Share your Nintendo NES memories!

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Baba Oh Really, Jun 30, 2013.

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  1. Classicolin

    Classicolin ‘60s/‘70s Rock Fanatic/Crown Kingdom Guitarist

    Location:
    Ohio
    Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt defined my early childhood. This was the mid to late 90s, mind you, and I only had the system because my dad bought it shortly before I was born (which I assume stemmed from a last-minute attempt to recapture some sort of childhood before his first kid was born! :D) but it was great. I only had those two NES games then, and I got a SNES when I was about 6, and played games mostly on that...but I still regularly (if not religiously) played Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt.

    When I got to be a teenager I re-discovered the NES and, because of the Internet, got to look up games more and got, from The Exchange, Mega Man 2, Ice Climbers, and Donkey Kong. My mind was really blown when I found out there was a Mario 2 and 3 for the NES...2 was good and 3 was ridiculously great (still wish I had played that in my childhood). The Original Zelda...found that later in High School, and it was like being a little kid all over again.

    Great system, great games, even better memories...the start of many amazing systems by Nintendo!
     
  2. MrRom92

    MrRom92 Forum Supermodel

    Location:
    Long Island, NY
    Being a child of the 1990's/2000's, the NES was just a bit before my time, but not enough so that it wouldn't be a presence in my life through my friends or family.
    I knew of the history behind all my faves. I knew the NES was where all the franchises got their big breakthroughs, I knew all the games were classics and were familiar with them through ports.
    Some of my friends had the NES from having had older siblings, my cousins had their father's NES. As a kid I'd go over and play all the time. I loved everything about it. The games, each new one was like discovering a gem you never knew about. Ninja Gaiden, Streets of Rage, Double Dragon, Contra... They all grew on me very quickly. The design of the system seemed so iconic and reminiscent of the 1980's in a very appealing way. It was a magical system. I wanted one for myself so badly for the longest time. As a kid, the closest I had to owning the system was a japanese flash cart for my Game Boy that supported emulators. Oddly enough, I never owned the system until last year, when I snapped one up on eBay for a nice price. It now sits proudly in my media cabinet, which is nearly entirely devoted to consoles!

    There are 4 Cubicles. One is devoted to Sega, featuring the insanely large Genesis/32x/CD monstrosity of a combination. The one below has the NES as well as my N64. The top right has a PS3 and my cable box, and the bottom right has a Nintendo Wii, Wii U, and my mom's old atari 2600. Boxed away elsewhere are a Sega Pico, and a coleco telstar arcade "pong console" from the 1970's.

    More on the topic of the NES, I used to see the games used everywhere as little as 7 years ago, but it seems now that the major game retailers won't acknowledge that generations games, and the independent gaming chains have been shutting their stores left and right. I almost never see the games anywhere anymore. Very very rarely. The odd occasion that I do come across an NES title, it is either undesirable and/or priced way more than it's worth.
    I do, however, have Tetris, Kung Fu, Mario 2, as well as Super Mario Bros. And Zelda 1 complete in box. Mario packaging is in dismal shape, couldn't possibly be worse, and the only way Zelda could be nicer is if it were still in shrink. It is perfect. I think it may have been some old unsold stock sitting around somewhere - the original save battery still works just fine but there was not a save on it, the plastic packaging still surrounded the gold cart, and there wasn't so much as a fingerprint on it!


    I love this system and treasure it dearly. I am very happy I finally have one, as I do have many fond memories of it from my childhood, regardless of my limited or late exposure.
     
  3. lugnut2099

    lugnut2099 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Missouri
    Probably entirely possible, I remember back around 2000 one of the local Wal-Marts was closing as they were about to turn it into a new Supercenter, and suddenly tons of boxes of NES games appeared in the clearance section (along with a lot of SNES/Genesis and other outdated-by-then systems). I picked up brand new copies of Mega Man 2, Castlevania 3, TMNT 2 and quite a few others for about $2.98 a piece I think. I guess if that Wal-Mart still had old boxes of those games in their warehouse sitting around for nearly a decade there probably must have been plenty of other stores that did too.

    Oh, and just for fun, if you want to find out if your Zelda is a "first pressing" so to speak or a later issue, just look at the Nintendo Seal of Approval logo. If it's round, it's an original. If it's more of an oval shape, it's a later reissue.
     
  4. MrRom92

    MrRom92 Forum Supermodel

    Location:
    Long Island, NY

    Wow. That is amazing. talk about being in the right place at the right time.

    And yes, I know about the round/ovular logos, but thank you for providing the information anyhow. I made sure that the one I purchased would be totally complete, down to the packing styrofoam, with the circular seal. :righton:
    NES collectors must have a real hard time, between 5 screw carts/3 screw carts and board/rom revisions... I'm sure they would think the same of our CDs and LPs with different masterings, but thankfully I'm only heavily involved with one "scene"... I don't think I'd have the patience or mental capacity to be a hardcore collector of two separate things. Nor the funds, for that matter.


    As a side note, it was interesting to read of your involvement with the emulation scene. I've long imagined that these files came from unknown collectors or developers with the right tools to do rom dumps, it was always a huge mystery to me. Thank you for all your work and dedication in helping to keep the history of gaming alive. If you were wondering where part of my username came from, now you know. :p
     
  5. lugnut2099

    lugnut2099 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Missouri
    Well, your imagination isn't too far off, that's pretty much how it was in the early days (and kinda still is with regards to piracy of current games). The emulation scene, in those days, very much looked down on emulating and dumping games from the then-current systems - we didn't want to be associated with piracy, we wanted to be associated with preservation. And while it's probably true that most of those cartridge games will outlive all of us anyway, I've also seen rare prototype games that were written on flash ROMs that would have definitely been lost if they hadn't been dumped when they were (and some that were already too late to really save).

    But yeah, mostly it was just a bunch of game dorks who would get together and gather up carts or the funds to obtain them and put them out just for the sake of doing it. When it came to the expensive prototypes, there was a lot of opposition early on from the hardcore collectors who refused to have their games dumped, even if they knew there was a good chance the flash ROMs inside might die before long, both because of the "It's mine and nobody else can have it!" mindset and because some were convinced their cartridges would become worthless if it was copied, so we'd often have to pool up money from various people to purchase the proto cart outright. We always resold them afterwards to regain our cash, and y'know what? All those protos that were now dumped still brought just as much money as the original asking price or even more. So much for that "it'll be worthless if anyone else has it!" theory (see also hoarders of musical bootlegs/etc).
     
  6. lugnut2099

    lugnut2099 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Missouri
    And to add on another pointless but kind of interesting "old emulation days" tale, Nintendo did not look fondly upon the scene at all. They did everything they could to try and shut it all down, from sending vaguely threatening emails to members of release groups and websites that hosted files, to doing the same to the coders of the emulator programs themselves, even though there was nothing remotely illegal about writing an emulator.

    Sega, on the other hand? They embraced it. There was a statement from the Sega president printed in EGM (or some other mag) that stated they felt honored that people cared enough to want to preserve their old games and would go to the trouble of doing it. And not only that, then they went and hired "Steve Snake," the coder of the Genesis emulator KGen, to write official emulators for them that were released on PC, Saturn and Dreamcast. Yet another reason why I always thought Sega was the cooler company.
     
  7. conception

    conception Forum Resident

    Location:
    Florida
    Asking me to share my NES memories is like asking me to write the story of my entire childhood. We had the original Nintendo as our main system for far beyond its dominant lifespan because my parents were thrifty, but what was great about it was that there was scarcely a game that could be played that your friend couldn't come over and grab the second controller for and still play a competent game. The simplicity of two buttons will never be matched, and these days controllers with 10-12 buttons and marvelous complexity give a rewarding experience to those who can take the time to learn the game's mechanics, but have limited enjoyable multiplayer games to a select few who have actually made the time investment in those games.

    Games like Tecmo Super Bowl, RBI Baseball, Paperboy, Battletoads, Mario & Mario 3 saw a large amount of usage at my home.
     
  8. Luke The Drifter

    Luke The Drifter Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    One of my few claims to fame, was I could beat Mike Tyson. So much of my youth was associated with NES games.
     
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  9. davidshirt

    davidshirt =^,,^=

    Location:
    Grand Terrace, CA
    Once I could beat Mike Tyson I found him to be easier to beat than Super Macho Man.
     
  10. Luke The Drifter

    Luke The Drifter Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States

    Agreed, but here is why I think that was. We could plug in the code to Tyson and practice against just him as many times as we wanted. There was no code for Macho Man. It took quite a while to get to him, and through Sandman no less. Can you remember the code to Tyson?
     
  11. davidshirt

    davidshirt =^,,^=

    Location:
    Grand Terrace, CA
    Yep! 007 373 5963!
     
  12. Rocker

    Rocker Senior Member

    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    I think I managed to beat Tyson once. It was tricky, but he followed a distinct pattern and could be beaten with a bit of study and practice. I never owned a copy of Punch-Out myself, so I must have borrowed it from a friend or something. :)
     
  13. S. P. Honeybunch

    S. P. Honeybunch Presidente de Kokomo, Endless Mikelovemoney

    I think that I witnessed kids and friends at a couple different houses playing them in late 1985. A year or two later I visited my cousins in Nebraska, who had Baseball. I thought that was a pretty sweet game. The price dropped to around 80 or 90 dollars in early 1988 and me and my brother chipped in for the basic system with my grandma completing the scene by providing Baseball. Baseball and Pro Wrestling were early fun ones along with the great Legend of Zelda and Metroid. I also later had a life changing experience playing Final Fantasy whilst listening to Rush Fly By Night on vinyl. The makers of the game must have been Rush fans.
     
  14. jriems

    jriems Audio Ojiisan

    Anyone remember Little Nemo: The Dream Master? I loved the character design, graphics and music, but I remember having a dickens of a time beating it. Not sure if I ever did.

    No other Mega Man fans in the crowd? I had I, II, and III for NES, but I think those were my favorite games overall. Mega Man was extremely difficult, Mega Man II was a nice step up in playability and graphics, Mega Man III was easiest of the 3 - if memory serves - but was a fun, smooth playing experience.

    Here's Mega Man from start to finish:

     
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  15. RockWizard

    RockWizard Forum Resident

    Forgot about MegaMan. Along with SMB and DK, I played the hell out of those games.
     
  16. Rocker

    Rocker Senior Member

    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    I owned Mega Man III, IV, and V.... could beat 'em all pretty easily. I didn't have my own copy of Parts I or II, but I did beat both of them, although the first one is insanely difficult! :)
     
  17. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member

    Location:
    USA


    This sums up my experience with The Power Glove nicely.
     
  18. dhoffa85

    dhoffa85 Well-Known Member

    up up down down left right left right b a select start
     
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  19. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    Anyone who can beat Contra without that code has earned my respect.
     
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  20. Rocker

    Rocker Senior Member

    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    I only owned about 20 games as a kid, but a few years ago I picked up several more at a pawn shop for dirt cheap, bringing my total up to about 30:
    (titles in bold are the ones I've beaten):

    Adventure Island 3
    Batman
    Battletoads
    Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse
    Cobra Triangle
    Contra
    Dragon Warrior
    Final Fantasy
    Ghosts 'n' Goblins
    Godzilla: Monster of Monsters
    Super Off-Road
    Kirby's Adventure
    The Legend of Zelda
    Lifeforce
    Mega Man 3
    Mega Man 4
    Mega Man 5
    NES Open Tournament Golf
    RC Pro-Am
    Robocop
    StarTropics
    Super Mario Bros. 2
    Super Mario Bros. 3
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
    TMNT II: The Arcade Game
    TMNT III: The Manhattan Project
    Tetris
    Tiger-Heli
    Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
    Zoda's Revenge: StarTropics II
     
  21. dhoffa85

    dhoffa85 Well-Known Member

    kneel before Rocker, that is if he didn't use the cheat
     
  22. Rocker

    Rocker Senior Member

    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    I beat Contra hundreds of times as a kid, always without the cheat. :) I've never understood why so many people seem to regard it as such a difficult game.... I always found it to be one of the easier NES games. Maybe I just played it too much.... :shrug:
     
  23. MrRom92

    MrRom92 Forum Supermodel

    Location:
    Long Island, NY

    You must be a god amongst men.
    That code was there for the sole purpose of the developers actually having a way to play the game in order to test it!


    Imagine my surprise when looking in the app store today, the #1 paid application is an official remake of Contra. looks like the original with beefed up pseudo-3d graphics. Don't really want to pay for something I'll likely never play, but it certainly looks cool, especially if you happen to be into iphone gaming. I'd love to see a video to have a better look at what they've done with it.
     
  24. bluenote

    bluenote Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    I had the Sega Master System as a kid, so my only experience back then of the NES was at my friends' houses. I do remember renting an NES once or twice just to play Bubble Bobble.

    I bought an NES 7 or 8 years ago, and I've since been rediscovering old NES games that I missed out on back when I was a kid. Right now though, I'm working on Link to the Past on my SNES.
     
  25. Rocker

    Rocker Senior Member

    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
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