Mayhem
03-13-2004, 04:55 PM
Cast your mind way back... back in fact to May 1992. The Super Nintendo was finally being released in Europe and there was much rejoicing. Our house had completely bypassed the 16-bit era up to that point, with the faithful C64 still in much use and handhelds on the go. No Amiga, no ST despite the fact most of my friends had upgraded. So with the release of Nintendo's new wonder machine, my brother and I finally decided to take the plunge.
Most fortuitously, my brother's birthday happened to correspond with the release date. Naturally he badgered our parents to death, can I have a SNES, can I have a SNES, can I have a SNES and so on. I think they eventually got the message. So one trip down the shops later and we managed to find a place still with stock left.
And for a few months we really enjoyed our new PAL console. Super Mario World was just so brilliant, F-Zero was a breath of fresh air and Super Tennis was incredible fun and a 2-player game to boot. Then Streetfighter 2 appeared in Japan. There's a story surrounding that too, which I may well spill at a later date. But with the PAL release way in the distance, it took borrowing a Japanese copy from a friend and buying a convertor to satisfy the agony we would have suffered just waiting for it to be released in the UK.
One killer ap indeed. And then just 2 months later another one appeared: Super Mario Kart. However there was one subtle difference about this game compared to the rest we had so far - this cart used a DSP chip and no convertor out there currently was equipped to deal with this as the cartridge board was longer than normal. Cue frustration and torment. Were we to be denied playing this superb game for at least another 6 months? Were we to be subject to the tales of how well it played from a couple of people who were able to play the game because they had bought foreign consoles? Well no as it turned out.
This was the impetus needed to get off my behind and go and do something about it. I was going to buy an import console. No more waiting, no more agony, no more crappy PAL release schedule. Sounded so easy didn't it? Well, could you find a place doing that sort of thing in the UK in 1992? Importing was still very much in its infancy here and whilst some places catered for these tastes, it was all still fairly "hardcore" with prices to match. Something rather out of the budget of myself or my brother.
And then I happened to chance upon a small shop a few miles from where we lived, advertising they sold US Super Nintendo consoles and everything you needed to run them in the UK for a reasonable price. So I hatched a plan with the parents to get them to fork for the new console, and then pay them back by selling the PAL one. Brilliant! So off we went to the mysterious shop and its fabled contents.
Mysterious is probably about the right word. The "shop", if you could call it that, was basically a counter at the back of a much larger building that sold absolutely no items to do with video gaming whatsoever. So approaching the counter with trepidation, we asked them about the US SNES advert. For all you UK peeps out there, it was very reminscent of the Pot Noodle advert! The guy had a quick look under the counter, walked over and talked to his colleague and seemed to get into a bit of debate. I began to wonder if I'd asked for something illegal, something not allowed and was about to get busted for asking for something not supposed to be sold in the UK.
As it turned out, it was nothing of the sort. They had so much response to the ad they only had one unit left and was the "display" model. This was no ordinary model either, it had been RGB modified and came with the cable. They asked if I still wanted it. Do bears crap in the woods? Of course I did! So they found a box for it, got a Megadrive (Genesis) power supply to use it with as they had no SNES power supplies left, and even threw in an extra pad to make up. All for the same price my parents had paid for the PAL model several months earlier.
Racing home at breakneck speed, we unpackaged it, plugged it in with our newly acquired US copy of Super Mario Kart... and the rest as they say, is history. I've still got the machine, it's turned somewhat yellow over time, and it still looks like a breezeblock, but it's still probably the greatest console ever.
Most fortuitously, my brother's birthday happened to correspond with the release date. Naturally he badgered our parents to death, can I have a SNES, can I have a SNES, can I have a SNES and so on. I think they eventually got the message. So one trip down the shops later and we managed to find a place still with stock left.
And for a few months we really enjoyed our new PAL console. Super Mario World was just so brilliant, F-Zero was a breath of fresh air and Super Tennis was incredible fun and a 2-player game to boot. Then Streetfighter 2 appeared in Japan. There's a story surrounding that too, which I may well spill at a later date. But with the PAL release way in the distance, it took borrowing a Japanese copy from a friend and buying a convertor to satisfy the agony we would have suffered just waiting for it to be released in the UK.
One killer ap indeed. And then just 2 months later another one appeared: Super Mario Kart. However there was one subtle difference about this game compared to the rest we had so far - this cart used a DSP chip and no convertor out there currently was equipped to deal with this as the cartridge board was longer than normal. Cue frustration and torment. Were we to be denied playing this superb game for at least another 6 months? Were we to be subject to the tales of how well it played from a couple of people who were able to play the game because they had bought foreign consoles? Well no as it turned out.
This was the impetus needed to get off my behind and go and do something about it. I was going to buy an import console. No more waiting, no more agony, no more crappy PAL release schedule. Sounded so easy didn't it? Well, could you find a place doing that sort of thing in the UK in 1992? Importing was still very much in its infancy here and whilst some places catered for these tastes, it was all still fairly "hardcore" with prices to match. Something rather out of the budget of myself or my brother.
And then I happened to chance upon a small shop a few miles from where we lived, advertising they sold US Super Nintendo consoles and everything you needed to run them in the UK for a reasonable price. So I hatched a plan with the parents to get them to fork for the new console, and then pay them back by selling the PAL one. Brilliant! So off we went to the mysterious shop and its fabled contents.
Mysterious is probably about the right word. The "shop", if you could call it that, was basically a counter at the back of a much larger building that sold absolutely no items to do with video gaming whatsoever. So approaching the counter with trepidation, we asked them about the US SNES advert. For all you UK peeps out there, it was very reminscent of the Pot Noodle advert! The guy had a quick look under the counter, walked over and talked to his colleague and seemed to get into a bit of debate. I began to wonder if I'd asked for something illegal, something not allowed and was about to get busted for asking for something not supposed to be sold in the UK.
As it turned out, it was nothing of the sort. They had so much response to the ad they only had one unit left and was the "display" model. This was no ordinary model either, it had been RGB modified and came with the cable. They asked if I still wanted it. Do bears crap in the woods? Of course I did! So they found a box for it, got a Megadrive (Genesis) power supply to use it with as they had no SNES power supplies left, and even threw in an extra pad to make up. All for the same price my parents had paid for the PAL model several months earlier.
Racing home at breakneck speed, we unpackaged it, plugged it in with our newly acquired US copy of Super Mario Kart... and the rest as they say, is history. I've still got the machine, it's turned somewhat yellow over time, and it still looks like a breezeblock, but it's still probably the greatest console ever.