Growing Up Nintendo is a series of features that recounts my experiences as a gamer, starting at the beginning and working toward the present. Do you have stories to share about your gaming childhood? Please sign up for a free account and share them right here! Gamers come from all manner of different backgrounds. It can be interesting to hear where others come from as we examine where we're going.
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My parents sat on the couch, mouths slightly ajar, staring at the screen. Brown, green, brown, green. The red power indicator on the old NES blinked on and off as the signal to the television wavered between the two decidedly wrong, decidedly ugly color tones.
''What's wrong?'' my mom asked.
My dad didn't know, but I did.
What was wrong was that my new game, freshly unwrapped from where minutes before it had rested under the Christmas tree, was not working. Instead of the title screen I should have been seeing, there were these nasty colors. Just a bit ago, I had been practically bursting with excitement.
''Oh, it's Time Lord," I had said with overwhelming excitement. "I got Time Lord!''
There the time traveler stood on the front of the box, monsters around him, a sword in his hand, silhouetted against the glowing moon with the big 'MB' logo in the corner. I had worked hard on my parents for this moment, and my reward was there, right in front of me. My mom liked to maintain the farce at that point that there was a Santa Claus, but I was in the fifth grade. I knew better. Still, what gets you presents gets you presents, so I was willing to play along as required.
As I unwrapped my gift and tore through the paper, my mom turned to hers.
''You might want to pay attention to this,'' my dad said with a smile. ''It might be something you can eat.''
I hesitated at my tearing and watched as my mom unwrapped a game of her own. It was Wheel of Fortune, and I didn't much care. Back to Time Lord and then, once it was unwrapped, it was time to play it.
And so I encountered the blinking screen.
You need to understand at this point that no one in my family had ever seen the infamous sight. We didn't know about copper connector pins or corrosion or anything of the sort. So it was that the first time I saw the relative Nintendo equivalent to Microsoft's blue screen of death, it was on Christmas Day. None of my family members knew that a small nudge and a push in the right direction could get the game to work. All we knew is that it didn't work and, shortly afterwards, that Wheel of Fortune did.
''Wheel...of...Fortune!'' the digitized crowd cheered. Then the familiar music piped through the television speaker. I only half saw it.
''This is the worst Christmas ever,'' I mumbled.
In awhile, the doorbell rang. The neighbor kids were at the door, bundled up like Eskimos and carrying with them their Christmas haul. Two new NES titles were theirs: Dr. Mario and City Connection. I was so excited by the opportunity to play new games that for a moment I forgot about my Time Lord disappointment. My parents were tolerant of the idea and retreated to the bedroom while my sister and I played with the two neighbor kids, our constant compatriots in times of necessary gaming.
Our friends were named Nathan and Melissa. They didn't always love games as much as I did, but on occasions like this one, games on Christmas morning had similar significance for all of us. So we played the new games. Both of them were good games. Both of them were really, really good games.
''Ooh!'' I'd say as my daring vehicle in City Connection flew over a cop car, squeaked past the cat, and launched into the air just in time to avoid a collision. ''That was close!''
''Grab the balloon!'' Nathan would shout excitedly. ''Three of them let you warp!''
We had a lot of fun, and it was awhile before my thoughts turned back to Time Lord. I still hadn't seen so much as the title screen. So we tried inserting the cartridge again, and this time it worked. This time, I got to experience what I had been hoping to experience for months and this time I found just what my months of incessant pestering had wrought. I sold the game a year or two later, then bought it back several years after that. I still play it sometimes, mostly when my nostalgic side insists that I relive traumatic moments from my childhood. Rare's story of a time-traveling hero is forever woven into my Christmas past.
There were other Christmas days, though, better ones where I received other games. One of the best times came the night I unwrapped The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. It was several years later, of course, and I'd only had a Super Nintendo for a few months at that point. The wrapping slid away and there it was: Hyrule goodness. I didn't care that my parents told me I couldn't play yet (they had by that point grown tired of the Christmas tradition of me opening the games present and then playing it the rest of the day or night). This was my first time opening a Super Nintendo game cartridge's box and I savored every moment and element of the experience. Ooh, whiteness. Ooh, a thick manual with beautiful gold pages and ooh, there's the cartridge! Everything was exciting.
There were other bad Christmas moments, though, despite every precaution that I took. One year I can recall as a particular disappointment. For months--probably half the year--I had been preparing my mother for what 'Santa' should get me. There was even a list, the sort of list that smart kids that still make and that today's parents still find every bit as perplexing as my mom did.
''They actually make games with such bizarre titles?'' the parent asks, and the kid just nods aggressively whether he's right or wrong.
I was always right about the titles that I listed, of course. I was armed with my Nintendo Power subscription, so there was never so much as a semi-colon out of place. My list was lengthy too, consisting of about 40 titles in their approximate order of importance so that even if the top two or three choices were gone (or the top 20 or 30), I still had a chance of getting a good game. By then, I had realized that bad games do indeed exist, and I was hoping that I could avoid them. After all, I would only get games once or twice a year. I had to make those instances count.
Enter the list, which was crafted with the care not unlike the care that one might bestow upon a beloved child. At the top of that list were two of the games I most wanted: Secret of Mana and 7th Saga. They were my two dream games. Below that were listed numerous other titles, also stuff that I would have loved to own and play routinely. Nowhere--absolutely nowhere on the list--was there mention of Konami's latest, a platformer named Prince of Persia.
As I unwrapped the packaging on that fateful year, the first thing I saw was the name Konami. My heart sank, but then I tried to tell myself that things could still be okay. Konami made The Legend of the Mystical Ninja. That was a great game. Maybe while straying from my list, my mother had inadvertently gotten lucky. Then I pulled away more gift wrap and found out that she hadn't. Instead, there was some game called Prince of Persia. Huh?
''It's like Aladdin,'' my mom told me, beaming.
''Mmm.'' I looked at it about like you might examine a snake when you're not sure if it's poisonous or not.
My dad saw how things were going, but he didn't want my mom to be disappointed. Obviously, she felt proud that she managed to find a magnificent new game that even my constant Nintendo Power reading hadn't let me know existed. Christmas list? Who needs a Christmas list when she's such a savvy shopper?
''Open it,'' my dad suggested.
I knew what was good for me, so I did. I even faked enthusiasm. When they went out to the Jacuzzi in the shop--a surprisingly long trek that for some reason we almost always took in the winter, without the benefit of any warmth beyond towels and swimsuits, when the thermostat was hovering in freezing territory--I stayed inside and tried out my new game. It wasn't awful or anything, but it also was nothing like anything that I had wanted. I sold it not terribly later, and that was the last time for awhile that I received any video games from Santa.
There were other Christmas memories, though. One memorable year, my grandmother played a role in the holiday proceedings. She had come to visit from Connecticut, which was a cross-country trip that she seldom made. When she did come, that meant good gifts. Specifically, it meant video games. On this particular year, it meant a game purchased from the local Radio Shack. Its pitiful selection at the time was generally awful, but my mom hadn't yet caught on to that fact and seemed to think that it was a perfectly acceptable place to find games for the occasional gift.
Fast-forward a few weeks and imagine a beautiful Christmas tree with a pile of gifts under its pine branches. It was a beautiful sight, with tinsel and pretty lights and Avon ornaments and whatever else made it out of storage. I had tunnel vision, though. I saw gifts under the tree and one with my name looked particularly promising.
"Hmm," I said to myself, "that looks about the size of a game and it's for me."
I ran into my bedroom and grabbed a game box, then returned to the base of the tree to compare size. I was like Solid Snake and my mission went well, without detection, until... my sister raised the alarm!
''Jason's measuring the gift to see if it's a game!'' she shouted exultantly.
My grandma and mom rushed into the room, where I suddenly looked very much like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
''What?'' my grandma demanded. ''I can take it back. I will!''
''No!'' I said, and I forget what else. I couldn't have been persuasive, but those events transpired quite close to the big day and the 34-mile drive to Madras would have been quite inconvenient. Despite my sister's treachery, the gift remained under the tree and I kept my distance for fear that if I even looked its way again, it might vanish.
Then came the big day and I opened the package. I had received a game, as my earlier investigation had led me to believe I would. The game in question was Mega Man 2, a title that didn't interest me in the slightest. I played it anyway, though, because a game was still a game at that point. Suddenly, after only a few minutes of play, I realized that I was hooked. The ridiculous cover was no way to judge the contents of that special gray cartridge. My grandmother's purchase had opened my eyes to a fantastic new world of robots, arm cannons, energy pellets and instant death at the hand of vicious spiked barbs.
Much later, I learned that my gift that year had come down to a choice between two games: Mega Man 2 and Jaws. Given that my mom was along and providing input, I believe that I just barely dodged two nasty bullets that year.
You'd think that I would have learned to be careful when it came to gift-giving season, but surprisingly, Mega Man 2 wasn't the only game that I nearly lost to rash behavior. The other title that was nearly a victim of my shortsightedness was Battletoads. So excellent had my prepping been throughout that particular year that I was almost completely convinced that I would get the gift I wanted. My cause was assisted by two $5 gift certificates that showed up in the mail that year, part of a settlement that Nintendo agreed to following a court case that ruled against the company and its competitive business practices. My mom went to Bend that year--always a good sign, since that meant K-Mart and other such stores were within range--and came back with packages that my sister and I were not to see. The $5 coupons had mysteriously vanished.
I knew what that meant: a game for me.
''So,'' I said casually a few days later, in perhaps one of the dumbest moves of my life, ''how much did Battletoads cost?''
I had no idea at that point whether my mom had actually come back with Battletoads or not, of course. It was a fishing expedition, but I hadn't considered the potential result if my mother fell into my trap. And of course she did. And of course she thought I had peaked, and accused me of that, and then it was clear that whether I had peaked or not, I pretty much knew what I would be getting for Christmas if she didn't return whatever she had purchased. Again, I was likely saved from disappointment on Dec. 25th by the inconvenience of a trip back to Bend, which really would have been quite the trek with the icy winter roads and the distance required.
I really hadn't peeked, though, and my Battletoads stumble was the closest I ever came to trying to determine what gift I had received ahead of time. To this day, the only thing I know about my parent's hiding place is that it was probably out in the 'van,' a semi-truck trailer that my dad purchased and used for storage on our property. I only know that much because of that Christmas morning I already mentioned when Time Lord didn't work and my mother guessed that "Maybe it got cold out in the van."
Despite a few near disasters, Christmas was the most magical day of every childhood year. That was always true, even on the 'bad' years. The big day was surrounded by all sorts of good things, like homemade divinity candy and carols and snowmen and sledding and lots of good food (my mom's lasagna was a personal favorite of mine). The moment each year where my family gathered around the Christmas tree, though, was never surpassed. The family togetherness at such times was partly to think for that, of course, but the rest came down to one thing: the excitement that can only come from unwrapping another new Nintendo game.
Someday, maybe I'll have kids of my own who will know the excitement of a Nintendo fan on Christmas morning.
