Over the Xmas holidays, I was fortunate enough to receive a couple of presents from my cousin, that would’ve made my heart explode with glee — were I still an eight year-old; a NES and a SNES. These of course are the fabled Nintendo consoles of yesteryears, namely the ones my parents never got me as a kid. *sniff*
NES came to Finland in ‘87 (4 years after it’s launch in Japan) and in 1991, when I was in Elementary school here in Finland, that 8-bit Nintendo was the dog’s bollocks. All the cool kids had a NES. My parents weren’t all that into kids playing video games (they thought it was a big waste of time) so I had to resort to going over to friends’ houses to play. We had a crappy 286 IBM PC at home with a few good games (Ducktales and F1 Racing), but back then PC’s were old hat compared to the Nintendo. The most important thing about the NES was that you could have two people playing it at the same time, which at the time was a huge advantage compared to the PC games we played. Also, several movie rental shops had NES games for rental, so we didn’t have to save up our measly allowances and buy games, we could rent them and pay a fraction of the price. Of course there was a huge dilemma with spending our hard-earned cash: video games or sweets? :) I must have spent a short lifetime playing Duckhunt and Super Mario Brothers, and also begging my parents to buy me a console — unfortunately, with no success.
About the same time Sega launched its Mega Drive console that also made us little kids scream and shout. Looking back, it wasn’t as ‘cool’ as the NES, but by god did I want one. And as Sonic The Hedgehog was released, it became one of those consoles you’d do anything to play with. I think I even made friends with a girl who lived next door to us just so I could go over and play with her MegaDrive (give me a break, I was 8 years old!). I tried to get my parents to buy one too, but no such luck.
A few years later, came the SNES, and as it was new I had to have one. Unfortunately keeping with the recurring theme of “consoles are a waste of time”, I lucked out. My cousin got a SNES for his 10th birthday and every time we went to visit them, we’d sit in front of the TV and play Battletoads or Super Mario World for hours on end. And it was great. Yet again, our house wasn’t adorned but a Nintendo.
So fast forward some 12 years to the present, past the Dreamcasts, Playstations and N64s - all of which I would’ve given my right leg and a kidney to own (you don’t need legs to play videogames) - I currently own 4 consoles. The first of which is the new Nintendo Wii, my first ever console. Even though I’ve totally fallen in love with my Xbox 360 and the Wii is inferior in almost all aspects, it holds a special place in my heart for being my very first, totally own console. I’m weird that way.
Even though the old NES and SNES are pretty useless now, the were a couple of items I need to own — specifically these two consoles, since they’re the ones I’ve spent a great deal of my childhood using. It’s funny how ‘insignificant’ things like those make you feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside. I guess this is what it’s like to be a geek :)