NES turns 25 today! Come reminisce here!

Taya

I was at my grandparents house one weekend and my cousin rented "a Nintendo." I didn't know what a Nintendo was but when he hooked it up, the TV had a green boy with a sword and there were three little hearts up on the screen. I thought "Nintendo" was that one game where you controlled the green boy with a sword. It was weeks later when my cousin explained that a Nintendo can play other games.

My brother and I got our NES for Christmas one year, probably 1990 or so. My parents didn't buy us very many games but we rented a game every weekend all throughout our school years.

Memorable games for me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2JuH88jm6k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJC7DIP5JIw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNSN48R6zt0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRq8a51JGLI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxEgHtjssdo

The game that still terrifies me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pshr6Cfak5Y

And finally, the game that I played the most, hands down:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMbSQAzktaI

Brainiac 8

I've beaten Blaster Master several times...I love that game.


Now Fester's Quest....hard as a rock, but oh so satisfying when you finally beat it. (The game practically requires the NES Advantage to beat it, due to turbo.)

lionheart_m

Cartoon Workshop! I remember that game. I recall my sister had quite a few uh..."masterpieces".

Taya

My Dad hooked up the VCR so I could record the cartoons that I made. Good times.

UncleSporky

Hi5 on Spy vs. Spy! That is one of those great "screw over your friend and call him a dirty screenwatcher" games.

Taya

My brother had to be hospitalized for a severe burn caused by The Legend of Zelda.

My dad was playing Zelda and my brother was watching him and pointing where to go and what bushes to burn etc, and he didn't realize our kerosene stove was on when he leaned against it with his right hand. The stove was right next to the TV and my brother would always lean on it when Dad was playing Zelda.

UncleSporky

Don't think I have any NES-related injuries. I was taught to take really good care of my video games, never throw the controllers etc. And why would I want to? My parents wouldn't have bought me another one if I intentionally broke it.

But I was pretty dumb when I was young. I didn't understand Final Fantasy at all. I had no idea that you had to equip things.

Brainiac 8

Abadox was another fantastic game.

Kill the monster...from the inside!

autono-wally, erotibot300

The first video game related injury I had were blisters on my thumb from litti's summer sports

Ragnar Dragonfyre

UncleSporky wrote: »

Don't think I have any NES-related injuries. I was taught to take really good care of my video games, never throw the controllers etc. And why would I want to? My parents wouldn't have bought me another one if I intentionally broke it.

But I was pretty dumb when I was young. I didn't understand Final Fantasy at all. I had no idea that you had to equip things.

Final Fantasy was one of those games I never played as a child. I remember picking up the box several times at the video store... but I always put it back down because it looked dull. Funny how tastes change.

Taya

I forgot about another game, probably because I tried to regress the memories:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIt_IwPbQb0

I HATE THIS GAME BUT I CAN'T STOP PLAYING IT

Brainiac 8

I remember my brother and I playing the track game with the power pad, and we never ever played that game properly.

We would slap the pad with our hands instead of actually running to play the game. :P

Cameron_Talley

Brainiac 8 wrote: »

I remember my brother and I playing the track game with the power pad, and we never ever played that game properly.

We would slap the pad with our hands instead of actually running to play the game. :P

I think everyone did that. I still have the power pad. It always comes out when there's a big party or something.

Madpanda

I rented Clash at Demonhead a few times and could never figure out what to do, I remember maybe trying to fight some skull guy.

I saw a video review of this recently, on happy video game nerd i think, that makes me want to pick up a copy. I just don't like buying single nes games from ebay/forums as they usually cost more to ship than the cart.

lionheart_m

I beat that one thru trial and error. It was weird and quirky and for the life of me I can't remember why I found it so fun.

Brainiac 8

Madpanda wrote: »

I rented Clash at Demonhead a few times and could never figure out what to do, I remember maybe trying to fight some skull guy.

I saw a video review of this recently, on happy video game nerd i think, that makes me want to pick up a copy. I just don't like buying single nes games from ebay/forums as they usually cost more to ship than the cart.

Yea, the HVGN just did the review for the game. It's an awesome game, but very difficult due to the vagueness of what you have to do.

fragglefart

Fuck you thread for making me feel old.

The picture in the OP is totally awesome though.

Madpanda

I picked up one of these on the cheap as well, still need to get the offical players guide. I saw the cover while browsing other stuff and got smacked by a nostalgia wave.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Super-Mario-Bros-Atlas

Tamin

UncleSporky wrote: »

http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Articles.Detail&id=256

Not really a good explanation of the final, most important part though.

Here's maybe a better guide:

http://www.raphnet.net/electronique/nes_mod/nes_mod_en.php#restore_connector

EDIT: This is for bending, not replacing. Try bending first I'd say, it's cheaper.

Where the fuck are my screwdrivers?!

cooljammer00

Speaking of Happy Video Game Nerd, his stuff is fantastic.

Omeks

My memory is a little fuzzy, but the NES was my first video game console. I remember I was in the hospital for some reason. I think it was for the asthma I've since grown out of, but at any rate, I was out of school for what must have been a week. My dad brought in an NES with Mario Bros./Duck Hunt as well as a copy of Chip n' Dale. I'm pretty sure I played Chip n' Dale first, which makes my inner Nintendo fanboy ashamed at not playing Mario first.

And that's how I became a lazy video game junkie.

Something I never understood, though, was later on when I severely wanted an SNES, my dad refused to get me one. He also refused to get me a Gameboy, which I understood since I think he thought the monochrome screen looked terrible. But it's not like he was against video games, because he got me a Genesis for my birthday, so it's almost like it was something about Nintendo.

I eventually got my grandma to buy it for me to bypass this.

anoffday

cooljammer00 wrote: »

Speaking of Happy Video Game Nerd, his stuff is fantastic.

Wait, what? He's happy now?

agoaj

Did anyone else obsessively check out Nintendo Magazine from their library? For some reason, my school had em all, laminated.

I accidently kept the LTTP issue.

Tamin

agoaj wrote: »

Did anyone else obsessively check out Nintendo Magazine from their library? For some reason, my school had em all, laminated.

I "accidentally" kept the LTTP issue.

fix'd

this fix'd is just a joke. The only library item I kept was a copy of The Boxcar Children: Mountain Top Mystery, which had mysteriously found its way under my mattress. I am, to this day, not sure how that happened.

I ended up having to pay the library for it.

edit: I also tried to follow those instructions, Sporky, but failed to fix the pins. My connector actually looks different to me than the one pictured. Given there's no way it can be different, I must be looking at it wrong.

Gennenalyse Rueben

I'm 24 and I've been playing video games my entire life. I have the vague recollections of a time when all my family had was a simple Atari 2600, the old version with the very 70's-looking wood design. I remember the old RF cables that were a pain to deal with compared to the simple A/V cables that came later. The first memory of a video game I can recall is something called Demon Attack, something I played a great deal of. In spite of being barely older than a toddler I had taken to the game so well that I was constantly competing with my own mother for top score. Up to that point I had not encountered anything but the old arcade-style games that the Atari 2600 offered.

Then one day my grandfather came home with a box in his hands. I was too young to really comprehend commercials or even the concept of the outside world, so the alien device that emerged from the box was mysterious. What could it possibly do that was so amazing that it had my mother and grandparents excited for it? They set it up to our old hulking early 80's-style television, plugged in the strange controller -- why didn't it have a joystick? How would you move your character? -- and popped in the Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt cart.

The entirety of my tiny world exploded as I had my first encounter with Mario. My mind was blown many times in World 1-1 alone. Holy crap, the graphics are amazing--holy shit the screen scrolls--oh my god you can get bigger--did you just go down a pipe--you're shooting fireballs now--oh my god did you just kick that turtle!? I remember the days when my entire family would gather in our living room and take turns playing Super Mario Bros. My mother, my grandparents, my granduncle...all of us competing to see if we could actually get to the end of the game.

I eventually beat them all to it, and without warp zones too! I was so proud of myself. And so many games would follow from that -- Chip 'n Dale's Rescue Rangers 1 and 2, Duck Tales, Snake Rattle 'n Roll, Mega Man, Tetris, the other Super Mario games. It was a great time for all of us.

But there was one member of the family that was truly what would be referred to today as a "hardcore gamer" (and was probably better than most of today's so-called "hardcore gamers"): my grandmother. She was amazing at the old NES Dr. Mario. And I mean really, truly amazing. She was so good at the game that she started at the highest possible starting level (20 I think) at the highest speed and would play from there for hours before losing. As a kid I was simultaneously blown away by her skills and annoyed her tendency to kick me off my games so she could play. After the NES generation she stopped playing altogether, though. I was overjoyed at first because I was a selfish little child who was happy to finally have the video games all to myself, but as the years have rolled on by I've become pretty nostalgic for the old days when my family would actually play things together.

The Wii has been something of a revival of those old days. Wii Sports and its sequel have both been featured at family parties and get-togethers on the holidays, and we all gather around the TV to play together. Further, that Dr. Mario remake they released a while back? My grandmother loves it and will periodically sit down to play it for a short period of time. Just the other day she wanted play maybe thirty minutes of it and by the time she quit over three hours had passed. She has to play on Medium now because she's twenty years older, but those skills never went away. Whenever I sit down to watch it feels like time itself has rewound, and I can just see us sitting there in the living room with the oversized box TV and the RF cables and the ugly green 60's carpeting. For a brief moment I feel like that selfish little child again.

But I guess I'm a bit of an emotional sap.

Omeks

agoaj wrote: »

Did anyone else obsessively check out Nintendo Magazine from their library? For some reason, my school had em all, laminated.

I accidently kept the LTTP issue.

Forget public libraries. I had my own library of Nintendo Powers in my bookcase. I kept everyone of those motherfucking things since I began my subscription around 1995. I had a whole shelf full of Nintendo Powers, ordered by month and sectioned by years, lined up so those spinal images made up a clear-as-day Lugia.

Then when I got older I realized they were taking up way too much space and had to dump them.

Darmak

Ragnar Dragonfyre wrote: »

UncleSporky wrote: »

Don't think I have any NES-related injuries. I was taught to take really good care of my video games, never throw the controllers etc. And why would I want to? My parents wouldn't have bought me another one if I intentionally broke it.

But I was pretty dumb when I was young. I didn't understand Final Fantasy at all. I had no idea that you had to equip things.

Final Fantasy was one of those games I never played as a child. I remember picking up the box several times at the video store... but I always put it back down because it looked dull. Funny how tastes change.

I remember getting the strategy guide from Nintendo Power and thinking the game looked so goddamned awesome and that's all I wanted to play for fucking years and for whatever reason my grandparents never bought it for me. I had dreams where I was playing this game and I was so disappointed when I'd wake up and find out they weren't real.

I never did play it until I had a SNES and had beaten Final Fantasy 4 and 6 already.

edit: Gennenalyse Rueben, my grandmother sounds EXACTLY like yours. She would do the same thing for hours and hours on end. hi5

Xenogear_0001

Monger wrote: »

One time I landed the plane in Top Gun.

One time I beat the fucking dam level in TMNT.

I can prove neither of these things, and I'm only mostly certain that I hallucinated neither.

The dam(n) level was easy once you memorized it. I actually made it to Shredder once. Only once. Shit, that van level that came after the dam one was much harder, if only because missiles were goddamn nearly impossible to get. And don't get me started on trying to locate the technodrome.

As for Top Gun--lies.

Brainiac 8

anoffday wrote: »

cooljammer00 wrote: »

Speaking of Happy Video Game Nerd, his stuff is fantastic.

Wait, what? He's happy now?

Nope, he's a different guy than James Rolfe, here's an example of his show. It is very much fantastic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nigaqFqg5cw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p38Z5AkZq0

anoffday

Oh man. I totally want to play Duck Tales now.

Cameron_Talley

Omeks wrote: »

agoaj wrote: »

Did anyone else obsessively check out Nintendo Magazine from their library? For some reason, my school had em all, laminated.

I accidently kept the LTTP issue.

Forget public libraries. I had my own library of Nintendo Powers in my bookcase. I kept everyone of those motherfucking things since I began my subscription around 1995. I had a whole shelf full of Nintendo Powers, ordered by month and sectioned by years, lined up so those spinal images made up a clear-as-day Lugia.

Then when I got older I realized they were taking up way too much space and had to dump them.

Fool.

I've got every issue since I began subscribing in 1996. Still a subscriber. I've been working on filling the back issues, too. I'm missing the first 18 or so, then various issues from 20-60 ish. But I have a lot of them.

They are actually great references when retro games come out...I used them when Chrono Trigger DS came out.

Algertman

I look back at my life and there has always been one constant. Mario. No matter how bad things got for me over the years Mario was always there.

dav3yb

i recently bought a new 72 pin adapter for my nes... i also bought some games off amazon for it!

fun stuff. all my old zelda saves are still there!

anoffday

I need to buy one of those pin adapters. It's long overdue.

DaveTheWave

I bought a 72-pin connector and replaced the one in my NES with it last year. The new one was worse than the original and was so tight that I thought it would destroy my cartridges. I ended up putting my old one back in. It works if you are patient. I don't know what went wrong with the new one.

I also bought a Retro Duo which I thought would be awesome but it runs games at the wrong speed and tends to crash a lot.

I still have my NES hooked up to the only remaining CRT in the house. My bros and friends and I still play International cricket and Aussie Rules Footy. The former is pretty great but the latter is a bit shit. A few months ago I went through SMB3 for the first time in a while. I've still got it. The skills, I mean.

I'd really like a new NES. Some of my games are really very hard to get working now. Shame the swap didn't work for me.

dav3yb

If you get a new pin adapter you usually dont even have to push the cartridge down into the lock position for it to work. thats what bends them out of shape in the first place.

and the new 72 pin adapter shouldn't screw any of your games up, just find an old game you dont care quite so much about and use it to try and wear it in a bit.

maximumzero

dav3yb wrote: »

If you get a new pin adapter you usually dont even have to push the cartridge down into the lock position for it to work. thats what bends them out of shape in the first place.

and the new 72 pin adapter shouldn't screw any of your games up, just find an old game you dont care quite so much about and use it to try and wear it in a bit.

I realized my games without clicking it down into place but it's such a habit I do it anyway.

Ferquin

anoffday wrote: »

Oh man. I totally want to play Duck Tales now.

Yeah, I did too. Until I realized today that my copy is missing. I must've lent it out to one of my friends long ago and never got it back. I lost Kid Icarus the same way.

Lesson: Never lend out NES games.

My soul died a little today...

anoffday

Find them!

Omeks

Ferquin wrote: »

anoffday wrote: »

Oh man. I totally want to play Duck Tales now.

Yeah, I did too. Until I realized today that my copy is missing. I must've lent it out to one of my friends long ago and never got it back. I lost Kid Icarus the same way.

Lesson: Never lend out NES games.

My soul died a little today...

I let a friend borrow my copy of Mario Kart for the SNES once. I never got it back.

I stopped being friends with him.