart from the first game back then.
I always loved exploratory platformers (Synapse's Pharaoh's Curse, Activision's Pitfall II, Parker Bros.' Montezuma's Revenge, etc.) so having an even larger one with haunting soundtrack, sci-fi/horror theme, and bad ass character upgrades was awesome. The only comparable game in the sub-genre for me at the time was Exploding Fist 2 on C64 but that scratched a different itch with its fighting combat. And it didn't have a save function.
By 1988 it wasn't just hardcore gamers talking about Nintendo anymore. NES had gone mainstream in North America. The holiday season advertising for Super Mario Bros. 2 was at a level I had never seen before. There were prominent commercials, store displays, and a new magazine called Nintendo Power. It was a big topic of discussion among people my age.
I thought SMB2 was an excellent sequel. The freedom to pick up objects and use them as weapons or climbing tools was a lot of fun as was having a selection of characters with different abilities.
1989 had the Game Boy launch. I remember trying GB Tetris for the first time at The Bay, a department store that didn't usually carry video games. It was addictive and since it had Nintendo's marketing muscle, it was obvious it was going to be a huge success. I got mine in the summer of 1990 at a mall in Washington state. We were down there for my sister's soccer tournament. She got quickly kicked out of the soccer game for fighting. My parents were pissed off but I was just laughing and playing Tetris on the ride home.
Here are some ads from the Vancouver Sun newspaper in late 1989. Canadians might remember Toy City.
I remember playing Super Mario Bros. 3 at a kiosk before the movie The Wizard came out. It initially had less impact on me than the previous NES games but I appreciated its improvements once I delved into more at home.
My primary source for video game info back then was multi-format magazines like Electronic Gaming Monthly, Video Games & Computer Entertainment, Game Players, and Gamepro. I was hyped seeing early prototype pictures of the Super Famicom, and really looked forward to its scaling and rotation abilities.
For some reason, a local specialty store called Encore Video Games where I bought Japanese Mega Drive and Game Boy games didn't have Super Famicom stuff in late 1990/early 1991. I had to wait for the domestic release.
I briefly played it around launch in the summer at a World of Nintendo kiosk in Bellingham, WA. Quite soon after that, a friend rented the system with F-Zero. Holy shit, was that impressive. I was used to console racing games being heavily compromised and choppy compared to arcade games. This was silky smooth and speedy. There were some impressive scaling games on Atari Lynx by that point but their frame rates weren't as high and they weren't as complex for track design.
It wasn't long before I had my own SNES. It was a powerhouse for first-party sequels for years to come. Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Donkey Kong Country, etc. still get talked about frequently on the internet given the advancements they made and how well they have stood the test of time.
Just when it seemed like light gun games were dead for home formats, Nintendo released the Super Scope. I wasn't very impressed with the Super Scope Six pack-in or Yoshi's Safari but Battleclash and Metal Combat made that bulky bazooka worth it. These were intense boss rush shooters with incredible detail. Sega of Japan may have excelled with light gun games in the 8-bit and 32-bit home generations but they opted out of the 16-bit era, and Nintendo cleaned up compared to Sega of America's paltry Menacer gun options.
Star Fox was a highlight for new Nintendo franchises. I was always a big fan of rail shooters and 3d polygon games but I didn't expect one that well made for SNES even with Argonaut's expertise in 3d computer games.
to be continued in my next post...
