Post a random classic gaming memory. Tell us a story!

[celerystalker]

Right before Thanksgiving 1998, I was beyond excited for Ocarina of Time, or "Zelda 64" as everyone around me called it back then, and so were many of my friends and family members. It was my senior year of high school, and I was still working at a Taco Bell at the time. I had reserved the game at a local KayBee Toys, and it was due to come out, like, the day before Thanksgiving if I'm remembering correctly. They gave me a T-shirt as a preorder bonus, which I was wearing that Wednesday after school when I went to pick it up, taking my brother along for the ride.

I picked the game up excitedly, and my brother was reading the manual out loud in my car as I drove home via the gas station to get a huge soda. We were ready to go, and I called a few friends over to see and try it.

There were seriously 8 people crammed into my little 10 x 10 bedroom when I turned on my N64. That cinematic memory of the fairy Navi flying through the village made me think this was going to be the game I'd be calling my favorite forever. Then, I started to play.

By the the time I'd crawled around to get my equipment, gone through the Deku Tree, and started going through Hyrule field, I was bored out of my mind, and in severe denial about it. Maybe it was the fact that one of the people from school on my bed was a girl I was super into, I figured, so after awhile I decided to save and start passing the controller around.

When it came back around to me after having found an excuse to sit all but on top of that girl at the time (hey, I was a kid with a crush), I did one more dungeon, and found myself getting irritated again. This was going to be the best game ever made, and I'd been telling everyone that for months.

The weekend was an awesome blur of hanging out, bouncing back and forth between houses with that group of friends, playing board and video games, eating, and watching movies, all while pining away over a girl and trying to like Ocarina of Time. I barely slept all weekend, even working a couple of shifts in the middle of it all. It was one of those magical, blurry whirlwinds that you look back on so fondly...

Except for Zelda. I kept playing as much as I could stomach until Christmas, when I got a Playstation. I put in that demo with the opening area of Metal Gear Solid, which put into sharp relief just how much fun I wasn't having with Zelda.

I look back on that time and smile, and it was great, but Ocarina of Time, I hate. I've tried to do it again at least 10 times, most recently this summer. The game will always have the strange distinction of being a game I remember fondly, but have never liked.

[celerystalker]

This is about how Goldeneye on N64 made me buy a bunch of stuff that isn't Goldeneye.

New Year's Eve, 1997, my family went over to the same home we'd gone to for so many years to hang out while all of our parents played board games all night. It was the first place I played NES, Master System, Turbografx, and SNES, and now it was about to be my trial by fire on N64. They'd added a separate apartment to the house they'd rent out, but with no current tenant, they hooked up an N64 to keep us occupied.

I'd briefly played Mario 64 at a Wal-Mart, and wasn't really into it at the time (probably my favorite N64 game now), but I was totally unprepared for the four-player insanity headed my way. Mario Kart, Star Fox, WCW/nWo World Tour, and Goldeneye were all there, and those controllers were in everyone's hands all night. I was crazy about the whole pile, but Goldeneye really stuck out, with it's uniquely competitive vs mode eating up most of the night.

When I went to bed that night, I was thinking about Goldeneye... the matches, the complex stage, and the take on the music. I had a jonesing for 3D gaming for the first time. Problem was, I worked at Taco Bell for $4.75 an hour, and had promised my mom that I'd only keep $100 every check and put the rest in the bank, and I wanted to play now, not some $400 or so later for a system, game, and three more controllers. I wasn't that patient.

First came the music. I bought the soundtrack to Tomorrow Never Dies, which was the next big movie. I had a 3 disc stereo in my bedroom, and it had that, Aerosmith's Big Ones, and Sarah McLachlin's Mirrorball that a girl I was into gave me most of the winter and spring. This, however, did not soothe my need to play.

It'd take me at least two months with no expenses to save that kind of money, and my SNES wasn't going to give me the particular experience I wanted... I needed to go new. So, when I saw an Atari Jaguar on clearance at Kay Bee Toys for $25, I thought that maybe, just maybe, I'd found my ticket. I remember my parents had steamed the carpets that day, and I sat down on the damp floor in my room with my brother and a brand new system to try, with Cybermorph.

"Where did you learn to fly?"

"Dude, this looks awful."

My brother was always so tactful. Anyway, I played on as the wet carpet slowly seeped into my pants, clumsily smacking mountains until I figured out how to clear a few planets. Now, I actually am a little fond of Cybermorph, but this... this was nowhere even close to what I was searching for... not even a little bit. It was hard to find new games as well, so the next two I found, I bought, which were Checkered Flag Racing and Troy Aikman Football. If you are not aware, they are ass.

Frustrated, I was thrilled about two months later when I stumbled across a Sega Saturn on clearance at Wal-Mart for $25. I had seen them aggressively go after Nintendo, so maybe they had something comparable? If nothing else, I was a big fan of arcade Virtua Cop, so I knew it wouldn't be a bust. I stopped by a Microplay next door and bought Panzer Dragoon II and NHL '97 to go with my demo disc.

Well... after some hijinx figuring out how to save (who knew you had to pull the ribbon from the battery holder?), we got into the Saturn. NHL was bland, but Panzer Dragoon II was cool... problem was, my brother and I cleared it in that first sitting, passing the controller back and forth alternating levels. No matter what, though, I wanted to dig it, and the Mansion of the Hidden Souls video on the demo looked interesting... but no Goldeneye.

It wasn't until fall that I knuckled down and bought my N64. I went all in, and got my controllers, controller pak, and even WCW/nWo to go along. It took two systems to learn the virtue of patience... but I still have both of them. I still play both. Hell, I even love my Saturn a hell of a lot more than my N64 these days, and its arcade-y library has aged way better. In 1998, though, they couldn't fill that gap that only Goldeneye could.

[Tanooki]

So so many misfires there. Perhaps you should have realized you needed to take it easy and not buy everyone a controller up front. That would save a considerable bit not paying up for 3 extras controllers. If the friends came over they could bring their own. Personally I mostly dislike, somewhat downright hate multiplayer as I didn't grow up with it especially at the same time, usually just 1-2P swap. Goldeneye 99% of my time was beating the hell out of the stages over and over again and it was and still is a fairly good right.

[celerystalker]

So, among my friends it's a well-known and often joked about fact that Zelda II is not only my favorite Zelda, but also my favorite NES game. While I have gradually won all of them over to at least appreciating the game and its excellent design and control, one friend thinks it's hilarious that I've played through it so many times. Because of that, in the early 2000s, the challenges started.

First, it was speed runs. Then it was no heart/magic containers. Then it turned into low level challenges... my buddy Tim would come hang out, we'd talk, play games, watch movies... but he'd want to finish the night by watching me play through Zelda 2 with some goofy handicap. Then, one fall night, he gave me the most infuriating of them all: I could only kill bosses.

This is a dumb-ass challenge to take.

To gain enough levels, you have to scrounge up point bags all over the place early so that when you clear a palace, you get the maximum points toward your next level. However, that's not the hard part. That comes when you get the downthrust.

Five times I had to start over from accidentally tapping a diagonal or reflexively hopping off of a bit or bot. It became somewhat of an endurance and math challenge, mastering dodging, using the fairy spell in odd places, timing random encounters to avoid overworld traps, making sure the points from a boss would hit my next level so I'd get another from the statue after...

Most of Tim's challenges took me about two hours. This one turned into a six hour marathon that ended at 4:30am when I finally took down the shadow. It was the last challenge he gave me on that game, but he still brings it up from time to time. I still adore the game, and the GBA port always comes along in my Game Boy Micro when I travel, but I will not do that challenge again. I've never been so mad from killing a Moblin...

[celerystalker]

There's not much more annoying to a kid than wrecking a perfectly good Christmas with a boring family visit.

When I was in my mid teens or so, there was a Christmas in which I got two gifts from my parents that I really liked a lot: SimCity for Super Nintendo and the book Martin the Warrior. I really enjoyed Brian Jacques' Redwall series at the time, and Martin's story was sort of an underlying legend in some of the early books. SimCity, of course, is just awesome, and I'd been playing it on a neighborhood friend's DOS computer for a couple of years, so I was super excited to get a chance to dig into it.

There was a problem, though... right after opening presents, my brother, sister, and I were bundled up and rushed into the car to drive 2 hours to visit my mom's parents in Bland, MO.

If you are understandably unfamiliar with the town of Bland, it was named after former US congressman Richard "Silver Dick" Bland. He was called that due to his platform of wanting to make all US currency out of precious metals as opposed to being backed by them in order that it might retain value resistant to inflation. To my siblings and I, it was a delightful penis joke on a billboard. That is the town's sole redeeming feature. It has a population of around 400, and I'm pretty sure that's counting livestock. They have a Baptist church and a stop sign... but that's where they decided to move after retirement, 2 hours away from their closest relatives.

I brought two things with me: Martin the Warrior and the instruction manual for SimCity. I knew this trip was only going to be about a four hour visit bookended by two 2 hour drives, but I needed something to get me through, and separating a kid from a brand new video game on Christmas (back when you only got one or two a year) was like watching the clock on the last day of school.

Honestly... I kinda hid out in the bathroom most of the time, reading Martin the Warrior and scouring the sample maps in that manual, planning out where I'd put industrial areas to minimize the impact of pollution on residential zones... the one good part of that excruciating wait was the nice dusting of snow that made for a pleasant view out the back window. The book was good (though maybe not as grandiose as I'd imagined), and the fact that nobody but my brother really noticed me hiding away was cool, as that set of my grandparents were known to sit and argue about scripture during... well, anything. I wanted to go home.

That drive home seemed interminable, and no restaurants were open to get something good to eat like we often did when making that trip (mind you, "something good" to me at that time pretty much meant McDonald's). It was too dark to read, so all I could do was look out the window and think, looking out at the snow.

It's funny how in some ways my mind romanticizes the calm of that day, but my memory clearly defineshow bored and anxious to get back home I was. I did play SimCity much of the night when we got home, and I remember naming that first city Mikeston...

Both of those grandparents have sinced passed (I think I mentioned that granpa passing on my wedding day in another post in this thread), and I don't have any relatives at that kind of middling driving distance anymore. I'll probably never go to Bland again now. I look back on that Christmas, though, and I can only laugh at myself for my teenage combination of enthusiasm, boredom, and anxiety. I hope everyone here had great holidays!

[celerystalker]

Daria's recent video about Rhapsody got me thinking about the three or so years when I worked at FuncoLand and some of the stupid/fun shit we used to do there.

So, you may recall FuncoLands used to have around ten or so TVs set up in each store, which we referred to as "the arcade" at the time, and they were designed to give customers the opportunity to try games out before buying them, as we didn't take returns on non-defective merchandise, and wanted people to know exactly what they were getting. It also provided a great chance to expose people to new games, and I used to get a kick out of putting obscure stuff in and getting people excited about new games... but those aren't the people I'm talking about today. I'm talking about the rat kids.

"Rat kid" was a pejorative we used to describe kids whose parents would drop them off with no intent to shop, trying to use us as free day care while they shopped elsewhere in the plaza. Some were polite, but some would want you to change out games all the time to cater to their time wasting, and it created a dilemma between customer service and what was clearly a waste of time. So, my buddy Ben who worked there came up with an awesome plan.

We put Ghosts n' Goblins in the NES. When a kid would loiter in the store too long, we'd make a bet with them. If they could beat the first level of Ghosts 'n Goblins on three lives, they could stay and have a free issue of Game Informer. If not, they had to leave. I can't tell you how many cocky ten year olds smirked like they were hot shit before getting booted within minutes.

One particularly bratty kid started to pitch a fit after three consecutive days of getting kicked out. His mom was a real piece of work, and would try to dump him there for hours at least four days a week. He started bitching, saying it was impossible and that we were assholes for laughing at him fail time and again. I'd beaten Ghosts 'n Goblins many times by this point, but I almost never played games at work; they encouraged it, as it would familiarize us with games, but I played plenty at home. However, the kid was irritating me, so rather than argue, I just went over, picked up the controller, and rolled through the level.

This shut the kid up, but one of my coworkers apparently had never seen anyone play the game well, and he asked me to keep playing. We were pretty dead, so I gave in and started the second level. I mean, really, if you can beat the second level of Ghosts 'n Goblins, you can beat the game, but I guess people who haven't stuck with it would be a little impressed. Anyhow, I was having a good game, and as customers trickled in, a small crowd of 10 or so people started gathering, as I hadn't died yet. I tried to pause it and help the customers, but they wanted me to keep playing. Long story medium, I ended up finishing both loops on one life, and ended with about a dozen people standing around in the peanut gallery cheering at the end.

It was a weird moment, and probably the closest experience I'll ever have to those stories about good arcade players in the '80s getting crowded around cabinets. The most important thing, though, is that no rat kid ever left that place with a free magazine. They just left.

[Cookie]

When I was three years old I was introduced to the NES by my father. I thought that the board inside the cartridge was supposed to be removed from the bottom, so I tried to pull it out. My father flipped out and yelled at me and all that jazz. It was super traumatic and I never made that mistake again.