Alrighty, time for this week’s edition. Now we are onto the Nintendo 64 and Playstation 1. These were my middle school days at Van Wyck in New York. As such, they were full of irresponsible and very memorable experiences with my best friend at the time: Ryan Barrett. I wish I had a journal from then, but I’ll do my best here to recall the highlights.
First off: the trampoline. As fate would have it, the Barrett family moved into my ward when we moved back from Tokyo. We became friends pretty quickly and became lil punks. We had some sweet games besides all the normal trampoline jumping and flipping. From what I remember, it’s a good thing we are still functioning in today’s society after the things we pulled. Again, as fate would have it, the Trampoline was positioned near the Barrett’s deck. So we got braver and braver with all the things we did off the deck. All the way to the point where we jumped off the deck in fully zipped up sleeping bags! Various games involved blindfolds while jumping around. The sprinkler was great to get a little more bounce during the summer.
We had a sweet pool in Hopewell Junction. We then of course perfected the “sailor dive” and even the back dive (which I will not do anymore due to many backflops). Another classic memory was at the IBM country club pool in Poughkeepsie (town of me birth). I have a lot of history there, as that’s where I learned to swim and even jump off the diving board at the age of 2 or 3. Anyways fast forward back to middle school, besides burning our feet on the hot brick ground on the way to and from the snack bar, there were other hazards we enjoyed. Messing around on the hand railing left Ryan with a sweet chipped tooth. The kiddie pool was always nice and warm. And we spent a lot of time warming up in the showers, but unfortunately the adults would usually shower naked, so we of course left “if” that happened. Naturally they became the “if showers” as well as starting another code word “if” for uhm…something else. (def not putting up a link there…) Also, speaking of code, that’s when we started pushing buttons on the phone to fake curse at each other 3J and began imitating the sweet sounds of the aliens from Mars Attacks!.
Anyways on to the gaming memories… At Leechmere’s in the Poughkeepsie Galleria I first saw a Nintendo 64 with Mario 64. It was so ridiculously ahead of the 16 bit games I talked about last time. I instantly wanted it, like whoa, like much more than i wanted a wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man. I wasn’t one of the kids who got it first day, (with this or anything except PS2). It was pretty expensive and games were crazy expensive too, all 2 of them were 70 bucks. I must have waited about a year since the first games I got were “greatest hits”. I stretched “itsa me Mario”s face around for a while and then started a most revolutionary game. Nintendo had to basically invent how a 3D game would work and did it right the first time. Starfox 64 was amazing and actually had a memorable multiplayer experience with many a Barrel-roll. I have a tie between the top 2 games though. Goldeneye stands as the greatest multiplayer game of all time while Zelda: Ocarina of Time stands as one of the greatest adventure games ever. Nights staying up playing goldeneye were many. Tweaking the rules always kept things fresh. My favorite always was one-shot kills with pistols only. Also I loved looking on other peoples screens and anticipating a shot before they knew I was there. So classic, so cheap, but also… not cheating! Oddjob was never allowed. Proximity mines always led to trouble.
Mario Kart 64 – Always fun, loved the fact you could get payback from beyond the grave in Battle Mode as the Babomb.
Star Wars games…for another post
And then there was Playstation… I was a Nintendo Fanboy, never thought twice about 3DO, Jaguar, or even Sega Saturn. Ryan’s family had a playstation, and that changed things. One thing playstation had going for it was a bazzilion games. Although I didn’t know Final Fantasy from the early days, I was introduced to it with FF7. Now that was an amazing adventure. I loved the music so much, but the story rocked, the gameplay was polished, and the game was much bigger than anything I ever saw to that point. Spoiler alert, the villain kills the main love interest (who was a playable character) and then uses her and other things (destroying the universe) to attempt to become a god. And he was awesome! It was another game worthy of my top 10. Also FF8 later on became one of my favorites, starting off with a bang Also, the main guys weapon is a Sword with a gun on it, so cool...in fact only one thing cooler than that. I ended up getting a PS1 late in the game as it were so it was cheap and the games were cheap as well. This was nice as I could catch up faster. I absolutely loved the style of the Crash Bandicoot games. Gran Turismo was a fantastic racing game. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night quickly became a favorite as well. It had an amazing techno-goth soundtrack (check out the lil diddy starting at 4:33) and the artwork was perfect.
I still love Nintendo, but PS1 helped fill the void and fill the space in my heart Sega used to have (though I’ll give sega some lovin yet see Dreamcast*). As such, in the present, I have a Wii and a PS3.
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