Super Mario Brothers - NES

When my brother was in high school, I would wake up to the vibrations of his stereo, pushed up against the wall between our rooms, pounding up against the sheetrock. It would be about 6 a.m., and I couldn’t quite discern the lyrics at that hour, but I didn’t have to. I knew it would be Motley Crue’s Shout At the Devil, on regular rotation. His room was the opposite of my peach, lacy bubble, with its white, imitation-French dresser and mirror. He had a small collection of vinyl, but it had the essentials – Kiss - Detroyer, Police - Zenyattà Mondatta, Iron Maiden – Number of the Beast. This modest collection was pushed up against a glass cage holding a white rat, which I still can’t believe he got past my mother. The room smelled like boy, and rodents. The walls were still bright red, but he got rid of the Star Wars curtains and bedspread a few years back, the ones I loved to stare at while he read me Arnold Lobel. I was too old for read alouds, but I still liked marching in and flopping down on his bed. Now I just sat there, wearing his huge Police concert T-shirt, memorizing song lyrics and gawking at his weird, teenage boy-artifacts – a plastic skull that glowed in the dark, a collection of bandanas, a stolen traffic light – until he kicked me out. My new favorite activity was forcing him to look at my latest issue of YM, and to tell me which girls he thought were the prettiest. I found this beyond fascinating. The girls he picked never matched up with my choices, and the huge chasm between the male and female psyche grew ever-larger. I later aborted this mission, going back to reading Nancy Drew where the world made sense. I thought we had a good thing going until one day, he just up and moved into the basement. He was no longer a wall away, but in a whole grown-up apartment downstairs, now with a double bed, a better stereo system out of my listening range, and a separate entrance to get girls in. By now he had run away from home once, graduated high school, and been in a fist fight with my father. He was away more, and I was invited in less.
Then I found my in. My brother needed an opponent to play with him on his new Nintendo system, where he introduced me to Super Mario Bros. At first I was psyched just to be there, to get some spy time in the man-lair. I grew up with an Atari, and loved swinging on a vine over a pit of crocodiles just as much as the next kid on my block. But this was different. More and more often, my fingers would itch for the control, for that satisfying crunch of bricks, and the magical trill of notes as I expanded from a flickering rainbow flower. I could now speed through the secret passages to advanced worlds, and slide under twirling bars of fire with ease. I could even make it through those evil spiky cloud-things that followed you everywhere, like an annoying little sister. It was perfect timing for me to learn how to beat this thing. It was summertime, and I was past the age of playing outside all day with my pals. The boy who had been my best friend since birth, who lived right across the street, didn’t want to hang out with me much any more. Not even for wiffle ball. Wearing “sulky” became my new fashion statement. The perfect retreat was my brother’s dark, cool basement apartment, the best place to hide from the heat and my adolescent boredom. He worked all day for some auto-part cleaning company, and I had long, quiet days to myself. I spent way too much time down there that summer, just me against the dragon. I saved the princess dozens of times. Eventually my brother moved out, taking Super Mario with him, and I made my own claims on the basement. I threw my first boy-girl party. I had my first open-mouth kiss in its cool dark, and years later, was consciously bored during make-out sessions on the old couch my brother had left behind.
During a recent trip down into a grown-up pal’s man-lair, surrounded by Spider-man posters and action figures, my friend Victor stuck a NES controller in my hand. I have continually resisted his temptations, riding high on my preachy-horse about the mindless violence of video games. I spend my days trying to get kids to read and lecturing them to tear their eyes away from various blinking screens. He knew I had a few glasses of Shiraz, and a belly full of chicken wings. I was weak. He said, “You know you want to.” As soon as he started it up, I didn’t have to think about what was coming around each corner. I knew instinctively what blocks to bash, and how far back I would have to start running to leap safely over a gap in Mario-world. Victor and my husband were staring at me with their mouths half-open, as I plowed through the tunnels, bopping and slamming those little turtle things and using them as bowling balls against my enemies. The automatic movement of my fingers brought to my nose the smell of my old wet, basement, and I half expected my brother to reach over and give me the deadly “collar,” halfway through the game. My initial thought was that it is disturbing that there is room being taken up in my brain for the reserve of these game-playing reflexes, space that could very well be occupied by much more important information, or a more significant experience or lesson from my youth. I then realized, it was playing this game, feeling rejected by the various boys in my life, I first chucked aside my fashion magazine and saved a princess instead. Lesson learned. I strutted out of the basement after pulverizing my husband at the game. “That was hot,” he said.
By Megan Southard

Track and Field - NES

Since it was first announced more than three years ago, the Nintendo Wii’s central selling point has remained its interactive nature. We’ve seen Wii Fit and snowboarding games with nifty looking peripherals and pilates games and a whole other series of stuff that takes gaming off the couch.
But the notion that this whole thing was some sort of new technology befuddled me. After all, when I first heard about the Wii, my mind instantly traveled to a simpler time when I didn’t work or drive. To me, the whole concept seemed cheap and under-handed.
Why? Because of Track and Field of the NES. Long before video game controllers had joy sticks and motion sensors, there was a gray mat covered in blue and red dots that allowed gamers to run sprint races and jump hurdles. There was even a long jump portion that, despite my sincerest efforts, couldn’t be tricked by my jumping onto a nearby chair.
The graphics were what you would expect from a NES title and the game was repetitive, but it was Nintendo Wii 25 years before Nintendo Wii. It even had some of the Wii’s corniness (like that dumb music in the Wii bowling alley) by way of competitors whose names mirrored difficulties.
Yes, the game may not have had the level of interaction we see from today’s Wii titles, but that little gray mat could sure take a beating and I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who could get through the varying degrees of difficulty with each stage.
Today, my Nintendo Wii gets turned on about once every couple months. I like the system, I just don’t like jumping up and down alone in my bedroom when I can avoid it. When I had Track and Field, however, I never let up on the thing. Maybe it was the novelty that came with the game’s mat, maybe the title was just well done.
In either case, I’m still waiting for my Wii to give me the enjoyment I got from a much simpler game from a much simpler time.
By George Morse
gmorse@eastbaynewspapers.com

Baseball Stars – NES

It’s been a long time since I’ve played video games with my dad.
When I was a kid, my family was the first one that I knew to own a Nintendo. In retrospect, I’m sure the system coming into our house was my dad’s doing because when we got the thing, I was way too young to have even known what it was, my mother had no interest in it and my sister was about three-and-a-half days old.
By the time I was got to four or five though, I spent more time on the thing than anyone. I was a kid, it was the late 1980s and we owned a Nintendo. It was perfect. In the mix of hours upon hours spent in front of the TV playing Super Mario Brothers, my dad and I would share the thing every now and again.
We started with Contra, the classic side-scroller shoot-em-up title. We’d usually get a level or two in and then get really frustrated and turn it off. Sports games were a different story. There were some epic match-ups we had that would span the NES and SNES generations. At the time, I needed, not wanted, to win every match-up. You see when I hit my teenage years I gave up on any dreams I had of being a pro baseball player or basketball player, but when I was a kid, all I wanted to be was Tom Glavine.
I wasn’t ever very good at athletics. I wasn’t bad, I was never picked last, but I was never picked first either. In a baseball line-up, I usually hit sixth. My dad, however, he was one of those guys who made it look effortless. He played softball and basketball and volleyball and everything he did just looked like the right way to do it. I couldn’t hit the ball as far as he did, throw it as hard as he did or make the catches he could and to be honest I still can’t.
But man I could kick his ass on video games. Especially with titles like Madden, I would beat him down every time … unmercifully. I’m talking 11 rushing touchdowns in a single game with Emmitt Smith. I’m talking about a glitch that made sure the fake field goal play work every time.
But baseball games were a little different. Yes, I won probably 90 percent of time, but it was never a blow out. Always a close game. Back then, there wasn’t a lot of nuance to baseball titles. You pressed A to swing. You pressed A to pitch. You pressed A to run. So regardless of how much time I spent playing the thing the relatively non-existent learning curve made baseball match-ups between me and Pop an evenly matched affair.
For awhile, we played Bases Loaded. Then we got Baseball Stars, which is considered by many to be the best NES sports title ever.
And for good reason.
As an avid sports gamer, there’s a lot me and my brethren take for granted today. You know, things like create-a-team and season mode. But in 1989, these things were other-wordly. Not only was Baseball Stars easy to play, the new features of trading players and season modes made it fun to play over and over again.
Which is probably why my dad and I played it so much.
But much, much more important than game modes or graphics, Baseball Stars has a direct tie to one of the most vivid memories of my entire life. I had to be six or seven tops. Me and my dad, we’re in my room playing a game of Baseball Stars. My dad pauses the game, asks me if I hear “that.” I ask him if I heard “what.” He said it must be nothing. We go back to the game. Play for a few more seconds. Then he stops the game again. Gets up and leaves the room. I follow him.
When you walk into our kitchen, you can see down a few steps to a landing by our back door. When we come around the corner, there’s a guy dressed all in black running out the door from our basement.
Its 7 o’clock at night and every light in the house is on. Me and my dad, we were talking so loud the neighbors could hear us, but apparently it didn’t stop some idiot from propping open our back door with a bucket and sneaking into our basement.
So my dad, he takes off after the guy. He would have caught him too, except he remembered I was in the house and who knows if there’s anyone else in the basement. So he comes back inside. Takes a look into the basement from atop the stairs.
And then it happened. A moment that has been repeated and a story that has been re-told at Thanksgivings and Christmas dinners for the last decade-and-a-half. Trying to scare the unknown thug who could still be lurching in our basement, my dad looks at me.
He says: “GJ. Get my gun.”
And me, the bright, earnest, good-hearted seven-year-old I was, I respond honestly.
I say: “Dad. You don’t have a gun!”
I said it because the fact of the matter was my dad did not own a gun. Never has. But now, not only did me and my dad know it, the unknown lunatic creeping around downstairs did now too. So my dad descends into the basement, unarmed but unafraid and thankfully, there was no one down there. After a quick inspection, we found nothing was taken. I still live in the same house now and while no one has broken in since, I’ll never forget that game of Baseball Stars.
Especially since after we checked the house one more time, I won.
by George Morse
gmorse@eastbaynewspapers.com

Operation Wolf - Nintendo Entertainment System

It was the late Eighties. My matinee heroes were Sly Stallone, Arnold Schwarzeneggar, and Bruce Willis. And there in the arcade stood a cabinet with an Uzi sticking up in place of a joystick. Ah, the lovely sidescrolling action unfolded as a cast of thousands of swarthy, Hispanics from some unnamed Central American country (Val Verde, perhaps?) popped up ready for me to cut down in a hail of simulated gunfire. How could any red-blooded, jingoistic, American boy fail to love Operation Wolf?
Of course, the problem was that arcade games cost quarters. And being something of a cheap bastard, I never liked plugging quarters into those machines. Still, Operation Wolf called to me. My brother saved up his quarters to buy a Nintendo. I remember the box of grey and taupe plastic and the rectangle controllers. The system also came with a gun-shaped controller for Duck Hunt. Point and pull the trigger. Could it be any more simple? I played a few rounds of Duck Hunt in my day, but I was never a big gamer.
Then Operation Wolf came out for Nintendo, and I shelled out the $50 for it. I missed the simulated blowback Uzi, but I was happy. The amazing thing for me was how close to the cabinet game it looked. No longer did I have to plug quarters into the machine. I played for hours until one day, I beat the game. As I recall, the ending had my first-person shooter character rescue some hostages, shepherd them through another round, and then jump onto a transport plane out of that pixilated green hell-hole
I went to college about that time. One Friday night I went down to the rathskellar and saw another cabinet game standing there. It was Operation Thunderbolt: the sequel to Operation Wolf. This was a two player version and had two MAC-10 submachine guns sticking up from the cabinet. I sidled up next to the crewcut fellow freshman playing the game and plunked my quarters in to take control of Player 2. Together, he and I blasted away at the African hostage takers (really, could you make such a politically incorrect game these days?) until these newest hostages were saved. And between us, it didn’t take as many quarters as I feared. All that home practice paid off. My wingman was an ROTC cadet. He and I became fast friends and shared a dorm room the next year as well as assorted other adventures.
After graduation, he got commissioned as an Army infantry officer and – soberly -- shot things for real. Sadly, I haven’t talked to him in far too long. He’s been a little busy these past nine years. I google his name sometimes; you’d be surprised what you can find online. He was part of the Army 1st Infantry Division task force that supported the Marines during the Battle of Fallujah in Iraq. He was widely quoted out of context in the media on the use of white phosphorus incendiary rounds during that battle. But knowing him, he’s probably prouder of his efforts to organize his area of operations for the first free election in Iraq in decades. That was also reported – but not as widely.
By John Fitzpatrick

Retro Game Challenge - Nintendo DS

An 80s love letter to retro gamers and anyone who likes a challenge, Retro Game Challenge was a delightful surprise. When you use words like “sweet” or “thoughtful” to describe a video game it’s usually for titles that feature ponies or Italian plumbers who save princesses. When talking about XSEED’s Retro Gaming Challenge, these words refer to the game’s personality and sensibilities as much as its characters.
It may be because I’m a child of the Atari 2600 and NES, but I found the overall attitude of this game refreshingly warm and thoughtful. It is a power ballad written to 8-bit gamers like myself who long for the days when high scores were everything and extra lives made a difference.
Older gamers often defend the early games for their brilliant use of innovative gameplay in the absence of mindblowing graphics and memory. We say those things, then we let our NES and Genesis gather dust in the shadow of our new consoles. We may miss the simplicity of game’s past, but we rarely go back and visit them. That’s where Retro Gaming Challenge is brilliant. Instead of licensing a bunch of 8-bit classics and bundling them with a goofy storyline, XSEED has managed to produce faithful – and deep – clones of classic 8-bit genres and presented them in a compelling way that begs to be played.
Retro Game Challenge is based on the original Japanese TV series, Retro Game Master. The game takes you back to the 1980s, where you play as a young boy forced by the evil “Game Master” Arino to test your gaming skills in a variety of retro-style video games including shooters, racing games, platformers and an epic role-playing game. Once you master Arino’s challenges, you can return to the beginning to play any of the eight games in their entirety.
The interface – which has you sitting in front of a TV and picking games (and magazines filled with cheats and tips) from the living room bookshelf – is cool and nostalgic. The in-game magazines provide cheat codes to help you warp through complicated levels, but they also offer a virtual history lesson on the video game industry. The fake ‘80s news stories cover actual trends and milestones in the industry from the ‘80s, including the meteoric rise and fall of new game releases.
It is the clever presentation and the game’s ability to take you back in time to your misspent youth jamming cartridges into a game console that sets the game apart from the simple retro release compilation games.
But it’s all about the games in the end. If they were no fun to play, the charm would wear thin quickly. Luckily, the games are fun and the charm doesn’t fade.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com