Game #7: Startropics (1990)

When Nintendo was in its heyday, video stores got a chance to venture out of the doldrums of video rentals and into Nintendo rentals. Such was the clamor to rent these games that one local store, Sentry Market, updated their video rental department’s sign to say, in a flashy Hollywood-ish font, “Video Rentals… and Nintendo too!” For a kid like me, there were lots of options, with new ones opening semi-regularly.

Eventually, when Nintendo finally fell out of vogue, there were many establishments available in Crescent City for Nintendo (and subsequent Super Nintendo) rentals: National Video Cassettes (NVC for short), Video & More (which became Spotlight Video), Video Mart, Squeeze Box, Video Valet, and to a lesser extent Sentry and Shop Smart.

All in all, these stores had pretty much every Nintendo game covered. Because the games came with only one manual, the rentals usually included a photocopied manual. Also, if the game you wanted had a battery backup system, you might as well just buy it—if another kid got the game after you took it back, your saved game was usually history. The only way to keep a consistent game without fear of erasure was to rent it four or five times in a row. Parents usually objected to this, citing school and other worthless things.

That said, Startropics is a Nintendo franchise that was the first Nintendo game to be made entirely within the USA, making use of Japanese programmers that just happened to live in the states. In an attempt to release a game to only North American audiences, Startropics had to pack a gimmicky punch, and the punch was a one-two that really ruined things for renters like me.

Later on in the game, your onboard submarine navigator requires you to actually dunk a note your in-game uncle “wrote” to the player into water, and doing so would reveal a hidden “frequency” needed to finish the level (level 4, to be exact). Because the manual was photocopied, whatever mystery chemical caused the frequency to show itself once submerged was effectively lost. If you dunked the photocopied page in water, the video store would get pissed. Trust me.

To make matters worse, Startropics was a battery backup game. What that meant to all the kids that rented it is that you’d finish level 4, be at a loss as to the frequency, then be forced to return the game only to have your game erased by the next butthole that rented it. Re-renting the game was a useless endeavor because you’d only get to the end of level 4 again before you had to stop. And level 3 is really hard, so fuck that.

It wasn’t until much later, when perhaps Nintendo finally realized that kids (and thusly, parents) couldn’t afford to plop down 60 dollars every time they wanted a new game, that the mystery was solved for us renters. The question was so asked of Nintendo Power’s “game counselors” that the question was eventually published into the annals of Counselor’s Corner, a monthly Nintendo help column.

Afterward, it was open season on Startropics, and I ended up finishing the game quickly thereafter. As it turns out, the last stage is incredibly difficult and worthy of a hiatus as long as mine.

Perhaps Nintendo did me a favor by postponing my pleasure for that of a greater pleasure. For this, Jon Stuart Mill would be proud of Nintendo and the gang. After level 4, the story takes an unexpected turn, so perhaps delaying my conclusion was Nintendo’s ultimate cliffhanger. It worked. To this day Startropics is one of my favorite Nintendo games, and its hero, Mike Jones, is the first character I usually bring up when discussing great Nintendo mascots.

By the way, the frequency is 747 mHz.

Game #6: Puzznic (1990)

Of all the puzzle games for the Nintendo, this might be the most brain-dead one I can think of. It came out when I was nine, and at nine, I remember picking it up in the video store and wondering why the owner would ever think that offering this game for rental was a good idea.

It’s apparently a rare game and I can understand why, because nobody in their right mind would and should pay the usual $50–$60 for a fresh copy of “Puzznic.” Not even those rich asshole kids that had every weird game ever owned “Puzznic.” I know this because I was friends with a couple of those kids and we all thought “Puzznic” looked stupid and we took an unspoken oath never to play it.

Sad to say that I have since played it. None of the levels require more than three synapse firings until level 3–2 or so, and by that point you’re too bored to care. One thing’s for sure, the best thing “Puzznic” has going for it is a really creepy song you get to hear for exactly 20 seconds each round, that is if it takes you more than 30 seconds to beat a level, which it shouldn’t. And when a 20 second song is the best thing your game has going for it, it should never have left R&D.

Game #5: Monopoly (1991)

I was 10 when this came out, and the Kula siblings waited for this one with bated breath. Our mom’s closet and a small room in our house dubbed “the office” held two separate stashes of board games that we only played when it either rained or our collective boredom was at extreme levels. One of our most beloved board games was Monopoly, only we used mom’s 25^th anniversary edition, special because it had wooden houses and hotels and gold tokens that included the ship and the ultra-rare locomotive. I was always the locomotive because I was older and thus, way cooler.

However, terminal boredom was still not enough reason to keep us attached to a marathon game of Monopoly, as the games ran indefinitely long. Also, my sister was five, so trying to keep her doing anything for over ten minutes was a fruitless endeavor. Trying to keep a five year old playing Monopoly at all is perhaps the MOST fruitless endeavor.

Because the Nintendo was the end-all be all technological advancement, any board game that is released for it is automatically the only way to play. Gone are analog board games. Othello? Who needs it? And don’t even get me started on Pictionary.

That said, “Monopoly” was the sleek streamlined version of the tiresome game that we’d been waiting for. I never owned it, but my sister and I pooled our sad-kid-eye resources and rented this a lot of times. For all the times we rented it, we probably could have bought it outright. Unfortunately, parents don’t think like that.

We were enthralled by the extras crammed into the game: the animated hammer building the houses, the cash register and Capitol building that ate your money, the auction system (which we didn’t care enough to do in the analog version), and the ability to name your character. I usually picked “M U N Y” and thought it was really clever at the time, even though it never stood for anything.

“Monopoly” ushered an era of solidarity in the Kula ranks that lasted for most of my childhood, and to think that it took a video adaptation of an old fuddy-duddy board game to do it only speaks to the timelessness of the lazy video game weekend and the unbreakable bond between brother and sister.

Game #4: High Speed (1991)

There’s not much to say about this one, other than the fact that it might be Rare’s worst game. Essentially, it’s a Nintendo port of the “High Speed” pinball machine, and it’s about as bad as it sounds. It looks like a puddle of melted crayons, but only the ugly colors that you never used.

My only memories attached to this game are those attached to the actual pinball machine, which indirectly ties any memories to the bowling alley or laundromat. And Crescent City’s bowling alley is a lonely old person place. The laundromat is like that too, but with soap.

Game #3: Zen: Intergalactic Ninja (1993)

Note: Some games have little or no memories attached whatsoever. For those, I will still write something, such as gameplay style, a short review perhaps. This is all still new to me.

That said, the reviews will likely be bad because I somehow feel like I have played everything that’s good.

After devouring every issue of Justin’s “Nintendo Fun Club” magazine, my parents were so taken with the novelty of my having a magazine subscription at the age of four that they signed me up for the legendary “Nintendo Power.” Even as a kid, thumbing through the pages, there are some games that, no matter how hard they get pushed, no matter how fancy the illustrations are, you know they’re going to flop.

“Zen: Intergalactic Ninja” came out at the end of the Nintendo’s lifespan in 1993. By that time, the game was featured in the waning Nintendo coverage in the magazine that bore its namesake. The title of the game itself read like a what’s-what of stuff that little kids would find cool. “Zen,” ok, we’d learned that from early-90s ninja culture, though we weren’t sure what it meant; and WHOA, a space ninja? This is what Konami wanted us to think. By this time, years after TMNT had run its course, us kids, we were smart enough to see through this ploy. To top it off, Zen was fighting to stop environmental polluters. This game seemed engineered from the ground up by a bunch of stuffy old people that thought they knew what us cool kids liked, but wanted to send a "positive message." Look guys, we're young kids. We want to see fighting and things blowing up.

Of course, now that the Internet is around, those that give enough of a shit about “Zen: Intergalactic Ninja” to look it up (or even remember it) are mildly surprised to find out that Zen is a comic book character with non-environmentalist roots that reach back prior to the creation of the game.

As far as gameplay goes, I truly believe that Konami could have really been onto something with some minor tweaks and a non-PSA-esque storyline. Basically, the game plays like “Castlevania” meets “Ninja Gaiden.” On its own, this sounds really awesome, and it certainly looks like a winner; the graphics are pretty good, Zen has more than one move and the animation is fluid. The only problem is that the controls feel really sluggish, almost to the point of complete ruination. Some people might find that endearing though, maybe those that can’t handle the frantic gameplay of “Ninja Gaiden.”

One thing’s for sure though, if any of the video stores in my town had carried this game, I’d probably have played it a lot. Alone, though, because I wouldn’t want my friends to feel like I was tricking them into playing some goofy hippie game.

Game #2: Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos (1990)

For those of you that don’t know me, I used to play bass guitar in a metal band. However, at the time I joined, I had never picked up a stringed instrument, even though my dad used to play Amazin’ Rhythm Aces covers all the time when I was little.

Before I played bass, I played drums in a decidedly nü-metal band called Atomic Shadow Effect. Our vocalist was a lanky man named Tyon. We played a few shows that went alright as far as crowdless small town shows go. One feeling that was ever-present however, was that our fledgling technical abilities were keeping us back. We underwent a rotating cast of bassists and guitarists, and myself, I learned to play the drums just a few months prior by sitting behind a friend’s $300 pawn shop kit and imitating the drum loop AC Slater plays in the Miss Bayside episode of “Saved by the Bell.” That's a true story.

When we all decided that we’d had enough of that, we went our separate ways, but I remained close friends with Tyon for some time. As expected, time eventually passed and Tyon and I steadily grew apart.

Eventually, Tyon called me unexpectedly and wanted me to hear the new project he’d been working on with a couple other guys. I agreed, and we drove out to the woods to hear them practice.

They played one song, and it chilled me to the bone, because Tyon had lucked into a musical prospect that sounded like everything I had heard in my head when I practiced with Atomic Shadow Effect, the sound that had been begging to be let out; the sound that our combined abilities couldn’t quite reach. I was chilled because in front of me lay what may have been the only four musicians left in my town that had their shit together, and I was on the sidelines. The sound that escaped from this quartet swelled my heart but drove a spike into it just the same. As they played on, I slunk out the back door to go kick rocks in the driveway.

Two practices later, the spike so effortlessly planted in me was just as effortlessly plucked out. Tyon had been talking to the rest of the guys, and they had decided to kick their bass player out and invite me into the fold. I must have been 20 then, and I can’t think of a single thing I wanted more in the whole world. Nothing I’d seen on TV, in movies, in anything, no woman I had ever encountered, no dream I had dreamt was more desirable than this.

Unfortunately, I had never plucked a bass before in my whole life. The guys assured me it was easy, and devised a foolproof method for teaching me: they would write the tabs out (Tabs? What were they? Who knew? I sure didn’t) and provide me with a static-laden recording from practice. Their makeshift tablature consisted of numbers and lines. Eventually I got it, but there was one problem. This was metal we were talking about, and my fingers and reflexes weren’t quite up to snuff. I tried for a week to match the speed of the recordings to no avail. Dismayed, I looked around my room for something to help me.

I saw my Nintendo. I also remembered I had a copy of Ninja Gaiden II, the second in a series of games that was widely regarded as the hardest ever made. Since time was the only thing I had to lose, I decided to play it. Then I played it again. And again.

After playing Ninja Gaiden II for a week, I began to beat it pretty regularly. I eventually decided to beat it 10 times a day. Soon, that turned to 15. After a couple months I was beating the game 15 times a day in about 20 minutes each time. To date, I can complete it in a time that’s second in the entire world.

It was then that I decided to return to the bass. After a couple runs through the song I had initially heard out in the woods, I was playing it with shocking ease. Thank you, Ninja Gaiden II, for helping me accomplish something that I never thought possible, for giving me the first drop of water and keeping me interested in musicianship to this day.

Game #1: Super Mario Bros (1985)

If you were a cool kid like me, this was your first NES game. Alright, just to get this out of the way, that is the first time I am ever going to use “NES” in this entire thing. When I was a young man, there were three systems: Nintendo, then there was Super Nintendo, and there was the cornier Sega. Sure, both companies came out with many other consoles over the next couple decades, but who cares?

The Nintendo came out on October 18, 1985. I was four. I can remember asking my parents for a Nintendo with the most dedicated vehemence a four year old can muster. I’d seen the ads. Nintendo’s marketing machine got my head in a full nelson and pushed my nose in the pixilated dirt. I needed this more than anything else. Two months later, I got it for Christmas ’85.

’85 was a banner year in the Kula household as far as Christmas was concerned. I was an only child, so this was the last year that I would rake in unimpeded loot, and to top it all off I got a Nintendo a mere two months after its release. My half-brother Josh had an Atari and it was ok, but that mess was for old people.

Speaking of old people, what made this Nintendo even more special is the fact that it was given to me from the bag and hands of Kris Kringle himself. He showed up to my house ho-ho-ho-in’ with his big bag of goodies. Both of my cousins got scooters—psh. Santa reached into his bag and handed me a parcel that was shaped an awful lot like the Nintendo set I’d seen propped up in all those commercials. I was such a state of awe that I didn’t care that a mythical being had delivered my hardware, but I did have time to notice one thing; Santa Claus looks an awful lot like my uncle Gene.

From that moment on, I was a four year old on the cutting edge of console technology—the envy of every kid on my block that I didn’t yet know. After being a good kid and making sure all the would-be jealous suckers were home with their crummy scooters, I tore into the packaging. After my dad hooked up the Nintendo to our ancient console TV (with much difficulty), I inserted the cartridge that once lay within the box: Super Mario Bros.

After struggling with it for a few minutes, performing the now-classic rookie parent moves of jolting the controller up when pressing A and completely failing to use the B button to “super speed—“ my own verbiage—I realized Nintendo wasn’t a weakling’s pastime.

Looking back, one thing was much more important than Nintendo—togetherness. My mom and dad would sometimes sit and watch me get farther and farther in Super Mario Bros, all the while cuddling on a couch and cooing over how good I was doing. Mom and dad would alternate playing with me, and when I think about it, this was one of the best times I ever had growing up. We were a family unit, we played together, we rejoiced the trouncing of Bowser together, we all recoiled when we saw how unfortunate looking the princess was. My dad joked that we should have let Bowser have her. The discovery of Princess Toadstool came at unlikely hands though.

It was actually my mother Diane that beat the game first, marking the first and only time that would ever happen in my lifetime. To this day, she jokes about potentially “kicking my ass” whenever I mention that I am either currently playing or about to play Nintendo.

Having read several issues of my cousin Justin’s Nintendo Fun Club, I knew what to expect from Super Mario Bros. except the staggering difficulty. Of course, people around the world are now beating it in under five minutes, but back in December of ’85, the Kula family sat in front of a glowing fireplace sharing Nintendo together, eyes agog when one of us would find a hidden 1-up, in awe at the sheer destructive force of the Fire Flower, and in a collective state of disbelief at discovering the warp zone at the end of world 1-2. It was a truly wondrous time, and the most vivid memory I have of a fully functioning family unit.

An introduction:

Hi, my name is Nicholas. What you've found is my life's telling—26 years of Nintendo games along with anecdotes and reviews of them. Now that I have every Nintendo game at my disposal, I can go back and play all the games I missed. Actually, it isn't that many. There were ~800 games made for the system, depending on who you're talking to and whether or not they consider unlicensed games and/or pirated games to be part of the roster.

I've decided to write the first chapter on Super Mario Bros., since it was the first Nintendo game I ever played. After that, games will be chosen at random, and I will write a new entry every day. I'm going to try my damnedest to conjure up an anecdote for every game, as a lot of my younger years were spent poring over Nintendo's catalog. I hope you enjoy it.