Nintendo’s first system the Nintendo Entertainment System changed gaming forever and pretty much everything has been said about it, except this. As we’ve gone through the past with other Nintendo system memories, for this anniversary of a console we’ll take a look at the original Nintendo console with our little tribute to the little console that could and remains one of the best ever made, the legendary NES.
While the original Game Boy was my first gaming system of any kind it wasn’t long at all before we got an NES. I am unsure if we I only have the faintest of memories of the early NES days in my life but I remember my mom asking why we were getting a Nintendo Entertainment System if we already had a Game Boy. I learned that you needed to blow the cartridges to make them work and put the sleeve on them as well. I wondered why some of my games didn’t have sleeves and why some had the Nintendo logo on it. My grandfather who was a doctor would tell us not to be too close to the TV, back then you would play next to the TV for a more immersive experience I guess and whenever he would arrive we would stretch the cord of the controller as much as it could to get approval.
I’m guessing the first ever game I played was the original Super Mario Bros which I played tons of and never beat, it was just too hard and I was too young. I definitely found some glitches while playing and it was always a good game to go back to, and I would often play as two player since i preferred playing as Luigi. In fact any of the Super Mario Bros games were, I think my mother even mentioned once something along the lines of “Mario games are always the good ones” when getting a game likely Super Mario Bros 3. I loved the improved version of Super Mario Bros 3 and was one of my favorite games and even if I didn’t feel like playing it I would play multiplayer Mario Bros, little did I know that it was an actual different game at one point.
With Super Mario Bros 2 I loved the slower pace and would often come up with storylines along my sister over what was happening since it wasn’t action oriented. Random dialog over what was happening to create short stories, now that’s a way no one intended the game to be played as. Never beat any of the Mario games or most NES games as a kid at least. But it’s not a Super Mario Memories post but I have similar great memories playing many other games which were amazing and are now considered classics like Mega Man II, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game among others that I owned.
Even what were considered bad games nowadays like Back to the Future, The Little Mermaid, Mickey Mousecapade, The Simpsons Bart vs The Space Mutants and others were a ton of fun for me to play. Part of it was because they were so expensive that if you made a mistake getting a game you needed to force yourself to like it, and boy did it work since it’s easy to overcome some of the flaws once you understand how to play certain games. I remember thinking I was getting the arcade game when I got The Simpsons for example and accidentally choosing Mega Man II when I wanted Mega Man III Because of Rush and I regretted it so much but looking back it was a great mistake since II is the better game.
What about the NES Zapper? Duck Hunt got horribly hard for me and I always preferred the frisbees game, I would get frustrated so I would get next to the TV to shoot the ducks. I only ever played another light gun game which was a western that I borrowed from an uncle and now I have no idea what it might’ve been. The controller I always liked and never found uncomfortable, though I was never a fan of the select button since most of the time it made more sense for the d-pad to be used instead. I never really dwelled much with all the different peripherals the NES got though.
Who can forget passwords, especially the ones from Metroid, it was great to be able to have some data restored but even then it a almost didn’t seem worth it as many times I would just play from the beginning. I didn’t get battery games until much later that idea of saving games started with the SNES. This was basically the only console where I got to rent games for it since it wasn’t something my family did much but when I got to rent games it felt weird getting a brand new game even if only for a weekend and I’d play the heck out of it like I did with Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers.
All of this was when I was really young but even then I felt the graphics were not as good, they didn’t look like the arcades and it felt “old” in a way. We eventually got a Super NES and I was so excited despite only owning one game, it was time to move on. However shortly after we moved to another country and I was told I couldn’t take the SNES and would need to take the NES for the year I’d be living there. It felt like the worst of punishments to have a Super Nintendo and not being able to play it but it gave me one extra year of playing the NES and now feel it was like a blessing in disguise since I got to enjoy that machine one extra year and a lot of memories were made during that last year.
Eventually I remember seeing an NES model 2 with the SNES like controller and thinking how it looked old despite the updated look but it wasn’t the end of the Nintendo Entertainment System for me since every time we went back to our other house I had that old NES console there that I would go back to even if I was now gaming on the Nintendo 64. In fact I got to discover a lot of the library later on and buying cartridges for $1.99, this included stuff like The Legend of Zelda, Kirby’s Adventure and a few others. Even during the Gamecube days I was still buying NES games like Star Wars. I got a lot out of that little gaming system and I am glad that despite being a bit too young for the original NES, I was still able to experience it as my first home console.
