So a month ago I was already having a pretty hard time believing that I was actually on my way to Japan... It did not help my disbelief when I found myself suddenly bumped up to that glorious land of excellent food, extra footroom, and cool freebie toilet kits: first class!

I had been regretting that I had forgotten my Game Boy (I play it so rarely lately, mostly because I never travel), but that was okay, since the seat was equipped with that relic of days gone by, the Nintendo Gateway System.

I had only read about this thing in Nintendo Power long, long ago; since the multimedia system on Air Canada's aircraft dates back to 1996 (as suggested by a copyright screen visible when they had to reboot the multimedia system), it's probably not too surprising that they still have it. (I've seen similar Playstation setups in a few hotel rooms.)



There's a selection of ten or so games available, including Super Mario World, Zelda ALTTP, Super Mario All-Stars, Super Punch Out, F-Zero, and a few sports games. I'm not sure whether the system uses actual SNES hardware, emulation, or a combination of both. Before starting a game, it is downloaded somehow; as you might expect from 1996 technology, this takes a few minutes. Oddly enough, when an annoucement comes over the PA system, the game is entirely halted (not just paused) until the announcement finishes.



The control pad is relatively comfortable, and the button position is fine, but the D-pad is a creaky piece of crap. Maybe this is because of old age, but I'm inclined to blame poor design. Notice that the pad is actually circular; it's very easy to acciently hit a diagonal when you don't intend to. It sometimes sticks, too.



I managed to finish SMW (the quick way) and I had a few rounds of Super Punch Out, but as I was unfamiliar with the game, Bear Hugger proved to be insurmountable. The intriciacies of The Lost Levels proved to be far beyond what I could accomplish with the D-pad. Pretty cool nonetheless!