I experienced the Nintendo Entertainment System from afar. I first saw the NES in 1986, at a friend’s sleepover. I was in middle school. Corey had a system with Super Mario Bros, but he also had an Atari ST with a paint program … and a game called Airball. Super Mario seemed fun and all, but I was fascinated by the color palette of the new 16-bit computer. For example, at one point in Airball you enter a dark room where you need a flashlight to continue. The screen wasn’t all black or all black and dark grey. If you looked closely, you could still make out the room, it was just very, very dim.
I was hooked and my path was more or less set, right then and there. I already had a Commodore 64 and I later ended up saving up for a Commodore Amiga.
I did play NES at friend’s places though. The first games I really remember playing were Rygar, Elevator Action and Super Mario Bros. In Super Mario, we would take turns going for a perfect score in worlds 1-1 and 1-2. Later on with other friends, I would play a quite a bit of The Legend of Zelda, R.C. Pro-Am, Contra, Mike Tyson’s Punch-out!! and Castlevania: Simon’s Quest. Out of all of them, Zelda was my favorite. I would try to see how far I could progress on my friend’s cart, but my save would often erase, resetting my progress. It wasn’t until the 90s that I finally got my own system and beat the game. Also, in hindsight, if all I was doing at my friends’ places was playing NES, I must have been a lousy houseguest!
Nintendo has a reputation for saving videogames in 1985, which I think is overstated. In 1984 the public was ready to call videogames a fad, but they were transitioning to computer games. The NES certainly brought console gaming back from the brink, but had they not introduced the system, I argue that gaming would have continued on home computers.
Like I said, for the most part, I stuck with computer games, first on the C64 and later the Amiga. Yet interestingly enough, Nintendo was so ubiquitous that many of my favorite computer games were ported to the NES. A few examples are Skate or Die and Winter Games on the C64; Lemmings and Rocket Ranger on the Amiga.
I will always be more of an Atari and Commodore nerd at heart, but I certainly have fond memories of the games that the NES does best. In fact, the three companies form a kind of trifecta for me. With Atari and Commodore long defunct and Sega no longer in the hardware business, Nintendo is the only classic console maker still standing.
Gotta respect that.
Cheers,
Ben
I love that image from KayBee Stores! Yeah Zelda was my favorite as well, I was the kid in the neighborhood who knew the secrets. So I would always go around to friends houses and get them out of a jam.