{"id":2775,"date":"2013-04-15T15:27:53","date_gmt":"2013-04-15T15:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=2775"},"modified":"2013-04-23T16:50:03","modified_gmt":"2013-04-23T16:50:03","slug":"and-one-i-just-thought-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=2775","title":{"rendered":"…and one I just thought about."},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought I was completely out of memories pertaining to Super Mario Bros<\/em>., but I was wrong.\u00a0 This one actually deals more with another game, one I probably won’t dedicate an entire post to otherwise…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"1987<\/a>

1987 – Square (NES)<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 I had books and books with pictures from the turn of the century, and I couldn’t help but be enthralled by them.\u00a0 Even though I was barely out of kindergarten when I first learned about them, they still interest me greatly, to this day.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Obviously, auto racing of all forms is still an obsession of mine.<\/p>\n

It’s no surprise that video games fall into this very same category.<\/p>\n

Playing Super Mario Bros.<\/em> was like a bucket of water to\u00a0the face; it took my imagination and made it run absolutely crazy.\u00a0 I thought about everything the game had to offer, even when I wasn’t playing it.\u00a0 The box art from games I’d see on\u00a0store shelves\u00a0was 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.<\/p>\n

I knew I couldn’t own them all, so that had to suffice.<\/p>\n

Whenever I was playing something other than SMB<\/em>, which was still pretty often, I would always compare it to Mario<\/em>.\u00a0 To me, every game’s structure was supposed to be like Mario’s.\u00a0 Day level, night level, castle level.\u00a0 It could be no other way!<\/p>\n

The first time we rented Rad Racer<\/em>, I wasn’t quite sure if I liked it or not.\u00a0 I played it, though, because it was colourful, and quite different from anything else I had played on the NES so far.\u00a0 That night, I went downstairs to our unfinished basement where my sister was watching TV.\u00a0 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<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

I was full of it, of course.\u00a0 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\u00a0<\/em>was actually this…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"It<\/a>

It went through a day and night cycle, which was pretty cool, for the day.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Not that I’ve ever, ever made it that far.<\/p>\n

As much as I loved the sport, racing games in the 8-and-16-bit eras always felt somewhat awkward to me.\u00a0 Games like Namco’s Pole Position<\/em> and Sega’s Outrun<\/em> were quite popular, and\u00a0they kept coming\u00a0even in the Super NES days with games like Top Gear<\/em> and Lamborghini Challenge<\/em>.\u00a0 I played those a fair amount with friends, but the way the cars handled and went through corners…\u00a0 it wasn’t for me.\u00a0 It just never felt right.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Mode 7 graphics really helped make some racing games stand out ahead of the pack.\u00a0 The obvious game to bring up in this instance is Super Mario Kart<\/em>, but F-1 Pole Position<\/em>, Al Unser Jr’s Road to the Top<\/em> and F-Zero<\/em> all separated themselves from the rest.\u00a0 In those games, there was such a thing as an apex<\/a>, and finesse of the brake and gas actually accomplished something.<\/p>\n

Going around a turn in Rad Racer<\/em>-type games was always infuriating to me, because by the time\u00a0I thought\u00a0I had\u00a0the car under control, the corner was over, and\u00a0I was on the next straightaway.<\/p>\n

Still, Rad Racer<\/em> holds a special place not in my heart, but in my mind.<\/p>\n

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…\u00a0 and thanks to the joys of MS Paint…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Exactly<\/a>

…here’s exactly how I imagined it.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought I was completely out of memories pertaining to Super Mario Bros., but I was wrong.\u00a0 This one actually deals more with another game, one I probably won’t dedicate an entire post to otherwise…     My… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5,81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mario","category-nes","category-racing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2775"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2795,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2775\/revisions\/2795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}