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Unfortunate Childhood Gaming Memories
Nick Soapdish
Registered User regular
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(Sister thread to http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=88302)
So that other thread had me thinking about not just the good things I remember about gaming, but the things I look back on sadly, or at least look back on and think "UGH".
How about getting a van (family trip vehicle) with a TV in it, then having your dad try and hook up your old Atari 2600 to the TV and wiring the powersource himself somehow off some cigarette lighter power thing -- then starting the car, turning on the atari to test it and smelling burning wires and your atari never ever working again? Crushing.
Almost as crushing -- running out that night to get the Atari 7800 to replace it, just to have the NES show up like a month later and blow it out of the water. I didn't get an NES til over a year later because "we spent good money on this other game system". I only had Xevious, Karateka, and Pole Position II (pack-in) to play on it, which might have been 50% of the 7800 library ever made. Thus began the pattern of "if we buy it, it will fail." Intellivision, Atari 7800, 2 Amiga computers, TG16, Sega CD... I had to hedge my bets this time, so I own all 3 current systems. So either I figured out how to beat the system, or there's a new industry crash coming....
Actually, maybe I caused the current financial meltdown. I'm sorry.
So that other thread had me thinking about not just the good things I remember about gaming, but the things I look back on sadly, or at least look back on and think "UGH".
How about getting a van (family trip vehicle) with a TV in it, then having your dad try and hook up your old Atari 2600 to the TV and wiring the powersource himself somehow off some cigarette lighter power thing -- then starting the car, turning on the atari to test it and smelling burning wires and your atari never ever working again? Crushing.
Almost as crushing -- running out that night to get the Atari 7800 to replace it, just to have the NES show up like a month later and blow it out of the water. I didn't get an NES til over a year later because "we spent good money on this other game system". I only had Xevious, Karateka, and Pole Position II (pack-in) to play on it, which might have been 50% of the 7800 library ever made. Thus began the pattern of "if we buy it, it will fail." Intellivision, Atari 7800, 2 Amiga computers, TG16, Sega CD... I had to hedge my bets this time, so I own all 3 current systems. So either I figured out how to beat the system, or there's a new industry crash coming....
Actually, maybe I caused the current financial meltdown. I'm sorry.
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The only one I have is when a buddy of mine snapped one of my NES controllers in half playing Punchout.D:
He was fighting Great Tiger, and couldn't get the blocking down for when he does his Tiger Punch. (zoom-zoom-zoom)
In a fit of rage...RRRRGGH...SNAP!!
The next bout was fought in my living room.
*EDIT*
Oh wait, there was the time I was at the very end of Megaman 2, on Wiley's second form, and my sister ran by in front of me, tripped over the cord and pulled my NES onto the floor causing it to reset.
later on my brother goes to try one more time and the kid had saved over his game. there was a nice new hole in the wall and a broken hand that resulted from the rage
Duke Nukem 3D.
Turok
Super Metroid
Strider Returns (Stage 5 looked like Aliens. For the best because the game sucks from a modern perspective.)
Super Bomb Jack (Can't sleep, brains will eat me, can't sleep, brains will eat me.)
I take it back, I was just fucking lost in Super Bomb Jack.
Aw man, megaman legends, i was so close to beating you.
Of course around this time the computer was messing up a little.
My Dad said something along the lines of "Well, it's trying to be a mac, but it's not a mac", and decided to delete the mac emulator(without consulting me first so I could tell him that's not how computers work).
The problem? He didn't delete the emulator.
He didn't even delete Escape Velocity.
All he deleted was my save file.
A month, for installing ICQ. I was so freaking pissed.
Or realizing you saved yourself into an impossible situation
Also, since we had only dial up internet phone calls would disconnect me. I swear to god I was ready to rip the face off the next call marketer who phoned.
Teenagehood Gaming Memories, yes.
In a garage sale, my mom sold our Intellivision II with its 30+ games (complete with boxes, controller sliders and manuals).
For 15$.
Also, that one time, I was playing my friend's file of Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 2, and I died, then instead of loading the game, I accidently deleted it, but since I was on a death screen, I couldn't re-save to put the file back. Thinking back, the save/load menu for that game was stupidly designed. Nevertheless, I deleted his file.
I find your sig nicely frames your post concerning THAT game.
Not happy
I had lent my neighbor my N64 with all my games (~30 of them, including the gold plated Ocarina of Time and gold plated Majora's Mask) because I'd gotten a Gamecube and a bunch of games. Why? I was 15 or so, and she was a hot Ukrainian girl. (My weakness...)
So I went to visit a friend in Nebraska for a weekend, and when I came back I found out they'd moved in that short amount of time. To where? I have no idea.
8 years ago and it still hurts me to this day.
Yes. Oh god yes.
As a teenager though? Bad luck came back around with a vengeance. I've corrupted 2 PS2 memory cards, fucking up my progress on about 15 games that I was at least 50% through (and in the case of some games, at the last boss), my buddy lost my copy of Wind Waker (which isn't a save issue with memory cards and all but it still pissed me off), the first PC that I built myself had a major hardware malfunction costing me about $600 in parts including my hardrive, and more recently my Wii started having a video problem about two weeks after its extended warranty expired.
I've never heard the story before, but I definitely feel for you.
You went from :winky: - o_O -
- Go out, buy a number of 360 games I've been wanting to play. Come home. Boot up 360. RROD.
- Being a cheapass and buying a third party Playstation memory card only to have it corrupt and lose save games for a few RPGs I was playing off and on.
- The nerve damage from playing Track and Field.
- I let a friend borrow my big box original copy of Resident Evil. Then I never saw or heard from him again. My only consolation: I still have his copy of Jet Moto.
Not quite "childhood," but a third-party PS1 memory card wiped a shit-ton of my point-of-no-return saves, including my 90+ hour Front Mission 3 save, the 55+ hour Xenogears save and the 60+ hour FF7 save with Knights of the Round and the whole works.
I didn't buy any third-party accessory for years after that. What warmed my heart was the sexcellent Logitech Wireless Action PS2 controller.
But later on in my teen years -- and even relatively recently -- there've been some goddamn terrible events. My little brother can't seem to keep his hands off my games and has stolen and lost/destroyed well over $300 worth of games.
Then several years later he stole my ENTIRE collection of Gameboy games. He sold my Gold and Silver cartridges off to kids at his school for 25 cents a piece, along with some other games I've forgotten. Everything else I managed to get back. Then later he stole half my GBA game collection. I managed to get most of those back, but he lost my Leaf Green cartridge which had long been designated my main cartridge. It had like 400 hours on it, I'd beaten every challenge, gotten a Mewtwo, and had a legitly obtained Mew on it. I now have a locked cabinet where I keep my games.
I used to tote around my PC CD-Roms in one of those zippered wallet to my friends place to play on his computer. One day I was carrying them while riding my bike to his place, I dropped the wallet, then proceeded to ROLL OVER IT.
About have of the CDs were broken in two.
I miss you, Megaman X.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
Oh my god.
If that kid was my brother, I would beat the ever loving shit out of him.
Then my N64 was forcibly taken away from me and sold because I wasn't doing well in school.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
... so many beloved characters destroyed. So so many.
I was like 6. We had played the game through as a family, and it was the first game I'd seen beaten. It was such an experience at the time and I was very emotionally invested.
I woke up at midnight crying and my parents couldn't figure out why. I couldn't explain, so I led my mom into the living room and turned the sound test onto the song at :30 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hakoWb9qlA0
...Oh god, I am tearing up right now. I can't do this, I am at work.
Seriously. God. So much anger.
You'd be minding you own business, walking through the station towards the shop, and BAM motherfucker comes out of nowhere, kills you and takes your badass equipment...in a game where you're not allowed to kill each other, especially not in lobbies.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
And then stomping on it.
His Wii is in for repairs right now.
Also, selling Chrono Trigger for like 5$ to my neighbor.
I would beat that child. only way to learn em.
he's probably still working on it
While he doesn't beat him. We do get quite a kick out of calling it "monkey stomping" for some reason.
Also, his kid is named after one of his D&D characters.
Haha, not really. I'm fairly nonviolent unless physically threatened, and I thought it was most appropriate that he not do anything fun at all for a couple of months (or longer). I tend to find noncorporeal methods of punishment far more grueling, and my brother has a really high tolerance for pain so kicking his ass wasn't going to be of much use. Now in order to understand the next detail you need to know that my family has had issues with my mother. Specifically, I was raised by [and currently reside with] my grandparents while my younger siblings live with my mother. We watch them while she's at work and such, then they go home with her. Unfortunately, the way my mother works makes any method of long term punishment or discipline impossible, as she will just turn the kids loose at home and not really pay attention to them. Unless they're destroying something of hers of course. So not only did he not learn, he's a repeat offender who I think's going to become a thief and wind up in prison.
Oh, he's also had his own games and game consoles and such. He has had a GBC, a GBA, currently has a DSL; went through an Xbox, two PS2's [the one I have is the second one], and two GameCubes. He's lost, sold, or destroyed most of those and the games that went with them. The GBA, the second GameCube, and most of the games for those were destroyed in a fire though.