Gaming Memories
By jimto 8 Comments
After my Gaming over 30 blog, I got to thinking about some of my gaming memories. I have them from all ages of my life, but I want to concentrate on my younger years, from about 5th grade to 8th grade.
- Being the first person in my town (only 350 people) to beat the original Mega Man. Kids wanted to see endings so bad at that age they would beg me to play it through. There was no YouTube. Being a jerkoff at that age, but also understanding supply and demand, I’d only do it after I had secured some loot, (“OK, but it’ll cost you two bottles of Pepsi, one of which I need before I start.”) or I’d make them promise future favors (“Get me three sodas whenever I want, even if you have to ride your bike to the store in the rain.”) I‘d sit down and play and they would call other kids over to see, even the older kids we thought were cool. I’d sit there and play with an audience, answering questions while trying not to die, occasionally doling out wisdom like “You see that thing there? Don’t let it hit you.”
- Getting together with my friends at recess around the beginning of December so we could decide who would ask for what games for Christmas. My friends and I usually only got new games on our birthdays and the holidays so we had to make sure we got the biggest variety we could. Around February we’d start borrowing each other the games we received at Christmas.
- My brother and his friends were all 3-4 years older than me, but I was the one with the NES. They would go out on Friday and Saturday nights, but I’d stay in and go to bed because I had to be up at 4 AM for my paper route. I was around 13 at the time. They’d get home around 1 AM and I’d get up and we’d all take turns playing NES games out in the living room (Note: As a kid, paper routes seem like easy money. And it is. Then winter hits.)
- A few times, mostly when they were broke and without girlfriends, they’d stay in and we’d pull an all-nighter taking turns on SMB or Ninja Gaiden. I’d take off around 4 am when the papers arrive, go deliver them for an hour and then and then come back for more gaming until I got too tired to stay awake.
- One night when I wanted to sleep instead of game all night, a friend of my brother named Chad gave me $5 to play Ninja Gaiden since we thought I was nearly at the end of the game. Turns out I was actually two or three levels of extremely hard gaming shy of the end. I stayed up all night, had to start over I don’t know how many times, but I finally beat it about 3 AM. No one I knew had beat it at that point. No one believed me either since Chad went to school in a different town and nobody else was awake to see it. That game was thought to be impossible. I had to end up playing the entire game in front of one of the guys in my class later that week to prove I wasn’t lying. Luckily I breezed through it on the first try. :)
- As I mentioned above, I grew up in a town of 350. My class was the largest one in school with a whopping 11 students. When I began 7th grade we started going to a school 12 miles over for half the day. This town had about 2500 people and my class grew to 55 students. More importantly, about 20 of those were new friends who had their own NES libraries. This was like hitting the gaming jackpot. Some of us ended up writing lists of our game collections so we could see what was available to borrow. It was the first time I ever really had an actual selection of games to choose from. Good times.
Any favorite gaming memories out there?
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