It's been a hell of a month here at ONM Towers. We've been wrestling with the many-tentacled beast that is ONM45 for the past few weeks, trying to ram as much E3-related awesomeness down its gullet as possible. The good news is that we finally vanquished the sucker this morning, and slung its twitching corpse in the general direction of the printers. It's a good 'un. Trust me, you'll love it.
This afternoon we've been sitting around trying to come up with some killer feature ideas for the next few issues (and largely failing - send us some good ones and you'll get a cookie). Conversation wandered to the first Nintendo games we can remember playing. It was nostalgic, tear-inducing stuff, let me tell you. Neil had to leave the room for a private weep when Chris uttered the immortal words: "DuckTales".
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Anyway, I thought I'd share the team's recollections with you here and then ask for your own early Nintendo memories below.
Not including hazy recollections of gathering around Game & Watch handhelds on the playground and waiting two hours for old C64 cassettes to load, my introduction to the glorious world of Nintendo was via the Game Boy back in 1991. After jealously observing them doing the rounds at school, I picketed my parents to get me one for Christmas, which they duly did. My first game? Super Mario Land of course, and it was love at first sight.
Around about the same time my mate down the road had gone one better and convinced his folks to get him a SNES, so I was cutting my teeth on Street Fighter 2, Super Probotector and Pilotwings too. I'd be over there all the time - I even got his mum to let me in when he wasn't there so I could play. Good times. Anyway, here's the rest of the gang with theirs...
Neil I remember constantly pestering my mum for some change to have a go on a PlayChoice 10 arcade machine. It had Punch-Out and Contra on it (among others) but inevitably the most awesome one was Super Mario Bros. After enduring the likes of California Games and H.E.R.O on an Atari 2600 (ask your granddad), I was finally given a NES for my birthday with Mario and Duck Hunt. Anyone remember Bad Dudes Vs Dragon Ninja? Awesome game. And probably the greatest title for a videogame ever.
Chris When I was three years old I went with my family to visit my aunt who'd recently moved to America. This would have been 1986, and she had a NES with Super Mario Bros. I got totally hooked on it (even though I was terrible at it at the time: come on, I was only three!) and when I got back home to Scotland I spoke about nothing but Mario. I would take books and get a pencil and draw a line along the top of the words, pretending I was playing Super Mario Bros and the letters were the floor of the level. Big letters like "l" and "f" were pipes he had to jump over, and spaces between words were holes. Yes, it was sad, but I was three and I was desperate to play the game again. That Christmas the NES came to the UK and I got one with Super Mario Bros, Mach Rider and Castlevania. 23 years later, here I am. :-)
Simon Up until about 1993 my gaming consisted of whatever cassette was on the cover of Crash magazine and knackered old Master System games. My mate, on the other hand, had been skilfully stashing away his dinner money and proudly announced one day at school that he'd done it - he'd finally bought himself a Super Nintendo. I couldn't believe it, but that night I went round his house and sat there open-mouthed as he carefully unpacked his new machine, tossed aside Super Mario World and slotted Flashback: The Quest For Identity straight in. I'd seen an ad featuring that wide, terrified human eye in a Turtles comic, and we were on a sci-fi bent anyway because we'd just watched Arnie's The Running Man, so Flashback blew me away. Just making Conrad run was cool, but add in a cyberpunk setting, moody synths and a story of alien invasion and I was hooked for weeks. My mate never got to play anything else 'til we'd finished it. Turned out SMW wasn't bad either.
Right, that's enough from us lot. Now it's your turn. Go ahead and make us feel old...
