Then, joy of joys, came the sequels of Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario Bros 3. My parents weren't quite subscribers of getting games on their release dates, so I remember using money from various jobs I had here and there to rent video games from my local supermarket (that is WHEN they were available -- of course these games were super in demand!) to support my Mario as well as other Nintendo game addiction. Some of my other favorites were Double Dragon, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Skate or Die, Friday the 13th, Tetris, and Donkey Kong Classics to name a few. Oh, and I mustn't forget Duck Hunt, where I got my first taste of packing heat (well, electronic pseudo-heat, but hey, I felt empowered nevertheless!)
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| My First Nintendo Loves |
Alas, I went on to finish high school, and Nintendo and game playing kind of went by the wayside, sad to say. I didn't really play video games for a long period of time, with my original NES system tucked away in storage. Occasionally when my sister, her husband and I would get together, we would play old Nintendo games while eating pizza and reminiscing about the past, but that didn't happen too often, unfortunately.
Fast forward about a decade where I was on a road trip with my son and we stayed in a hotel that offered video games in the room. I saw Super Mario Bros. as one of the game selections, and was immediately brought back to thoughts of my old friend Mario, and all the fun he had brought me in the past. I thought my son might enjoy playing it, so I paid for the service and let him try it out. Well, he loved it of course (duh!), and from then on, I was on a mission to get a NES system and most of the old titles that I loved playing so much as a kid for both me an my son to experience and enjoy together (the NES from storage was long gone unfortunately). Although I wasn't able to locate an original NES (wasn't into eBay at the time), I was able to get my hands on a Yobo system that played old NES games (and that's ALMOST as good, isn't it? Ok, well, maybe not, but it allowed me to get back in the Nintendo saddle again, and that was all that mattered at the time!). I was back in business, baby!
I'm not a collector, so you won't find super-rare, still-sealed, never-used Nintendo products in our household (as cool as they would be, I couldn't afford them anyways, lol!) -- nope, our Nintendo products are used and well-enjoyed -- but I thought it would be cool to share some of our Nintendo obsessions, thoughts and finds, as we are definitely Nintendo fanatics for life!!! :-)
