NES Anecdotes ...

[Flack]

As I reflected on what to post in this new forum du jour, I realized that I have a lot of short, funny stories that involve the NES. I thought this thread might be a good place to relate such stories. They don't have to be stories about the NES so much as they have to have one in them.

For example:

When I was 14, I was friends with a girl named TR, who was pretty much known as the biggest slut in school. Of course at 14 I really wasn't that interested in girls so much. During our summer vacation one day, I get a call from TR, who tells me her mom isn't home, she's bored, and I should come over so we could "do something." In Oklahoma, you can get a driver's license for motorcycles at the age of 14, so I hopped on my bike and drove over to her place.

When I got to her house, I knocked on the door. "Come in!" I heard her yell from what turned out to be her bedroom. I opened the front door and stepped into her house. I can still remember how quiet it was. When I got to her bedroom, TR was sitting on her bed. As I walked in to her room, next to her bed I saw her TV and an NES.

"Holy crap, you have a Nintendo!" I said.

"Uh, yeah, I guess ..." she said.

"Do you have Super Mario Brothers?" I asked.

"Uh ... yeah, but uh ..." she said.

"Awesome, can we play it?"

So, during my 9th grade summer vacation, sitting in the bed of one of my schools most "experienced" young ladies ... I played Nintendo for two hours. Looking back, I'm pretty sure that's not what she had in mind that hot summer day.

[Gemini-Phoenix]

Um... I'd have done them both! Plug the pad into her controller port and play away!

[GarrettCRW]

It's not a story, per se, but more of a legend-in junior high, one of my brother's friends was playing playoff Tecmo Super Bowl with us and another friend as (or against, I forget which) the Raiders, where the most insane thing ever happened:

Bo Jackson and Marcuse Allen got hurt. In the same game.

[squirrelnut]

ROFL @flack. Greatest story ever.

Anyways my stories are of a simpler variety. The kind that everyone can relate to. I remember way back when, me and my friend Colin. We would stay up til 10 oclock!!!!! (that was WAY past when the streetlights came on).

I would loose and then complain about how the A button doesn't work right or, how he got in my way of the tv so I couldn't see. Spending many minutes jiggling the cart, blowing on it. Wishing my Dad would buy the cleaning kit from Venture.

But then... Genesis came onto the scene. I got it for 90 bucks from funco land for christmas with Sonic 2. Mr Nintendo got sent into my room (13 inch color tv). And Sega took control of the living room. After a while I tried to keep up with the systems. Had psx, ps2, dc, n64, and saturn. But yet the NES was the only one hooked up 24/7 upstairs. Sure I barely used it, but come on.. it was only 8 bits. I had to be kewl!! :embarrassed:

But recently, playing ps2, hearing about how the latest FPS and I realised something. Todays gaming isn't what it use to be.

Wen't downstairs, found all of my old games. Took the NES, hooked it up, had more fun playing SMB then I ever did GTA.

So now, me and my friend Joel. We played NES til 3 am (we had to stop for food). And now since I have money, I can afford to buy the games. And we still game in the classic position.

One on the ouch, one on the floor, bag of Doritos inbetween.

[Ninja Blacksox]

I have a few. I'll do one now.

I remember sitting down to play "Super Mario Bros. 2" on a VERY cold day.

Well, it was cold day for Houston, TX. So it was probably about 35 degrees.

Anyway, I sat down in my footie pajamas and plopped SMB2 into the deck. I remember starting the game up, and hearing my brother say "Hey, I'm going to the Stop and Go. I'll be back in a few minutes."

About one minute later, I was greeted with the loudest sound that my young ears had heard ever heard...

BAM!!

I jumped up from the game and ran outside.

What did I find?

My parents' Ford Bronco, a garage door that had been blown into splinters, and my brother, head in hands, saying over and over again "Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit."

For whatever reason, he had forgotten to raise the garage door while on his way to the store. I guess the Bronco's spare tire had served as a battering ram powerful enough to bust the entire thing into tiny shards of wood.

The thing I still don't understand is how he built up enough speed to do it. There was two or three feet between the rear end of the car and the garage door at most. He must've just peeled out.

Needless to say, my parents were less than amused. More than anything, they just wondered how the hell he was able to do it.

Sure, it's not really a TRUE NES story. But in my mind, I distinctly remember that the event disrupted what was probably the best SMB2 game of my life up to that point.

That and the footie pajamas.

-A Boy

[Graham Mitchell]

My story is similar to Flack's. I brought a girl over when I was about 19. She was all over me, but I didn't want to start anything because, well, my mom was downstairs, and that was just creepy. :hmm:

So I started playing Rush'N'Attack in hopes that it would distract her. Instead she got infuriated and left. I really wasn't upset about it because I thought she was kind of nuts to begin with, and I went on to beat Rush'N'Attack for the first time in my life! What a day!

[Qixmaster]

now THAT is a funny story Rob LOL
thanks for sharing it.

I have a similar story with a girl and video games, but it took place when i was significantly younger then you.

It started in first grade, when Nintendo was reigning king and that was what was on every little boys mind... not girls. So... one day along comes this girl named Natalie. She had a HUGE crush on me and wanted to always hang out by and around me. I also pushed her away because i thought it was "gross" or whatever. A year down the road, she figured out that i liked nintendo, so SHE decided that she liked nintendo as well.

I remember as if it were yesterday, we sat on the playground all damn day every week talking about NES games (especially zelda II). I even brought my nintendo powers and we looked at those. I wasn't so interested in the fact that she was a girl, but the fact that all of the sudden she knew her shit about NES games. As the story goes, i invited her over and she didn't want to play video games... at all. To my disappointment, she wanted to hang out with my sister more then me. Ugh... i sent her packing, and thus, ending our short spree of video game love.

Wasn't quite your story flack, but i can tell you if a girl (14) invited me over when her mom wasn't home (when i was in high school of course), I would have quickly forgot what a Nintendo was or even what it did. I would have been asking where her 2600 was so we could bust out the joysticks.

-Josh

[Kilik Kurosawa]

This story harkens back to a time when children could get roughed up by parents or family members and was not followed by a law suit. Recalling this tale in my head now seems violent and kinda unNESessary (sp.....iknow).

Christmas time at my Unlce's house was always a time for fun and competion around the NES. For some reason my Mom's family loves fart jokes. Nothing is funnier to them. During a heated competion of Duck Hunt, my brother aged 7 at the time, tries to show off his "skills" and jumps up and farts right in my uncles' face as he is playing. Well it must have been his first reaction, so he jammed the Zapper right up his bum and sent him screaming and confused (maybe a little excited?)into the other room. At the time it was hilarious.

I also remember my friend Russel Rutter who used to make this spastic motion with the controller. When he wanted to move left he would jerk the controller in that direction. It was also very funny to watch him play games like Life force or Spy Hunter, and I'm sure there are a lot of other jerkers out there.

[Graham Mitchell]

I also remember my friend Russel Rutter who used to make this spastic motion with the controller. When he wanted to move left he would jerk the controller in that direction. It was also very funny to watch him play games like Life force or Spy Hunter, and I'm sure there are a lot of other jerkers out there.



My dad did this every time he played Rad Racer. When you hit about 12 or so you start to think your parents are the stupidest people on the planet, so I would constantly rag on him about it. If he still did that nowadays, I wouldn't say anything because I'd just want to watch him yank the controller around intensely for my own entertainment.

[Xexyz]

Jerkers, hehehe. Every once in awhile I can get some 2 player action on the origional SMB with my Mom or Dad (the only other video game they ever play is SMB3... it sucks!) and they always move the controller to the left or right when pressing the buttons. Fun to knock on them and their playing habits :)

[Ruudos]

The time I went to the store and planned on buying Dragon's Lair (actually my brother always gave me the money to buy games at the store, he never went himself). When I was at the store Dragon's Lair was gone, I decided to buy another game there (although it wasn't my money and my brother agreed on Dragon's Lair and not anything else), I saw StarTropics and bought it because it looked interesting. Happens to be my all-time favorite game, and my brother loved it too. Much better than that Dragon's Lair, which would have probably been the worst NES game we would have bought back in the day.

[Graham Mitchell]

The time I went to the store and planned on buying Dragon's Lair (actually my brother always gave me the money to buy games at the store, he never went himself). When I was at the store Dragon's Lair was gone, I decided to buy another game there (although it wasn't my money and my brother agreed on Dragon's Lair and not anything else), I saw StarTropics and bought it because it looked interesting. Happens to be my all-time favorite game, and my brother loved it too. Much better than that Dragon's Lair, which would have probably been the worst NES game we would have bought back in the day.

Actually, Dragon's Lair was sweet. In some ways it was too difficult, but I think it was just trying to keep the spirit of the arcade game alive by forcing you to memorize things. It was one of the best looking NES games ever, period. Startropics is great too, though.

[Flack]

Here's another funny one.

When I was fourteen or fifteen, I got a babysitting job through a friend of a friend. It was supposed to be a steady job, like three times a week.

The first night I watched the kids went awful. First of all, they wouldn't eat what their parents had left for dinner. Second, they took my sarcastic suggestion of having a food fight literally, and we spent the next hour or so trying to clean all the food out of the carpet and off of the furniture. Things went downhill from there.

The two boys had an NES in their bedroom, and the parents were very serious about a 9pm bedtime. The kids begged me to stay up late, so I made a deal with them -- we would all stay up late and play Nintendo, as long as when their parents got home, they would pretend to be asleep.

The three of us stayed up until almost midnight, playing Nintendo for three hours. When we saw the headlights turning into the driveway, the kids hopped into bed and I ran for the living room. When the parents came in the houise, they asked me how things went and I said great, and that the kids had gone to bed right on time.

Then the little bastards came out of their room and told them all about the food fight, and staying up late, and playing Nintendo all night, and everything else we did wrong. The parents were pretty pissed off at me and told me to go home, and that when I came back the next day we would be setting some ground rules if I was to babysit for them again.

I never went back.

[Push Upstairs]

Well, my stories aren't really funny, and sadly don't involve girls, but NES stories nonetheless.

It was a summer or weekend sometime in 1991 i believe...I had spent the entire afternoon playing some hardcore SMB3 when a friend of mine calls or I call him (i forget which) and invite him to spend the night. I'm ready to hang out with a friend and play Lego's, GI Joe, or whatever..but as soon as he walks in the door all he wants to do is play Nintendo (because he doesnt have one).

Well i am mad because I've just spent 4-5 hours playing NES and its time to give it a rest, and also because the point of having a friend stay over was to hang out *WITH* your friend. I say no go for Nintendo and he gets mad, cries, calls the whole thing off and goes home.

Between this and some other incidents that brought the idea of being friends into question, i never was really good friends with him.


The second story takes place X-mas break of 1991. I remember this because for almost the entire two weeks i had off i had a fever/sinus infection. For X-mas that year i recieved "Super Mario Brothers 2" and inbetween the naps during the day i played this game often. Still to this day, when i get to level 5&6 in the game i am reminded of those 100+ degree fever sessions of SMB2.

[Graham Mitchell]

The second story takes place X-mas break of 1991. I remember this because for almost the entire two weeks i had off i had a fever/sinus infection. For X-mas that year i recieved "Super Mario Brothers 2" and inbetween the naps during the day i played this game often. Still to this day, when i get to level 5&6 in the game i am reminded of those 100+ degree fever sessions of SMB2.


The first time I played Zelda II: The Adventure of Link I had a fever of 102 as well. It's funny because I remember that every time I play Zelda 2 also.

[Dire 51]

Back in the early '90s, my brother and I were always trading NES games we had for other ones, either with friends or at the flea market (truthfully, he was more the trader than I was, as I kept the bulk of the games I had, and he traded almost every game he owned in a six-month period).

At that point, I had Gradius, but didn't care for it too much (that would change after I got into playing Gradius III for the SNES). I had rented and played Life Force, and I absolutely loved it - not realizing that they were part of the same series, but noting some of the similarities. At any rate, I wanted to buy Life Force, but couldn't find a copy at any of the stores near me.

I went to the flea market with a friend one weekend, and took my copy of Gradius with me (along with a couple other games) in hopes I could trade it for something else. The first booth I stopped at had Life Force. A bit of haggling later and it's bye bye Gradius, hello Life Force. I would regret that decision somewhat later, as my copy of Gradius that I traded was boxed, and I haven't seen a boxed copy since, but that's a different story.

Anyway, I get home and fire up Life Force. I'm playing for a while, and then my dad gets home from work. He comes into the room where the NES is set up, looks at the game, and says "Oh, playing that space game again, eh?"

"No," I reply. "I traded that one in today for this one. It's called Life Force, and it's a lot like Gradius, just better."

He shakes his head. "I swear, you and your brother trade away every game you get!"

"That's not entirely true, Ryan's more of a trader than I am," I say, but when my dad's convinced of something, there's no changing his mind.

"This game will be gone in a week. I know you guys."

That was 15 years ago. I still own that copy of Life Force, and I make it a point to tell my dad that at least once a year. I'll just drop it on him out of the blue.

"Hey Dad, remember that game I got that you said would be gone in a week?"

"Yeah."

"Still got it!"

[Sotenga]

Awighty, a long time ago, Rolling Thunder distributed by Tengen was a game that I played a lot for my NES... until one day, for absolutely no reason at all, I became really freaking scared at Mabu, the green guy that gloats on the big screen and chuckles at you whenever you lose. I really don't know how it happened, but frightening representations of Mabu showed up in my nightmares and reduced me to a quivering ball of fear until I exited the realm of my dreams. I seriously don't know how that happened, but Mabu became the essence of my bad dreams.

However, I had forgotten what he originally looked like. >_<

I guess it wasn't so much Mabu as it was very f**king scary green guys with blind white eyes and equally creepy laughter that appeared in my nightmares, but since I couldn't even remember what that green goblin looked like, I was starting to think that my dreams weren't very accurate. I did play the game, but only with a Game Genie armed with infinite lives, so when I died, I wouldn't have to face "the horror." C'mon, admit it, that seemed very asinine. Eventually, I thought so too.

So I decided to face my fear of "that green guy with the dead white eyes." Sans Game Genie, I placed RT into my NES... and thought that facing him right away would make me piss my pants, so I stood in the doorway of my room, away from the screen, and let the game run until Mabu appeared in the demo, and his dark chuckle sounded... sounded primitive. Kinda funny, actually, for the NES sound processor. Wait, the laugh in my nightmares sounded like the voice of an echoing maniac played backwards on a tape recorder! This was not the same laugh!

With my fears of one of my childhood menaces quelled, I decided to face Mabu directly... and this is what he looked like.

http://www.81x.com/Authors/Sotenga/4.png

Ooooookay. So he's creepy. And? This was NOT the essence of my nightmares. This guy, Mabu, was... actually, kinda goofy. His laugh sounded like a barking dog with a bad cold, and although the dead eyes are a bit unsettling, I asked myself: Was this really the fear in my dreams? He was, but apparently, because I stopped playing the game, I had forgotten what he precisely looked like, and I thought he was much, much scarier than this! And it was only about a year ago that I realized Mabu was more a goof than a really effing scary video game figure.

I know, that rant was pointless, but here's three morals anyway:

1. Voices always sound weird on the NES.

2. Don't let scary things in video games discourage you from playing. If it's a great game, but you refuse to play because of a part that could potentially traumatize you, just keep playing anyway. You'll get over your fear, and you'll find much awesomeness once you finally beat the game, and you'll say to yourself, "I sure am glad that I stopped being so friggin' cowardly." :)

3. My dreams are EXTREMELY retarded. Godcrapit. >_<

... however, let's not discuss those "things" in the Mako reactor in Cloud's flashback in Final Fantasy VII... or the fubared Colonel in Metal Gear Solid 2... :embarrassed:

[vintagegamecrazy]

I had a couple of friends one was about 3 years younger and his bro was 2 or 3 years under him. I was around 15 at the time and their mom asked me if I would babysit for them at their house for one day, I like money and said yes, I packed my SNES up and was walking out my door and my dad saw me and my snes and said "I knew you would find a way to make money playing video games". LOL

[poloplayr]

I received my first BJ while playing SMB3. It all started with 3:2. What a gentleman I was back then.

[Berserker]

My dad has a really short temper. He wasn't very good at video games, aside from RPG's, and he doesn't play them anymore, but he did when we had an NES. Whenever he'd lose or get whooped in a game, he'd get so mad. He'd complain out loud, sometimes even sprinkling some nice profanity in there too. And it'd always make me laugh... on the inside. Because if I laughed out loud, I knew it'd probably just make him even more angry, to the point where he might tear my head off, or something like that, I thought as a kid.

One time he was playing Castlevania 3, on the level where the owls come down and swoop at you. Every single owl that came out, hit him. He quickly became very mad, started screaming out every obscenity I'd known up to that point, meanwhile those owls just kept on hitting him. He couldn't kill a single one, and yet he kept playing, dying, and swearing. I was laughing on the inside.

Another time, he was playing Pro Wrestling, using my NES Max controller... that I was very fond of. He got his ass royally handed to him, I don't remember by who. Probably Black Panther, that sneaky blonde bastard. Anyways, he was getting mad, but he still kept playing. I was laughing on the inside.

Swearing, playing, getting beaten, swearing, playing. Eventually he got so mad that he sat the controller on the floor, stood up, and STOMPED on it as hard as he could...

I stopped laughing on the inside.

[rbudrick]

I remember this one time playing Ikari Warriors when I was about 13 or 14, and for years I was never able to beat it....I would get to the last screen of level 3, if I was lucky, and the I'd die. Basically, you could continue as many times as you wanted with the A, B, B, A trick, unless you were on the last screen of a level (sometimes I would try to snag an extra couple of lives and buy some time by making player 2 appear on the last screen with the A. B. B, A trick in case I ran out of lives...works in the sequel too). Then, if you were on one of those last screens, the trick no longer worked...very frustrating, granted it was a cheat...not that it's even close to remotely possible to beat the game without it. It's the only cheat I can think of that I don't consider a cheat...just part of the game, but I digress.

I would die on one of these final screens and get REEEEAL pissed. It takes hours to get far in that game because your character moves so slowly.

One day I finally made it to level 4, the last level. I was about two screens away from the last boss when my 6 year-old brother came screaming and beating on the door to the little room packed with junk the TV was set up in. He was big into Ninja Turtles at the time, and he just got some new action figures. I used to like to humor him sometimes and sort of play for a few minutes with him with the TMNT figures. We really didn't have much in common and we barely ever got along back then. He's my best friend now, but he was a hellion who would do ANYTHING to get me in trouble back then, and my parents ALWAYS bought it, whether it was a lie or not. So, Ninja Turtles got him pretty excited and he really wanted to show me the new ones (since TMNT was the only pastime I could stand with him for much long-I liked the TMNT comics and the NES games, but that's about it). He wanted to show me right "NOW! OPEN THE DOOR! LOOOOOK! OOOOPEEEENN THE DOOOOORRRR NOOOOOWWWW!!!" He really started screaming and wailing and slamming on the door. My mother starting screaming at me, figuring I must have done something really mean and cruel to my brother for him to act like that (a trick he had learned years prior). She started screaming through the door, demanding I open it, and then I fucking died.

My mother ended up screaming at me for God-knows-what. Probably for "teasing my brother," and "why couldn't you just get off your ass and open the damn door!" or some shit. I was so fuming pissed that I cried. I wanted to kill my brother, and hated my mom for screaming at me at length for doing nothing. At the same time, I had just wasted 4 hours of my life trying to beat a game I had tried off and on at for probably 3 or 4 years. I was almost there for the very first time, my heart was racing like a madman, excited I was finally going to make it, and my little shit brother came screaming at me to look at his fucking Ninja Turtles and fucked up my whole situation.

To add insult to injury, my sister comes out of nowhere and chastises me for "crying over a game," when in reality I was crying for feeling so helpless because I was screamed at and blamed for absolutely everything back then, and I couldn't just beat the hell out of someone or something to fix the situation. The Ikari Warriors situation was just icing on the cake. She hated videogames, so she said crap like that whenever the time was right for her. I could always count on my sister to come out of the woodwork to kick me while I was down. If my mother yelled at me for something, you could almost guarantee my sister would be there to add her 2 cents and rub it in, even if she missed the whole situation or conversation, she'd chime right in at the end with some holier-than-thou bullshit as if to say, "So there! I told ya so! Listen to your mother!," as if she'd been there the whole time.

I basically felt like somone had kicked me right in the fucking balls for no reason and then laughed at me...all that crap just happened at once, and totally out of the blue.

Sorry if I sound bitter (just wanted you to get some of the vibe of how I felt)....that memory makes me laugh now, but MAN, was I pissed off! LOL LOL


-Rob

[Red Hedgehog]

I don't know that I have any big stories (ceritainly not turning down nookie for Nintendo).

I remember that, before I had a Nintendo of my own, I used to hang out with my one friend who had one quite a bit. We actually didn't have that much in common, and I must admit that I partially used him for his NES. I remember one time, it was winter and we went sledding. I had a lot of fun, but when we got back to his house, I tore off my snow clothes and ran to the Nintendo, put in Commando, and started shooting away.

I guess karma came back to bite me because at one point, many years later when we were in different high schools and I hadn't seen him in a couple years, I noticed that four of my nintendo games were missing. Somehow this came up in a conversation with a friend who had gone to the same elementary school with the both of us. He said that the first friend had sold his nintendo and games at one point, those four were included in it. I then remembered letting him "borrow" them in elementary school. Grr! And they were pretty good games, too: Zelda, Ninja Gaiden, Kid Icarus, and Bubble Bobble. I still haven't replaced Bubble Bobble in my collection.

I also remember that, when I was young and had first gotten my NES (I was about 8 or 9), I would get very anxious when I got to a point in a game that I had never gotten to before. One specific memory was when playing Kid Icarus. I would always die about midway through level 1-2. The first time I got past that point, I was so excited that I broke out into a cold sweat and was shaking.

When I was 10, I had a sleepover party to celebrate my birthday. Before my friends came over, my parents and sisters gave me their gifts, which included Ninja Gaiden and Zelda II. I was very excited about both of them. However, then I rememberd that my friends had been talking about Zelda II and even though only one had played it, another's brother had played it and it was pronounced "not cool". Since I wanted to be cool, I realized I had to hide Zelda II and not tell my friends about it. I put the box in a drawer in my room and started playing Ninja aiden and this was what I was playing when my friends started to come (and they all thought the game was cool).

Later that night, when we were all in our sleeping bags, I decided I wanted to learn about Zelda II, so I grabbed a flashlight and the instruction booklet and attempted to surreptitiously read it in my sleeping bag. I think I managed to get away with it that night, but in the morning when we were all getting up, I got out of my sleeping bag and go brush my teeth and when I came back, I start talking with my friends. One of them looks at my sleeping bag, sees the Zelda II instruction booklet, and asks "What's that?" I sheepily tell him (and everyone else, because they are all up and around by this point). Instead of ragging on the game, they all think it si s pretty neat that I have it. Even the guy who had been the most vocal opponent of it at school is impressed. I realize now that all this "Zelda II is bad" talk is coming from people who have hardly played the game. They are all impressed because I am the first one of them that actually owns it.


Finally, my most traumatic moment was when a friend and I were playing some 2-player game on my NES (Super Off-Road, I think) and he got really frustrated (probably by the cheating gray car!). So he yanks hard on his contoller. At the time, my nintendo was on a stand next to the tv and the nintendo comes riht off it and falls to the floor. Fortunately, all that ended up broken was the RF switch so his parents paid for a new one of those. But for days I wa so upset that I had lost my nintendo.


Okay, I've rambled on too much about stuff I'm sure no one cares about. The NES just brings back so much nostalgia for me.

-- Red Hedgehog
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