Bubble Bobble (NES) 0

by Andre • Bubble Bobble, NES

1986 - Taito (Arcade, NES, Game Boy, lots of others!)

1986 – Taito (Arcade, NES, Game Boy, lots of others!)

 

Have you ever gone back to somewhere you used to go, or even where you used to live, looked at a particular spot and said “there – it all happened there”?

I’ve been house-sitting my mom’s place (the house I grew up in) over the last few days, and as I played Red Dead Redemption on her snazzy 55-inch TV in the living room last night, it dawned on me;  in this very corner of this very house, on this very same carpet, I sat about two feet away from where I was now, for hours and hours, playing video games.  Of course, I had a few other rooms I played games in, as well, but the idea remains the same.

And then my mind goes “well, wait a minute, the Earth rotates and spins around the sun, so, it’s technically not the exact same space at all.”

 

Know what I'm sayin'?

Know what I’m sayin’?

 

Anyway…

The 55-inch flat-panel TV now sits where that old busted TV\table-top used to sit.  I’d invite friends over and play games in the living room, or watch recorded episodes of Captain N and The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 on VHS.

There was one occasion where the video game session didn’t last very long, and actually ended with me in tears.  It’s a bit ridiculous, but I was only five years old, or so.

I had a friend named Tristan who lived in our neighborhood.  We didn’t play outside all the time like I did with my closer neighbor-friends, because he lived in another part of the neighborhood, and it was far.  It was only the street running parallel to ours, but it was still far, to me.  From time to time, we’d ride bikes, search a nearby stream for frogs and tadpoles, that sort of thing.

I don’t remember Tristan as being much of a video gamer, but I remember us sitting in our living room one time playing Bubble Bobble.  We hadn’t made it very far into the game, and he and I got into an argument about level numbers.  In that game, stage numbers are at the top of the screen, and stages 1-9 are numbered 01, 02, 03, and so-forth.

Tristan kept calling the numbers ten, twenty, thirty, forty, etc…  I’d tell him “you’re wrong, it’s just one-two-three-four!”  I was starting to get mad, but I was still letting it slide for the most part.  By the 8th stage, however, he got adamant that it was eighty, and I was adamant that it was eight.

We argued about it, I cried, and he went home, still not understanding why “08″ did not mean “80″.

We were still friends, and I even “ran away” to his house one time.  I was in a pouty and argumentative mood one day, so I walked “all the way over” to Tristan’s house without telling anyone.  He was there watching cartoons with his two brothers, who were twins.  I hung out with them for a while, but I wasn’t there very long before our old Pontiac Grand Prix pulled into the driveway, and I knew I was in trouble.

Mom wasn’t particularly happy with me, that day.  Can’t say I blame her!

Tristan’s family ended up moving to the Northwest Territories not long afterwards.  I’m not sure if his dad was in the Army or the RCMP, but when I looked at a map and found out where they were moving to, it was the first time I really thought “whoa, Canada is HUGE”.

I managed to track him down on Facebook when I first created my account in ’07 or so, but he only vaguely remembered who I was, since he left the province at such a young age.

“DON’T YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU THOUGHT ’08′ WAS ’80′ AND YOU MADE ME CRY??”

If he barely remembered who I was, I doubt he’d remember that!

 

 

While I remember having quite a bit of fun with Bubble Bobble, it’s really just your typical 80′s arcade game.  Like Donkey Kong, it’s a one-screen-at-a-time affair, and it could get pretty intense!  I haven’t played it in quite a while, simply because I’m not sure my brain could handle a hundred (or more) stages with that repetitive music, which I used to think was among the best on the NES.

Not only that, but the game’s “good ending” only happens if you get the crystal ball at level 95 or so, and if you play through the whole game in two-player mode.  Lame!!

Bubble Bobble Part 2 was actually a vastly superior game that I’d love to have in my collection, but the last time I checked Amazon.ca, it was $250!!  I’ll settle for an emulator for now, thanks!

A Mass of Memories 0

by Andre • About the Blog

I can still think of various times in my life and associate them with video games, somehow.  Good, bad, happy, sad, whatever.  The unfortunate part about that is that I always re-gravitate towards the games that I played in happier times.  The games I experienced during the more stressful or unhappy periods of my life (not that I’ve ever been “down in the dumps” – everyone has their ups and downs) don’t get very many playthroughs, simply because they plop me right back into those time periods.

Not that they’re bad games, they just weren’t all that great to me.

It’s not just video games, either.  It’s the same way with movies, music, or even sporting events.  Various parts of my life can be pieced together by thinking of various other things, which bring back certain memories.

It works vice-versa, too.  If the games\sports happenings\movies were bad, I don’t have too many random memories from those time periods.

For example, I don’t remember much of 1994.  The Blue Jays did awful that year, and the Expos had a fantastic season nullified by the player’s strike.  My early interest in auto racing took a hit when an F1 racer I had just started following because I thought his name was catchy (Ayrton Senna) was killed in the first part of the year.  I lost a bit of interest in both sports, which was a bit of a bummer.

Kurt Cobain died some time during the end of Grade 5, and though I didn’t like Nirvana at the time, the image of kids crying the morning after he died is fresh in my mind.  One of the girls in my class had her mother pass away after a tough battle with cancer, and it freaked a lot of kids out to the point where counsellors came in to help some of the kids.  I was more or less fine, but the frank discussions we had about death kinda spooked me.

So, yeah, what games did I play in ’93-’94, while I was in Grade 5?  Off the top of my head, I can honestly say I’m not too sure.  Maybe Mega Man X?  The release date seems right, although I don’t associate many childhood memories with it, except the specific ones I’ve already posted about.  NHL ’94 and NHL Stanley Cup come to mind, but that was more around Christmas time, and there were no other really memorable games to speak of.

Perhaps there were others…  they just aren’t coming quite as naturally to me, maybe because I just choose not to remember.  Funny, how that works.

I know this wasn’t much of a gaming post, although it kinda\sorta is.  I just kinda let my fingers do the flyin’ today.

That being said, I don’t expect to be out of gaming memories any time soon!

NASCAR ’98 (PlayStation) 0

by Andre • PlayStation, Racing, Saturn

I actually started this post some time early last year, and the draft for it has been staring me in the face ever since I started the countdown.  Now that I’m done, I might as well go ahead and finish it up!

 

1997 - EA Sports (PlayStation, Saturn)

1997 – EA Sports (PlayStation, Saturn)

 

There were two consoles back in the mid-to-late 90′s that I desperately wanted to add to my collection.

There was the Nintendo 64, which I had read about non-stop in Nintendo Power since the days it was known as the Ultra 64.  I regarded that console as I did the Super NES - the reliable standby, with Zelda and Mario titles for me to enjoy, and maybe (who knows) a Mega Man game or two.  Good, wholesome family fun that maybe my parents would enjoy watching me play.

On the other hand, the Sony PlayStation was a console I wanted so I could experience racing games, as well as more mature titles.  One console would serve one purpose, and the other console would serve another purpose altogether.

Buying Electronic Gaming Monthly or GamePro magazines didn’t happen as often as I would have liked, so getting to see the latest news in the gaming world outside of Nintendo was always a nice treat.  I had friends who preferred Sega to Nintendo, and we’d have childish disagreements as to what the better company was.  That might be why I kept an eye out for new Saturn games, or the (supposedly) upcoming Sega Neptune mega-console.

I didn’t have much of an interest in the Saturn, other than the fact they were competitors with a different-looking product.  I didn’t think I’d ever want one, since Atari had failed miserably with the Jaguar, Panasonic wasn’t doing too well with the 3DO, and Phillips’ CD-i was already out the door at that point – and for good reason.  Why shouldn’t I believe the same would happen to Sega, or even Sony’s new PlayStation console?

Well, a kid two doors down from my house eventually rented those two consoles – the first was the Saturn, which seemed pretty cool.  The controller was similar (if not identical) to that of the Genesis, which I wasn’t really a fan of.  He rented Sega Rally along with it, and we spent most of a snow day playing that.  The graphics did look pretty fantastic, even though I was torn about whether or not I enjoyed the gameplay.

That day we played the Saturn, we also got that kid to call random phone numbers – mostly 1-800 hotlines from the back of food labels – and ask completely nonsensical questions.  We also got him to call 1-800-ABCDEFG, which was the number for the Hooked on Phonics children’s literacy program.  He was from Nigeria, so his accent, coupled with the ridiculousness of the questions we had written down for him to ask, had us rolling on the floor with laughter.

 

When he told the person on the other end "Hooked on Phonics worked for me!", I darn near peed myself from laughter.

When he said the line ”Hooked on Phonics worked for me!”, I darn near peed myself from laughter.

 

Not exactly the proudest moment of our childhood, but props to him for not cracking up during those prank calls.  He did a fantastic job, better than any one of us would have!

Anyway, a week or so later, he rented a Sony Playstation.  I’m not sure if it was the simple fact that the controllers were different, and more similar to those for the Super NES, or what…  but the PlayStation just felt cooler than the Saturn did.

 

 

Looking back on Ridge Racer, it really wasn’t that great a game.  The drifting controls were a bit awkward for me, but it was so vivid and colourful, I couldn’t help but enjoy it.  Those first few games you play on a console will leave an impression on you anyway, no matter what they are.

Because it was a racing game, and because I was just beginning to follow racing as a sport, the PlayStation became a “must own” for me.  Andretti Racing was another early PlayStation game that he rented, and being able to race with IndyCars and stock cars was quite fun.  EA was also on the verge of releasing NASCAR ’98, so I started wanting a PS1 pretty badly once I found that out.

I definitely still wanted an Ultra 64 when it came out, but I wanted a PlayStation just as badly so I could experience more racing games.  I’d get to play other genres as well, but the PS1 became a “racing game console” to me.

So, a recent NASCAR ’98 playthrough got me thinking of those days all over again.

There was the time I was watching Mike (from across the street) playing the game for the first time, and since I was a self-proclaimed NASCAR guru, I was giving him tips as quickly as I could spit them out.

“Arc it down into the corner!”
“Stay in the groove!”
“Feather the throttle, stay as close to the white line as you can!”
“Don’t go down on the apron!”

At this point, Mike had had enough of my badgering his driving style, and yelled out “STOP TELLING ME ABOUT ‘GOING OFF OF THE APRON’ AND ONTO THE…  (short pause)  SPATULA!!”

Instead of being insulted that he didn’t want my tips (I knew I was being annoying, anyway), I just burst out laughing!  So did Mike, after a moment.

The apron of a race track is the flat portion at the bottom of the banking.  Cars don’t handle very well there, so putting the left-side wheels on the apron while the right-side wheels are still on the banked portion really screws with the car’s handling…

The apron I was referring to had nothing to do with a piece of clothing worn in the kitchen, but I thought Mike’s retort was quite hilarious.

Good times, man.  Good times…

 

Getting onto the apron is usually bad news. In this case, the 18 saved his car, while everyone else wrecked avoiding him!

Getting bumped onto the apron is usually bad news.
In this case, the 18 saved his car, while everyone else wrecked avoiding him!

…and one I just thought about. 0

by Andre • Mario, NES, Racing

I thought I was completely out of memories pertaining to Super Mario Bros., but I was wrong.  This one actually deals more with another game, one I probably won’t dedicate an entire post to otherwise…

 

1987 - Square (NES)

1987 – Square (NES)

 

My obsession with ocean liners was a strange one for a kid my age, especially considering the ocean liners that fascinated me were the ones that sank with great loss of life.  I had books and books with pictures from the turn of the century, and I couldn’t help but be enthralled by them.  Even though I was barely out of kindergarten when I first learned about them, they still interest me greatly, to this day.

Same goes with racing – once I experienced my first NASCAR race in person, I wanted to know everything about everyone who was ever in the sport.  Obviously, auto racing of all forms is still an obsession of mine.

It’s no surprise that video games fall into this very same category.

Playing Super Mario Bros. was like a bucket of water to the face; it took my imagination and made it run absolutely crazy.  I thought about everything the game had to offer, even when I wasn’t playing it.  The box art from games I’d see on store shelves was mesmerizing, and I thought for sure that if I stared at the images on them (all two or three of them), they’d come alive.

I knew I couldn’t own them all, so that had to suffice.

Whenever I was playing something other than SMB, which was still pretty often, I would always compare it to Mario.  To me, every game’s structure was supposed to be like Mario’s.  Day level, night level, castle level.  It could be no other way!

The first time we rented Rad Racer, I wasn’t quite sure if I liked it or not.  I played it, though, because it was colourful, and quite different from anything else I had played on the NES so far.  That night, I went downstairs to our unfinished basement where my sister was watching TV.  She asked if I liked the game she had rented for me, and I said “yes, I beat it, and the last level is a castle just like in Mario.”

I was full of it, of course.  I’m not sure if the intent was to cover the fact that I didn’t really like the game all that much, or what, but the final level of Rad Racer was actually this…

 

It went through a day and night cycle, which was pretty cool, for the day. I've never actually gotten that far, though.

It went through a day and night cycle, which was pretty cool, for the day.

 

Not that I’ve ever, ever made it that far.

As much as I loved the sport, racing games in the 8-and-16-bit eras always felt somewhat awkward to me.  Games like Namco’s Pole Position and Sega’s Outrun were quite popular, and they kept coming even in the Super NES days with games like Top Gear and Lamborghini Challenge.  I played those a fair amount with friends, but the way the cars handled and went through corners…  it wasn’t for me.  It just never felt right.

On the other hand, Mode 7 graphics really helped make some racing games stand out ahead of the pack.  The obvious game to bring up in this instance is Super Mario Kart, but F-1 Pole Position, Al Unser Jr’s Road to the Top and F-Zero all separated themselves from the rest.  In those games, there was such a thing as an apex, and finesse of the brake and gas actually accomplished something.

Going around a turn in Rad Racer-type games was always infuriating to me, because by the time I thought I had the car under control, the corner was over, and I was on the next straightaway.

Still, Rad Racer holds a special place not in my heart, but in my mind.

That night in our basement, I envisioned what that “completely made up in my head” level looked like, and whenever I see the game at a flea market, I can’t help but think of what it looked like in my mind’s eye…  and thanks to the joys of MS Paint…

 

Exactly how I imagined it.

…here’s exactly how I imagined it.

My Top 100: #1 – Super Mario Bros. 4

by Andre • Mario, NES, Top 100

1985 - Nintendo (NES, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Console, eShop)

1985 – Nintendo (NES, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Console, eShop)

 

Could it be anything else?

My previous experiences with games were fleeting, whether they were in the cart corral at Co-Op (with Centipede and Millipede) or in Baie-Sainte-Anne with our friends’ Vectrex.  These were one-screen affairs that had a character moving from side to side, shooting stuff.  Berzerk for Vectrex was pretty fun, and it kept my attention for a while, but aside from that, I didn’t have much interest in that kind of toy.

I was too busy with my Matchbox cars, Popples and Glo-Worms to care, I guess.

When I was finally introduced to Super Mario Bros. a year or so after the NES was released, I was suprised at how quickly the game’s world sucked me in.  The colours were so vibrant, and there seemed to be secrets everywhere.  There was an above-ground, an under-ground, day levels, night levels, and World 5 even looked kinda snowy.

Mario felt like he actually weighed something…  if you compare Mario’s controls in SMB to those he has in Donkey Kong, I’m sure you’ll know what I mean.  I didn’t know the concept of “physics” when I was little, but I definitely knew the game felt different from the rest of the ones I had played.

The idea that the screen was scrolling to the right was quite something, as well.  I remember looking at the right side of the TV it was being played on, wondering where the land scrolling onto it was coming from.  No longer were games confined to a single screen – this was one big world, like an interactive cartoon, waiting to be explored.

I’ve used the word “explore” a lot in my Top 100 game posts, and I truly think that my love of games comes from being able to immerse myself into the gaming world.  Much like a movie or a cartoon, these are just images on a screen; once you put that controller in your hand, though, you become the character, whether it’s a first person shooter, role playing game, platformer, whatever.

I got a little too philosophical for my own taste, there.  Still, it’s kinda true.  If a game doesn’t control all that well, then chances are pretty good you’re not going to like it.  Plain and simple.  That’s where Super Mario Bros. had me right from the get-go.

Just now, while I was looking for a video to post, I couldn’t stop watching.  Playing (or evidently just seeing) the game makes me happy.  I think of all the trading cards, lunch boxes, t-shirts, colouring books, stickers, school supplies, and who knows what other Mario merchandise I made my mom buy over the years.

That’s why I can’t help but go back to it, time after time, just to feel like I’m 4-5 years old all over again.

 

 

I’ve already mentioned that snowy morning at our house when my sister rented an NES, as well as the time my dad got back from a work trip to Calgary with the console in his suitcase.  Those are my two most vivid memories that I’ve shared in a prior post (seen here), so I’m kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel here…  but here goes nothin’.

Our family friends in Shediac had a teenage son who owned an NES.  After he showed me Super Mario Bros.\Duck Hunt, Renegade and Excitebike, playing NES was the only thing I wanted to do while we stayed there.  I played and played, and since I was pretty terrible at Renegade, I focused on Mario and Excitebike.

They also had a teenage daughter, and she must have thought I was cute or something, because I hung around her a lot as well.  She had some of her female friends over one day, and I was hanging around all of them.  Now, keep in mind that I’m 4 years old.  They’re all in the bedroom, talking about who knows what, and I casually stroll in to hang out with my new girl-friends.  I’m not really paying any attention to their conversation, since I’m busy playing with the dog, a cocker spaniel named Sandy.

Out of nowhere, the girl says “OK Andre, time to leave.  We have to change.”

I argued my point, saying I could put my hands over my eyes so that I wouldn’t see anything.  It’s not like I even wanted to see anything!  Besides, if the dog could stay in the room, I could stay in the room too!

She said the dog was blind, and that he didn’t have to leave.  With that, she picked me up, plopped me just outside the door, and closed it in my face.

Shot down!

Another memory involves me waking up in the wee hours of the morning to my dad playing the game on our big TV in the living room.  One of Dad’s friends was over, and he was watching him play, marvelling at how far he had gotten.  He was at 8-3, which was the furthest any of us had gotten at that point.  I knew it was way past my bedtime, but I stayed up to see what the level looked like.

There were lots of Bullet Bills, lots of Hammer Bros., and for some reason, in the background was a long brick wall.  It looked quite intimidating, and it gave us the impression that the end of the game was near!

So, Dad managed to get to the last part of the level, but after making it past one of the Hammer Bros., got a little too confident, and lost his last life by running into yet another Hammer Bro a few seconds later.  He tried again, only to die at the same spot, since there were a total of four of them lined up before the exit.

I’m sure what I thought was the “wee hours of the morning” was actually closer to 9PM, but I really did feel like I was breaking the rules to watch Dad try to make it to the next castle.  For all we knew, 8-4 might not even be the last one, but finding out would have to wait another day.

 

World 6-3 was probably my favourite level in the entire game.

World 6-3 was probably my favourite level in the entire game.

 

So, there you have it.

When I started making posts for this countdown, part of me doubted I’d actually get to #1.  I tried to stick to the “one post every day”, but it quickly wore me out.  I struggled to keep the writing fresh enough to keep it interesting, so I tried to spread it out a bit.

Like butter on toast!

Anyway, I intend to keep posting to this blog as long as I have memories to share, and even if the games aren’t Top 100-worthy.

See ya ’round!

My Top 100: #2 – The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 0

by Andre • Nintendo 64, Top 100, Zelda

1998 - Nintendo (Nintendo 64, GameCube, Virtual Console, 3DS)

1998 – Nintendo (Nintendo 64, GameCube, Virtual Console, 3DS)

 

Whenever Nintendo Power compiled “best of” lists in its last few years of existence, Ocarina of Time always seemed to end up somewhere at the top of the heap.  Nintendo had a lot to be proud of, and their flagship publication definitely did their best to hammer the point home; “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is one of the greatest games of all time, and we’re not going to let you forget about it.”

The game was indeed damn-near perfect, but there was no need to brag about it…  jerks.

Much like I wanted to explore the unseen sides of the Mushroom Kingdom when playing Super Mario Bros., I had been wanting to explore Hyrule the same way after enjoying the hell out of Super Mario 64.  Ever since that kid in Grade 1 told me you could climb a tree in The Legend of Zelda for NES, I tried to imagine what doing such a thing in a Zelda game would be like.  I knew the kid was full of it, but he really got me thinking.

Lo and behold, the world got its hands on Ocarina of Time in November of ’98, and the first level had us climbing through the guts of a giant tree.

Words couldn’t express how pumped I was to play this game!  I put it on my very short Christmas wish list (yeah, I still did that at 15 to help with gift ideas), but never expected to find the Collector’s Edition with the gold cartridge under the tree that year.

Best Mom ever!

Anyway, the game not only looked and played great, it felt like Zelda was supposed to feel, looked like it was supposed to look, and sounded like it was supposed to sound.  It felt like a lifetime since A Link to the Past had come out, but playing Ocarina felt like you were meeting up with an old friend; even though you had both grown up, nothing else had changed.

What else can I say?  It was Zelda, it was 3D, and it played so well, I’ve bought it and beaten it more than once on four different consoles.  I keep saying “OK, that’s enough Ocarina for me”, then I just find myself sucked right back in.

It’s just that good.

 

 

For the first little while after this game came out, I was desperately trying to find a way to play it.  For some reason, Blockbuster Video had no copies for rent, and the only thing I had to whet my appetite was the November ’98 issue of Nintendo Power.  There were maps and screenshots galore, and I spent most of my “reading periods” (the five minutes every day before classes actually started) trying to imagine what the levels actually felt like.

My friend Tyler found a rentable copy of the game somewhere, and I jumped at the opportunity.  I didn’t necessarily want to go over to his place and play it – instead, I brought a VHS cassette to school, gave it to him and said “record what you can, and bring this back to me tomorrow!”

He was nice enough to do that for me, and as he gave it back the next day, he said “the game is good, but it’s really nothing special”.  I was slightly disappointed, but I was still looking forward to going home and checking the tape.

My sister picked me up from school that day, and told me that she’d just gotten back from Houlton, Maine.  She had gotten some groceries, as well as a few music CD’s.  We were in the New Maryland “woods” part of the drive when she popped a CD into the car stereo, and said “this girl is apparently hitting it big in the States right now…  it’s catchy song!”

At that point, I had just recently started listening to Korn, and was beginning to appreciate lots of bands from an entirely new (to me) genre of music – Rock.  Much to the dismay of my parents and two older sisters, my interest in Pop and Country music was waning, and this girl singing a song about “hitting it baby one more time” really wasn’t my cup of tea.

She looked so damn pretty on the album cover, though…  erm, I mean, nothing.  The song was awful.

I got home, watched the Zelda tape Tyler had recorded, and was mesmerized by what I saw.  I wasn’t sure why he didn’t like it all that much, but it sure looked like fun.  I kept the tape, and watched it over and over until I got the game that Christmas.

You lucky kids with your YouTubes and Vimeos and other video-watchin’ doo-dads don’t know how good you’ve got it.

I also think about Anita whenever I play this game.  I was on one of my many playthroughs, the first since I met her, and I evidently had to open lots of doors with Zelda’s Lullaby one day.  The next morning as we both sipped our cups of coffee, she told me; “I had dreams about that Zelda song last night…  it wasn’t fun.  I kinda hate it.”

So now, whenever I play Ocarina of Time 3D and have to prove my so-called “connection to the Royal Family“, I crank the volume on my 3DS.  The glare I get from doing that is priceless!

 

"She's so pretty, she'd even look good bald!" I probably didn't say that.

“She’s so pretty, she’d even look good bald!”
I probably didn’t say that.

My Top 100: #3 – Super Mario Bros. 3 0

by Andre • Mario, NES, Top 100

1990 - Nintendo (NES, Super NES, Virtual Console, eShop)

1990 – Nintendo (NES, Super NES, Virtual Console, eShop)

 

After compiling a list of a hundred games I thought deserved to be on my countdown, I determined the order from #100 to #10 rather easily.  “I like Title A more than Title B, but less than Title C.”  That’s how I worked through my list, and even doing most of my top 10 was easy enough.

When it came to my top three, however, that’s when it got difficult.  If there could be a three-way tie for first, I would be happy with that.

In good conscience, however, I can’t.  I had to choose, and somehow figure out what these three games meant to me, and which one meant the most.  That is, after all, what my countdown has been about from the get-go.  These games are more to me than just several hours of gameplay; they were the defining games from various parts of my life, and I can still pick up and play any of them at any time, no matter what mood I’m in.

So that’s where Super Mario Bros. 3 fits in.  Numéro trois.  It feels somewhat low, but that’s just how it goes.

SMB2 was nothing like the first game, so it was only natural to assume SMB3 would change things up as well.  In reality, the game actually went back to what made the original so fun – running, jumping, head-stomping and fire-spitting your way to defeating Bowser and rescuing Princess Toadstool.

But there was more to it than that…  a lot more.

Sure, the Mushroom Kingdom was once again yours to explore, but it was friggin’ alive.  After seeing the land map for the first time, I remember just sitting there and staring at it for a few minutes before going into the first stage.  There were wandering Hammer Bros., dancing hills, mushroom huts, a castle moat…  and what was this?  Six stages in the first world?  That was a wild concept.  The first game had four stages per level, and the second usually had three per level…  but six, and two castles??

If my Mario math was correct (even though my actual math was terrible those days), there’d be at least seven of these worlds.  Whatever the hell seven times six was, I was in for quite the ride.

*I know there were more than six stages in later levels, I just didn’t know it at the time.*

Every world has a unique theme, and though the difficulty ramps up with every one, the challenges are always different.  Whether it’s the brutal anxiety of swimming in World 3′s water levels with Big Bertha just a few pixels away, or the sweaty-palmed precision it takes when navigating World 7′s hundred-pipe stages, there are no two areas that feel the same.  Never had the gaming world ever felt so vibrant and colourful, or seem so friggin’ big.

The game’s powerups were so random, too.  The Super Mushroom and Fire Flower were back, and were joined by a few new ones as well.  Flying around as Raccoon Mario was pretty awesome, but when the Frog Suit popped out of that treasure chest at the end of World 2, I no longer had any idea what to expect from the game.  I mean, Frog Mario was pretty useless in the Desert World, but was pretty handy in future levels.

The Tanooki Suit’s random appearance didn’t seem to be too much out of the ordinary, but turning into a statue by pressing down and B didn’t make a whole lot of sense.  It was pretty cool, though, and it could be pretty useful.

My “THIS GAME JUST WENT FROM AWESOME TO RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME” moment came some time during World 7, when I first got the Hammer Suit.  Hammer Suit Mario is actually pretty useless – the arc of his projectiles was a bit tough to get used to, and I didn’t seem to last very long whenever I had that power up.  Still, there was something incredibly badass about actually being one of the fearsome Hammer Bros.

I could go on and on about how the game plays, or how all the little things like the White Toad Houses, Treasure Ships and Kuribo’s Shoe kept you guessing, but for the sake of the blog, I won’t.  Super Mario Bros. 3 was such a leap forward that pretty much every platformer released afterwards tried to emulate it somehow.

It was definitely Nintendo’s crowning achievement on the NES!

 

 

Ahhhh 1990.  It was a pretty memorable year for me, and the decade it kicked off was quite fantastic as well;  Crystal Pepsi, Full House, Jurassic Park, the ridiculousness of the OJ Simpson murder trial, and most importantly, the Blue Jays and Red Wings both winning back-to-back championships.  There were a bunch of other things that made the 90′s awesome, but let’s focus on ’90 and the beginning of my love affair with Super Mario Bros. 3.

That was the year I remember going to Newfoundland to see my father’s side of the family.  I had seen them a few times when they’d come to New Brunswick for a visit, and I had actually made the trip over as a toddler, but this was the first time I’d get a “grand tour” of the island from Mom and Dad.

Unfortunately, the trip became memorable for all the wrong reasons.

There are two ferry rides to Newfoundland;  one lasts about 8 hours, but leads you to the opposite side of the island with a much longer drive to St. John’s;  the other ferry takes about 14 hours, but with a much shorter drive afterwards.  Thankfully, we had chosen the short ferry ride with the longer drive.

Some might think a relaxing ride on a boat in the middle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence would be preferreable to a cramped ten-hour car ride.  I got pretty violently ill during the second half of the ferry ride, though, and it often had me (to quote Bill Cosby) with my face in a place that was not built for my face.

The majority of people my parents were making idle chit-chat with, including the ferry’s Captain, said I just had a typical case of seasickness.  The Captain even said “ah, he’ll be fine after he gets sick a few more times”.  He also said we should head to one of the lower sections of the boat, just so that I wouldn’t feel the effects of the waves as much.

I can still picture that lounging room down below;  very dark, everyone facing one direction, and paper barf bags in a slot behind the seat in front of us. One of the kids in the family sitting up front let me play Golf for Game Boy, which was the first time I played Nintendo’s hand held.

A day or two after getting to Port-aux-Basques and hitting the road to St. John’s, I was still quite sick.  During our hotel stays, in-between pukes, I tried to relax and get my mind off things by playing through Super Mario Bros. 3.  It was in one of those hotels that I made it as far as the Pipe Maze for the first time, without even having to pause the game to puke!  I got to that level with the Arrow Lift, the one you jump on to change directions…  then paused the game so I could go puke.

It was an amazing trip, and quite memorable despite the stomach bug.  We went back to Newfoundland two years later for a family reunion, but didn’t take the whole scenic trip around the island.

I’m definitely hoping to take the long way around again some day soon, even if it means packing the Gravol.

 

A fun trip, although it was a bit long for my liking at the time.

A fun trip, although it was a bit long for my liking at the time.

My Top 100: #4 – Mega Man 3 0

by Andre • Mega Man, NES, Top 100

1990 - Capcom (NES, PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox, Virtual Console)

1990 – Capcom (NES, PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox, Virtual Console)

 

I’m not sure whose idea it was for to get me a subscription to Nintendo Power, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t mine.

Sure, I liked buying issues of this and that from time to time, but I didn’t really think getting one in the mail monthly was necessary.  Still, it really was a nice little surprise to have an issue waiting in the mail that first time…  it sucked that it was a guide to 4-player games, but I couldn’t be too upset.

I mean, seriously, what percentage of gamers have ever played a 4-player NES game?  Thankfully, the next issue featured something I could actually get excited about.

My sister was picking me up on my last day before Christmas vacation in Grade 2, and she had gotten the mail beforehand.  She put the issue of NP on my lap as I got into the car, and saw that Mega Man 3 was on the cover.  That was amazing!  Since the first issue I got was a player’s guide, there was no mention of the following month’s cover story.

In fact, aside from seeing small and blurry screenshots in an EGM or two, this was the first good look I got at it.  I liked Mega Man 2 quite a bit, so this one should theoretically be much, much better.  That’s just the way it went with games.  A sequel was supposed to be better than the first game, and #3 in a series was essentially supposed to be perfect.  That’s what the Mario games seemed to be doing, anyway.

For my money, Mega Man games don’t get any better than 3.  2 incorporated everything awesome about the first one, then built on it.  In that same vein, 3 took everything awesome about 2, and built on that model even further.  Bigger levels, better items, more characters, a fleshed-out plot (you know, by 8-bit standards), and a higher difficulty level…  you didn’t even get to Wily’s lair until you beat the eight Robot Masters from Mega Man 2!  Although, technically, it was spread over four levels and not eight, but it was still hard as hell.

Rush’s abilities were more flexible and useful than the aptly named “1″, “2″ and “3″ from the second game.  Mega Man could now perform a slide move to scoot away (or under) from attacking foes, which minimized the annoying threat of having an enemy respawn if you backtracked a bit too much, just for being careful.  I definitely liked the challenges the first game threw at me, but respawning enemies could sometimes drive me nuts.

Proto Man was an intriguing addition, seeing as how you didn’t know what his deal was until the very end of the game.  Was he a friend?  Was he a foe?  All you knew was that he had a terrible attack pattern, showed up just long enough to drain a bit of health from you, and had a really cool whistle to announce his arrival.  That curiosity about Proto Man, and wanting to find out who he was in the grand scheme of things, really helped drive me forward during some of the more difficult parts of the game.

Once you get through Dr. Wily’s Castle and beat the game, you’re treated to some of the best 8-bit music there is.  The extended Proto Man theme that leads into the credits is probably my favourite chiptune of all time!  Obviously, the rest of the game’s soundtrack is great, as well, but overall, I still believe the music from Mega Man 2 is better.

There will always be people on both sides of the Mega Man 2\Mega Man 3 “argument”, but it’s pretty clear which side I’ve always been on.

 

 

Christmas in 1990 was pretty awesome.  I got several Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures, a Bart Simpson piggie bank (a Bartie bank?), a massive Raphael (TMNT) doll, a Nintendo Game Boy, and Mega Man 3.  The Game Boy was a complete surprise, and I spent my entire holidays playing it and Mega Man 3.

The coolest part of it all was that my father had borrowed a camcorder from work, and got a bunch of the festivities on tape.  It was such a great time, and I re-watched that tape over and over again in the years that followed.

The gathering we had that New Year’s Eve was also on tape, but I never watched that part of the video.  Here’s the why…

My parents had friends over that night, and I was busy showing off my new games to their daughter, who was much older than me.  After a while, we turned the games off and watched television.  There were two movies on that night, both of which scared the absolute crap out of me.  Because of that, I would always skip that part of our home video, simply because it reminded me of those movies.

The first movie we watched was Gremlins.  Those little lizard-like bastards were kinda nasty-looking, and those kinds of things really grossed me out, for some reason.  I remember a scene where one of them melts, and it looks an awful lot like melty green cheese…  I’m not sure if that rings a bell, but I have that image stuck in my mind.  That’s honestly all I remember from that movie, but it didn’t scare me nearly as much as the second movie we watched that night.

InnerSpace, a sci-fi comedy starring Martin Short and Dennis Quaid.

The premise involves Quaid hopping into a space shuttle-like device that shrinks down to microscopic size, which they intend to use to explore the inside of a mouse.  You know, in the name of science.  Unfortunately, something goes awry during the transfer, and Quaid’s shuttle ends up on the inside of Martin Short’s character.

Hilarity ensues…  or, it’s supposed to, anyway.  I was terrified.

Quaid’s character zooms through various parts of Short’s body, from one internal organ to another, desperately trying to find his ticket out of there before his oxygen runs out.  Along the way, Quaid shoots a harpoon-like device into the back of Short’s eye, travels to his ear canal so they can talk to one another, then over to Meg Ryan’s body where he finds a growing fetus, and various other things.

It all weirded me out quite a bit, but it was one of the movie’s final scenes that scared me the most, and had me paranoid to watch movies of any kind.

The movie’s antagonist eventually manages to get shrunk down-to-size, and confronts Quaid in the pit of Short’s stomach above a green pool of stomach acid.  At this point, I was so mesmerized about what I had seen so far that this didn’t bug me all that much.  However, after a short battle, the bad guy bites the bullet when his shuttle crashes into the pool of acid.

What I saw next gave me nightmares for weeks; the bad guy’s skeletal remains floating across the screen.

Yep, like being scared that Jupiter would come after me, I was now scared that I’d someday be shrunk down to the size of bacteria and consumed by stomach acid.  You know, because that’s a rational fear, right?

Anyway, I can’t help but think of New Year’s Eve ’91, as well as Gremlins and InnerSpace, whenever I play Mega Man 3.

 

"In a world where comedies are terrifying... one man kills another man, giving a Canadian child... NIGHTMARES."

“In a world where comedies are terrifying… one man kills another man in stomach acid, giving a Canadian child… NIGHTMARES.”

My Top 100: #5 – Half-Life 0

by Andre • Half-Life, PC, Top 100

1998 - Valve (PC, PlayStation 2)

1998 – Valve (PC, PlayStation 2)

 

In Grades 10 and 11, I was so obsessed with all things Star Wars that everthing else that happened in those years seems like a blur.  I don’t remember the NASCAR races all that well, which, if you know me, I’m sure you know is a big deal.  I honestly don’t remember any games that I played those years either, other than Ocarina of Time, but they were probably mostly Star Wars games.

I had gotten my friend Ken to burn me a pirated copy of The Phantom Menace, and I watched that so many times that I actually had the entire first half of dialogue from the movie memorized, word for word.  In between “important” note-takings in Grade 11 History class, I even wrote it all down in my notebook.

Obi-Wan:  I have a bad feeling about this…
Qui-Gon:  I don’t sense anything.
Obi-Wan:  It’s not about the mission, Master.  It’s something elsewhere, elusive…
Qui-Gon:  Don’t center on your anxieties, Obi-Wan.  Keep your concentration, here and now, where it belongs.
Obi-Wan:  But Master Yoda said I should be mindful of the future.
Qui-Gon:  But not at the expense of the moment.  Be mindful of the living Force, young Padawan.

By the end of the semester, I had everything until the pod racing scene written up.

Yes folks, it was that bad.  I wish it weren’t the truth, knowing now that the dialogue in that movie was in fact quite dreadful…  but it is 100% true.  I didn’t look up that dialogue I wrote just above, so evidently, it’s still all fresh in my mind.

Crazy.

It was in this same History class that my friend John mentioned that he had started playing this amazing little game called Half-Life.  I had heard about it on GameSpot TV, a show with Adam Sessler on ZDTV that eventually became the popular X-Play show on G4.  I assumed it was something along the lines of Quake or Unreal Tournament, and as was the case with other PC games, I didn’t have much interest in seeing what Half-Life was all about.

John had a copy of the game burnt on a CD (which was pretty damn amazing, at the time), and he lent it to me.  He wasn’t that much of a gamer, but I figured I’d give this one a shot.  I had just gotten a new 3DFX video card, so why not let it stretch its legs a bit?

This was the first time I ever played with the ol’ keyboard and mouse combo, and the controls felt great.  The Black Mesa research facility had texture and depth, and felt a heck of a lot more realistic than what I had seen before.  NPC’s were talking to me, and although I had seen this sort of thing on console games before, interactions with Half-Life characters just seemed more genuine.

Things had changed quite a bit since Doom, that much was certain.

The narrative was much deeper, and you could associate with Gordon Freeman a heck of a lot more than…  DoomGuy, was it?  Even though Doom blew my mind for putting me in the shoes of an angry dude carrying a gun, needing to kill everything in sight, Half-Life made me experience something completely different.

I mean, the first part of the game has you showing up for work, and doing Gordon’s job.  That was friggin’ brilliant!  It connected you to the story, and made you feel as though you were as much a part of the journey as Freeman himself was.

From the moment you step off that hover train at the beginning, you’re sent through this amazing inter-connected space that sends you to every corner of Black Mesa.  While the weapons all looked and worked pretty damn awesomely (not to mention how great they sounded), you needed more than just firepower to get past certain situations.  There was always some kind of obstacle for you to overcome using your noggin, rather than brute force.  I appreciated that, for sure.

Even though I’ve said time and time again that PC games are just not for me, Half-Life is one of those games that I need to re-play on PC again, some day.  Sure, the PlayStation 2 version was quite nice, but I’ll never forget the awesomeness that was Half-Life for PC, and how it got me off that Star Wars kick.

I needed that…  thanks, John.

 

 

The first memory I have about Half-Life comes a few years after I first played the game, on my second or third playthrough.  What might seem like an incredibly happy memory is actually somewhat bittersweet.  I know I’m usually pretty open about things on my blog, but I won’t get into the details, this time around.

I actually didn’t know it at the time, but the winter storm brewing outside my window that day was being hailed as “White Juan”.  Hurricane Juan had rocked the Maritimes a few months earlier, and this blast of weather was the winter version of it.  Luckily, I wasn’t working that day, so I settled in for my favourite snowstorm activity – playing lots of games.

That morning, we had gotten the call from Moncton, saying that my sister was driven to the hospital.  She was going into labour!  Before the day was out, we were hoping to have a little niece or nephew, and my parents would have a grandchild for the first time.  It was very exciting!

They didn’t determine the baby’s sex beforehand, so everyone told my sister she was having a boy.  Weird cravings?  Yep, a boy.  Belly has a certain shape?  A boy.  Blah blah blah.  A boy.  Mom and I were the only two people that ever told my sister we thought she’d be having a girl.  It wasn’t by looking at her, or anything superstitious like that – although, maybe there is some science behind all that stuff, who knows.

It was just the simple fact that we saw her raising a little girl, and not a little boy.  That was it.

I was at the part in the video above, where you travel down that massive elevator shaft with the green acid at the bottom, when we got the next call from the hospital in Moncton.  I paused the game, headed out into the kitchen and soaked in all the details.  We were both elated at the news that both the mommy and baby were healthy, but it was made even sweeter by the fact that it was a girl!!  Mom and I were right!  Take that, everybody!

Mom didn’t have much time to celebrate, since she had to venture out into the storm and go to work.  That had me a bit worried, but she ended up making it just fine.  I stayed home and played Half-Life for the better part of the afternoon.

What a strange, surreal day that was.

For memory number two, let’s fast forward almost three years.

I had been dating Anita for a bit more than six months when her roommates bailed on her just after Christmas.  I wasn’t sure what she was going to do with her living situation, so I spent a lot of time with her at her place.  I didn’t know if I was going to move in, or what, but I wanted to be there while the departing roommate and her boyfriend moved all her stuff out.

It’s not that I didn’t trust them…  but…  yeah.

Anyway, even when she was at work, I was at her apartment.  No cable TV, no internet…  just the PlayStation 2 I had brought over to watch movies with.  Naturally, I brought a few games along, as well.

There were nights I played games in complete darkness on her little 14-inch TV for hours, waiting for what seemed like forever for her to get off work.  The majority of the furniture belonged to the departing roommate, so it really was quite eerie in that place.  Of all the games I played, Half-Life was the one that I played the most.  In complete darkness, it was a pretty intense playthrough!

We ended up moving in together into a different apartment a month later, but there were definitely some memories from that old place that neither of us will ever forget!

 

Halifax after "White Juan", February 2004. Good times in the Maritimes.

Halifax after “White Juan”, February 2004.
Good times in the Maritimes.

My Top 100: #6 – Grand Theft Auto III 1

by Andre • Grand Theft Auto, PlayStation 2, Top 100

2001 - Rockstar Games (PlayStation 2, PC, Xbox, Mac, iOS, PlayStation Network)

2001 – Rockstar Games (PlayStation 2, PC, Xbox, Mac, iOS, PlayStation Network)

 

Here’s another series that really made the transition into 3D nicely.

I remember playing the first Grand Theft Auto game on a PC in Technology class.  Not only did you learn a bit about computers, but it also had various modules that explored building engines, wood sculptures, rockets, among other things.  For some of them (like the Lego robot-building one), a computer was required for you to issue commands.  I’d always sign up for these modules with my friend Tyler, who was quite the computer-savvy individual.

Before too long, Tyler had an NES emulator running on the PC’s in the classroom.  We’d have to minimize it whenever the teacher came around, but it was pretty fun to play NES games once we had finished the module’s exercises.  GTA was also one of the games he installed.  It was cool too, I guess, but there was always too much going on at once, and the camera perspective made driving controls a little wonky.  I wasn’t really a fan, and I ignored the handful of PC sequels it got.

By the time the PS2 rolled around, everyone was talking about Metal Gear Solid 2.  I still have all those EGM and Official PlayStation Magazine issues from the Summer of ’01, and previews for Grand Theft Auto III didn’t take up more than a page in either one.  The concept of a free-roaming environment sounded pretty cool, but it got a bit lost in the hype surrounding MGS2 and the new Nintendo and Microsoft consoles.

It was released to immense critical acclaim in October of 2001…  I guess?  Maybe?

I was still busy playing Gran Turismo 3 in those moments I wasn’t studying like a mad man, so I wasn’t really aware of any hype at the time.  The next month saw the release of the GameCube and Xbox, so I was completely oblivious to the apparent awesomeness of GTA3 until early December or so.  My friend Wil mentioned that he’d been playing it non-stop, so I figured I’d at least rent it to see what all the apparent fuss was about.

So, I rent it…  and I like it…

 

I like it

 

Gone was the awkward camera angle from the previous games, replaced with the over-the-shoulder view commonly seen in most third person shooters.  That was a big deal, because that was the only hurdle in the first few games that I couldn’t overcome.  It was awful, but this new third-Claude-perspective worked great!

While doing the missions was definitely quite fun, I had a blast just driving around, looking to see what I could or couldn’t do, where I could or couldn’t go, and what ramps I could turn into slow-motion super jumps.  Hidden Packages, Rampages, random weapons, armor, police bribes…  I found a ton of stuff that I could eventually come back to if I needed it, and the completionist in me absolutely loved looking around for little secrets.

And then, to top it all off, getting the Callahan Bridge back open gave me that same kind of feeling I had gotten after defeating Bowser for the first time in Super Mario 64.

“YOU MEAN THERE’S MORE???!??!?  HOOOOLY FRIG.  Amazing.”

There was more lurking around every corner on the second island, and even more stuff to find on the third.  The game’s missions were also getting more and more intense, and had you taking on a variety of different weapons and vehicles.

The simple fact that you had freedom to do what you wanted, when you wanted to, was pretty damn amazing.  I’ve played it more than any other GTA game to date, and despite the fact that you can do much, much more in later games, this is by far my favourite.

 

 

There’s two things I think of whenever I play GTA3.

When I first rented the game, I was somewhat skeptical that I’d like it.  I brought it home, popped it in, and watched the intro…  but something looked weird.

The characters were being driven around in the back of a Police van, and camera shots of the cars zooming by looked a bit…  off.  It was obviously raining, but why was the pavement all shiny?  It looked black, and was shimmering blue on the surface.  I didn’t think too much of it, since I wasn’t sure what the game was really supposed to look like.

Eventually, the cutscene ended, and I was in control of the character.  Unfortunately, the pavement still looked very strange, like I was driving on a night sky, or something.  It actually looked like the rain was coming “up” to the underside of the seemingly translucent pavement.  It was friggin’ weird.  Something was definitely wrong, for sure.

I took the disc out, and there didn’t seem to be any damage to it.  I popped it back in, and the same thing happened.  Damn…  my experience with this game wasn’t getting off on the right foot, at all.  I had to make the trip all the way back into town, and try to explain to the dude at Blockbuster what was happening.

“Uhhh yeah, the pavement looks all black, blue, and shiny, and it’s like, raining upside down, or something?”

He gave me a weird look, but had no problem in swapping my copy out for another one.  My only hope was that it wasn’t something on my PS2 that was screwed up, and not reading the disc properly.

I got home, and all was good this time around.  I ended up playing the hell out of that game that weekend, and got it for Christmas not that long afterwards.

My other memory pertains to a rather grumpy day I was having in late ’02.

I had just started my new job working retail, and I wasn’t used to long periods of time on my feet.  I mean, I wasn’t far removed from playing 8-9 hours of street hockey almost every day, but standing in one spot behind a cash register all day was proving to be incredibly hard on my knees and back.  I also had a bad head cold at the time, and I was an all-around grump-face whenever I had to work the 8:30am to 10:30pm shift.

The morning after one of those long days, I had big plans; go to the podiatrist (the foot doctor people, I think that’s what they’re called) to get my knee and back pain checked out, go to my family doctor to get prescribed something for my head cold, and then a chill-out jam session with my friend Tom later in the day.  He had borrowed my copy of GTA3, so I had to get that back from him, as well.

The podiatrist looked at my feet and asked “have you ever used arch-supports?”  I hadn’t, just because our family doctor had taken one look at my foot imprints as a little one and said “he has flat feet!”

Well, I didn’t have flat feet, and the “flat” imprint was caused by my ankles rolling inward, putting my knees out of alignment, which ended up hurting my back, as well.

Frig.  That explained why doing simple stuff like ice skating hurt me so much as a kid.

Anyway, right then and there, he took a mold of my feet to do up my arch supports, which would no doubt help make me more comfortable behind the cash register.  I remember the plaster being cold and gooey, and I was quite glad when I was finally able to clean up and put my socks back on.

So, from there, I went to the doctor’s office.  It was busy, so I sat and waited for my turn…  and waited…  and waited…  finally, an hour after the scheduled time of my appointment, I went to see the receptionist.

“Oh, you’re here!  You didn’t pop in to say you were here, so I just assumed you weren’t.  I’ll tell Tom you’re ready to see him whenever he’s ready.”

An hour wasted.  *sigh*  Whatever.  I got a prescription for meds, and headed over to Tom’s.

We jammed for a bit, and it was fun.  When I grabbed the GTA3 box, the instruction manual looked like a big slice of bacon.  He had spilled something on it, and it was sticky and barely even pliable…  I was mad, but from what I can recall, I kept it all in.  Tom was pretty apologetic, and he genuinely felt horrible for ruining a simple little instruction booklet.

I was extra grumpy, and I really hope I remember that right, and that I didn’t flip out on Tom.  I don’t think I did…  in any case, I ended up trading the PS2 version, messed up manual and all, for the Xbox version when it eventually came out.  So it’s all good now, anyway.

Just one more reason for me to have trust issues when lending games to friends……  sorry guys, I’ve been jaded a few too many times.

 

Although the day was a pretty grumpy one, getting arch supports is actually the sole (HA!) reason I didn't quit my job. I'm quite glad I got them!

Although the day was a pretty grumpy one, getting arch supports is actually the sole (HA!) reason I didn’t quit my job. I’m quite glad I got them!

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