I’ve explained previously that the interactive screen has always been especially alluring for me. As a kid, the power of interactive entertainment was so magnetic for me that I’d play with single-minded focus, ignoring the rest of the world completely. My parents saw this and decided to put some limits on my gaming time, one of those limits being that we had no Nintendo Entertainment System in the house.
The original Game Boy was actually my first video game system, which I got with some Christmas money around 1990. Prior to that we had the VIC-20, and a bit later an Apple ][ clone (a LASER 128 we got from a now-closed Sears store). The Nintendo, however, was like a drug for me. We’d go to peoples’ houses that had it, and I’d get hyper-focused as I played it – so my parents decided not to get it.
Incidentally, if we had one of these at home I probably wouldn’t have felt like I needed to play the thing any time we visited someone who had it – but I guess that thought didn’t occur to my parents…they probably figured that I would play the thing day and night if we got it. They might have been right – maybe I would have snuck downstairs when everyone else was asleep and turned on the TV to play Nintendo, at least at first. I doubt it would have lasted. The Game Boy was something my parents could feasibly take and hide in a drawer if I got too obsessed, so that was the first “console” I got.
Eventually, once the Game Boy proved not to be detrimental to my grades, I was allowed to get the Nintendo Entertainment System I’d always wanted. By this point it was around 1992, and the NES was on its way out. The Super Nintendo was already in stores, and there were few games for the NES available at the local Electronics Boutique. I bought it with Castlevania III and Wizards & Warriors III, passing by the Contra Force game that was also on the shelf.
Up until this point, I’d only played games at friends’ houses – particularly at my good friend Jeremy’s house down the street. There were lots of games that had looked interesting, but that I had experienced only through advertisements (particularly in comic books, where many NES ads appeared back in the day). I was entering my teenage years at this point, and finally had a system to play these games on. I picked up StarTropics and the sequel at Toys R Us on clearance, along with the original Mega Man and Mega Man 6 – all still new and in stores. It’s tough to recall, but I might have gotten a few others at a local video rental store that was getting rid of their old games.
As I entered high school and had a summer job, everything got easier: Funcoland was in town, and they had loads of old Nintendo games for sale. Several were in boxes, and I had a small paycheck to burn. I recall getting Crystalis, The Legend of Zelda, and a few dozen other games from a store on my way home from school. While my friends were playing Sega Genesis, I still wanted to play those games that I’d always dreamed about and missed back when I was five to ten years younger.
I took my NES with me to college; friends would come over and play. For the past few years it’s been sitting in the box; it’s about time for it to make a comeback, though. We’re cleaning out my grandmother’s house (she’s still alive, but is in a nursing home, and in her 90s…her house itself is probably a post for another time), and I got an old CRT television and VCR that was sitting in the basement. I’m planning on hooking up the old NES and playing some games for old times sake.
Although my parents could have probably relaxed a bit about the Nintendo, I can’t say I feel like I was deprived. If anything, I think the delayed gratification enhanced my experience later. Even playing these games today, I can still summon that child-like anticipation I had, the thrill I felt when I took that system home and finally enjoyed the games I had for years looked forward to playing.
