Month: August 2020

Why Super NES is so damn important to me~!

When I was a kid fell in love with video games at an early age. By the time I was 18 I had played more games than I can count. I owned multiple game consoles and dozens of games. In all my years gaming nothing has brought me as much joy as I was delivered when I entered the digital world of Super Nintendo. It was by far the greatest video game experience in my life. I was so happy to finally buy another after being without for over a decade.

The SNES holds a special place in my heart  not just because the games were pure magic, that’s a given. The real reason I love the Super Nintendo so much is it was the first game console I ever bought with my own money. I took a job after school delivering newspapers. I worked on weekends in the corn field like most kids in Nebraska did.

I worked my butt off to save the money to buy me a Nintendo 64 on launch day. I would have taken it home that day too if I hadn’t walked into a pawn shop selling a box full of SNES games with a console for $50 bucks total. Needless to say I took that bundle of electronic goodness home, tossed the trusty Genesis aside and was immediately immersed in the wonderful worlds Nintendo characters took me into.

The best game I played at the time remains my absolute favorite video game of all time, the beloved Super Mario World. Oh sure Super Mario Bros. 3 is near and dear to my heart as well but nothing gets my blood flowing like the euphoria of leading Mario, Luigi and Yoshi through Dinosaur Island on a quest to defeat the King Koopa yet again.

I distinctly remember the best days in high school were coming home from school for my free period, sitting in my bedroom (in my dress I hid) and blasting some Quad City DJ’s as I played every level of Super Mario World.

Over the years I have continued to revisit the classics in some form or another. Mostly via emulation be it through Wii or Wii U Virtual console or some other shadier method Nintendo would hardly approve, I never stopped playing the game. In fact I just did another 100 percent run on my laptop a month ago.

Die hard Nintendo loyalists will tell you there is no substitute for playing on physical hardware. I often reply my Laptop IS physical hardware so case closed. I use USB adapters to play using authentic SNES controllers, I always figured that was good enough for me.

A couple of days ago my Super Nintendo I had ordered from ebay arrived in the mail. The moment I fired up that pristine looking system no yellowing in sight a year drop rolled down my cheek. I was instantly transported back in time. I will fight to the death that playing NES on an emulator sans blinking lights, headache inducing blowing and constant cleaning carts is a joy compared to playing on the flawed, but still charming NES. But let me tell you nothing beats firing up an SNES cart plugged into a real SNES machine, oh maybe only if that machine was plugged into an old school tube TV set but I have to take things one step at a time.

The Nostalgia Bug bit me hard this week and once I got over the shock of finally having my favorite gaming system back in my life after all these years, I sorta went on a shopping binge on the ebay buying back all my classic favorites, even shelling out a whopping NEW game priced $60 bucks for a copy of Super Mario RGP: Legend of the Seven Stars. Yeah I had no choice I was buying back my childhood and I will be damned if I don’t get that done before I hit the BIG four zero in the next couple of years.

Right now all I can say is the Super Nintendo will always be my favorite game system and I am so relieved to finally have another one in my life. I have made a promise to myself not to let this out go for nothing.

TECHNODROME!

Have you ever felt a one word headline was sufficient to get your point across? I’ve seen it done rarely in newspapers and websites. I don’t often resort to this method myself. In fact more often than not I find myself actually writing lengthier headlines than is required for the story.

So why am I writing about the TMNT Technodrome? Easy, I bought one. Yes after more than 25 years since my parents bought me the behemoth vehicle/playset I finally talked myself into spending the massive money ebay required of me to get another one back in my life.

As is often the case as I was browsing the popular auction site I discovered it was actually more cost effective to spend a little bit more to get a large bundle of toys that included a nearly complete set than it would have to buy a complete set.

I was probably 10 or eleven years old the Christmas my parents bought me this toy. It was the absolutely most amazing toy ever. I had years of fun with it. Under normal circumstances I often repurposed my toys as we were poor growing up and I could tell my mom worked hard to save up the money to buy me this when she did. It was a pretty big deal.

This was no exception to that rule. My G1 Transformers Skullgrin doubled as a Terminator as needed but would also work as a Ghostbusters PK Meter when I was so inclined. I mostly used the spherical tank of death with the giant eyeball as intended, a playset for my ever growing collection of Ninja Turtles toys. I also, through not very creative modifications, used it as a stand in for Cybertron when it was called for or even as a Death Star once I began getting a number of Star Wars Power of the Force toys.

Do you want to know how important it was for me to get this particular toy back in my life? My bucket list actually features a line that says Buy Technodrome. I wrote that list nearly a decade ago and now I can finally cross one more thing off it. I know most people put places they like to travel, or how many kids they want to have, and yes I have those on my list as well but this is literally the only toy on my list, it means that much to me.

Like most toys I owned the one from my childhood is most assuredly no longer in collectible condition. In fact I am quite certain the remaining pieces I had of it made their way into a dumpster that summer I went nuts over breaking up with my girlfriend and threw away all my toys and comic books. Yeah, I know a stupid overreaction to a girl I barely knew. But I was 16 and that’s a very difficult time in a person’s life.

I have exactly THREE Christmases I can point to in my memory where I got EXACTLY what I asked my parents for. The first was the time they bought a Nintendo Entertainment System. Oh, sure, I had to share it with my sisters but that Christmas I wanted nothing more than to play Super Mario Bros. like all the cool kids at school.

The other one was the year I begged my mom to buy me a Generation 2 Optimus Prime. My mom made a deal with me. She said if I learned how to dive off the diving board at the local swimming pool and overcame my fear of heights she would get me ANYTHING I asked for that year for Christmas. I put in the effort, she rewarded me as such. That was a vastly more personal Christmas gift as Optimus Prime was more than a toy to me, he was my best friend for many years.

The year I got the Technodrome was all kinds of special for a different reason. I honestly don’t know where the extra money came from but it was the first year we got multiple toys from my parents, usually we got one big toy and a couple little ones plus the usual clothes. That year, for whatever reason, I got a ton of toys, easily two to three times as many as ever before, or since. It might have had something to do with my mom getting her first high paying job as we were slowly  beginning to climb out of lower class poverty and into working class. It might have been because my cousin had come to live with us as her parents were separating and they wanted her to have a great year. For whatever the reason it was by far the best Christmas in my childhood memories. For that reason alone I have been longing to get every item from that year back in my life, most significantly the giant eye ball of death. Stay cool.