A few words about a friend who passed away, my N64. (Part 1)
By Hizang 11 Comments
It was 1998, I was 6 years old. My parents took me and my sister to GAME for a surprise, when we got there they took us to the games section. We closed our eyes, he told us to open them, in his hand was a Nintendo 64. We bought it and went home and set it up, the game that came bundled in was Banjo-Kazooie. Oddly enough Banjo-Kazooie is my favourite game of all time, so I couldn't have asked for a better bundle. The weeks followed and every so often our parents would be us a new game, Super Mario 64, Super Smash Bros and Mario Kart 64 were the games that we played the most. I remember being at school and hearing about my friends and how they had so many more games than me, but I didn't really care. Those four games could hold our attention for years.
So the years went on, my dad picked up a Playstation at one point with a copy of Metal Gear Solid. My dad was still into games back then, not like really into them but sort of. He wanted to see if he still cared about games, after playing MGS1 he didn't like the direction in games were going. He preferred simple and quick games, those cutscenes were enough to make him really not like video games, so he gave the Playstation to me and we now had both a Playstation and a Nintendo 64. Owning both consoles meant we would never really have a large pile of games for either console, but it meant we would have a nice small pile for both.
The Playstation 2 launched in the year 2000, we didn't get one until 2001 and it came with a copy of Burnout. Suddenly all the prices of the old games dropped, being the spoilt kid that I was I always had a grump when my parents got me old games for gifts/birthdays etc so eventually they stopped and just got PS2 games. So at around the time I got a PS2 I was never bought a N64 game ever again, so my collection was the following.
- Banjo-Kazooie.
- Banjo-Tooie.
- Super Mario 64.
- Super Smash Bros.
- Mario Kart 64.
- Pokemon Stadium.
- Star Wars Shadow of the Empire.
Those were the only games I had for the system, looking at that and then looking at my PS3 collection of about 150 games, it makes you wonder how kids can last on that few games. So there would have lied the N64, when we got the PS2 I was given the N64 and the PS2 was kept in the living room. Despite not being interested in games it made for a cheap DVD player, but not soon after they won a DVD in a competition, so the N64 was put away into storage and I set the PS2 up in my room. My sister has always been about the new, even to this day she will never play anything thats pre current gen, so she wanted nothing to do with the N64 or the Playstation. So the N64 would gather dust, all through Primary school and through most of secondary school it went untouched. I ended up staying with my PS2 while my sister got a Gamecube, I lost my interest with anything Nintendo as I grew more attached to Sony.
It's the last day for exams at secondary school, I ended up finishing that exam rather quickly, not because I wanted to get out and go celebrate with my friends. The last day of my exams was the same day that Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was released, looking back on that now there could not have been a better way to celebrate exams. MGS4 was my most anticipated game of all time, I was so invested in the world and the characters. I pre-ordered it so it was there when I got home, I ended up playing through it and finishing it the day after my exams. That whole saga was finished, Metal Gear Solid was a childhood friend, that series has been with me for a great deal of my childhood and was a fitting way to end it.
I had been obsessing about MGS4 for years, I needed something else to obsess about now. I had a whole summer before I started collage and I worked part time with my mum so I had quite a lot of money. I was just chilling about one afternoon on Youtube, when I happened to come across a trailer for Conkers Bad Fur Day, I think I was in a forum topic about cool trailers on gamespot somewhere. Anyway, I ended up looking a bit more into it, this led me to look at other N64 games including Paper Mario. That led me to looking at the N64 in general, I then noticed it really doesn't have that many games for it. I then decided to set out on a crazy and insane quest, I set up a tick sheet and everything. So in the summer of 2008, I decided..
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