Legal Ramblings [ Tuesday, August 13, 2002 (3:04 AM) ] ( link ) Classic Nintendo: While cleaning out the garage, my brother and I discovered our old 8-bit Nintendo, complete with our ancient collection of games. Within half an hour we had it installed on our big-screen TV and were re-living our childhoods. Among the games that we have: Abadox, Double Dragon II, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Crystalis, Megaman 2, Defender 2, 3D World Runner, and a 20-games-in-1 pack (among some others I've probably forgotten). The 20-in-1 pack deserves special mention. We got it free several years ago when some person whose restaurant we frequented gave it to me and my brother as a gift. When we came home and tried it out we were disappointed, at first--most of the games looked terrible, and seemed to play terrible too. But within a few days we had become converts: what the games lacked in graphics they made up for in gameplay. Among the 20 games: Ice Climber: Two players race against each other to reach the top of a mountain. If you move faster than your opponent then the screen can scroll past him and cost him a life. My brother and I used to get into screaming fits about this game, and yesterday we did it again. (I think we liked it a lot better than this guy.) Baseball: A terrible looking game, with absolute no skill involved, that is also conducive to screaming fits between opponents. Tennis: See Baseball. Battle City: Two tanks have to work together (for once) to protect the base, an icon that looks disturbingly like a Nazi eagle. Excite Bike: Race against awful computer players! Crash for no reason! Become unable to climb up hills! Build your own course! Yi Ar Kung Fu: There can be only one. At any rate the 20-in-1 collection was great, and my brother and I had a blast. Then there is Crystalis, a true classic in every sense of the word. The premise behind Crystalis is something like this: you have to collect four ancient swords, each with a succession of three items that increase the swords power, and then you get a super sword that allows you to defeat the big bad guy. No, it's not original--but boy was it addictive when we were kids. (And even now it's capable of reducing us to drooling fools in front of the television.) Finally, two of my favorite games ever: Megaman 2 and Double Dragon II. I remember those games being really hard, and certainly when my brother and I played Double Dragon II we rarely progressed past Level 5. But now, for some reason, the games seem a lot easier--maybe our hands are more dexterous, or maybe we're just not as retarded as we used to be (leaping off buildings, walking into enemies, and so on). At any rate it took us half an hour to go further in Double Dragon II than we ever had before, and only one hour to beat all the bosses in Megaman 2 and advance one level in Dr. Wiley's castle. And to think we spent all that time as children trying to do just half of that. So my brother and I had loads of guiltless, healthy fun, flavored by the nostalgia of seeing all of these childhood classics back on the big screen. Yes, I know that the Nintendo was a brain-destroying toy that sucked time away from studying and contributed absolutely nothing to society. But I wouldn't have given it up for the world.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.