I need your Super Mario memories for a graphic novel I'm writing

Okay, this has to the most annoying first post in the history of first posts and for that I apologize.

I hate when people get on message boards and make requests without first mingling and discussing other things, but alas here I am being that guy. Throw dirt in my eyes and I will not be offended.

So, I'm somewhat of a comic book writer. I write graphic novels in my spare time and have for nearly ten years. Nothing published yet, except for some short stories for an anthology comic titled The Gathering. And of course I love Giant Bomb and video games yada yada.

The terrible part is now out of the way, let's get to the gist.

For the last six months or so I've been writing an OGN titled BEYOND the MUSHROOM KINGDOM. It's a fictionalized telling of Shigeru Miyamoto creating Super Mario Bros for the Famicom while courting his future wife, Yasuko. A love story about a man who has to grow up and become an adult while creating one of the most beloved video games of all time. I'm on the cusp of finishing the first draft and need the help of you guys (and other message boards) to fill in five (possibly more) blank pages.

During pre-production I had the bright idea that every few scenes we'd step out of the main narrative and have documentary style interludes of real fans telling Mario memories. Since the story itself is kind of a love letter to all things Mario, I thought this would be a neat touch that breaks up the story in an interesting way.

A breakdown:

- Write down a SMB memory in this thread. At this time each memory is one comic page but I'm fine with bleeding over to two pages per memory.

- I will select the five best/ fitting memories amongst all of those I receive.

- If you are selected I'd like for you personally to be drawn telling your story in a backdrop of your choice (coffee shop, walking down a sidewalk, your own living room etc. I do want to keep it real world to emphasize the documentary style of these segments).

- Try to make it a memory pertaining to the original Super Mario Bros, but if a memory from a different game in the series is the better story, I'm willing to accept it.

- I can't pay you for this because well...I'm poor. But you may be in a comic! And your name will be listed in the credits if you are!

And if you guys want to see some of the script, I'm willing to share, but won't bore you with my writing talents (or lack there of) just yet. This project does not currently have an artist and what's more boring than reading a script from a no-name writer like myself?

The only memories I have wouldn't really work. The first time I played a video game was SMB for the NES. The story involves me "playing doctor" with a neighbor girl as a kid and us needing to pretend we were playing Nintendo when her mom came down to see what we were doing and me not wanting to stop playing SMB to go back to "playing doctor" once her mom had left. The other is when a cousin broke my SNES by yanking the controller from my hand and causing my SNES to fall on the floor and break while playing World. You are welcome to use it but I doubt it would fit your story well. So best of luck.

When I was... I must have been 3 to 4 years old, I don't remember exactly, it's one of my earliest memories. I remember my dad showing me how to do the infinite lives trick on world 3-1, he was really good at it. Good times. Uh, I'm not sure how you'd turn that into a comic though.

It's not a lengthy memory, bet here we go. I was 10 years old in 1986, and had been playing Atari 2600 games for half my life. I went over to my friend Michael's house and he had a brand new NES. He put in Super Mario Brothers and I remember being shocked -- SHOCKED -- by the quality of the graphics on the screen. To me (who up until that point thought that Pitfall was state-of-the-art) it looked just like an interactive cartoon. The animation, the music, the varied worlds; it was all so remarkable. I played video games before SMB, but it was at that point that I knew it was a hobby I would never give up. I never have.

At least you're not a cheap Canadian pharmacy selling v1agra and shitty handbags.