Good evening everyone, and welcome to the first of many posts on the Mash To Win: 30 day blog challenge. Here about 5 of us are blogging our little hearts out talking about how much we like video games.
Before we get started, allow me to introduce our bloggers:
Brandon Long has a castle that must be explored upside down for the best ending.
Mike Leo is secretly a gun-slinging action movie star who plays video games when he's not saving America.
Josh Johnson is the person you want to consult about tactical espionage action.
And I'm Kameron Monk, a 8th degree black belt in 2D fighting game-fu.
So, with that out of the way, let's get this shindig started.
Brandon
Having begun an illustrious video game playing career at the tender age of 5, I couldn’t actually tell you with 100% accuracy what my VERY first video game ever was. However after delving through the murky, unexplored, and frankly quite clutter mess of 18 years of various accumulated memories, I think I got the right one, or close enough at least.
Game & Watch Gallery 2
Before we get started, allow me to introduce our bloggers:
Brandon Long has a castle that must be explored upside down for the best ending.
Mike Leo is secretly a gun-slinging action movie star who plays video games when he's not saving America.
Josh Johnson is the person you want to consult about tactical espionage action.
And I'm Kameron Monk, a 8th degree black belt in 2D fighting game-fu.
So, with that out of the way, let's get this shindig started.
Brandon
Having begun an illustrious video game playing career at the tender age of 5, I couldn’t actually tell you with 100% accuracy what my VERY first video game ever was. However after delving through the murky, unexplored, and frankly quite clutter mess of 18 years of various accumulated memories, I think I got the right one, or close enough at least.
Game & Watch Gallery 2
May 5th, 1998. My 5th birthday party. After a day of running around in the field behind my cookie cutter dirt brown duplex and attempting to invent a revolutionary new take on Tag, (Dinosaur Tag to be precise, though to be honest it wasn’t anything more than Freeze Tag played with your arms crooked at your side with two fingers extended in classic “Dinosaur Claw” fashion. It never took off for some unfathomable reason) my ragtag assortment of acquaintances and I sat more or less in a circle in the sparsely decorated living room. Our bellies full of cake and store brand soft drinks, I sit surrounded by shreds of wrapping paper and toys that my chums had probably only gotten me so that they could borrow them later, as was customary for children of our age. I don’t remember anything I had gotten, nor is it important in the slightest, because suddenly, in classic Christmas Story style, a secret final present is pulled from out of nowhere, almost like magic, and my face lights up as if a wizard HAD just appeared in front of me to deliver the parcel as I opened it and saw what it was. A Game Boy, mother fscking, Color. This little (regrettably Hot Pink) box of plastic and circuitry was essentially an express ticket to the very tip top of the social ladder, and it was mine. This glorious piece of technology came with an equally glorious bonus, a single game cartridge, Game & Watch Gallery 2. Being as young as I was I couldn’t appreciate the history behind its conception in the slightest, but it was fun, and it was mine. (At least until a few months later when it would be absconded with by criminal mastermind, and former good friend Stephan Somethingorother. And that’s Ste-fahn not Steev-ehn).
The game was a basic rehash of a handful of classic Game & Watch games, in one handing portable bundle. It also replaced iconic, but then unnamed, Mr. Game & Watch, with various Mario Bros. protagonists, AND updated everything from static black and white, to a slightly more dynamic interface with bright, vibrant 16 bit color palette. A welcome sight to tiny, easily bored me. You cold, however, switch back and forth between this bright and colorful Mario new-ness, and classic black and white at your leisure. This little cartridge blew my mind when I discovered that it was comprised of not just one, but FIVE whole games for me to sink countless hours into. These five masterpiece were as follows:
Parachute: The premise was simple enough. There is a building on fire (likely a clown college, given the impossible number of people inside), and the only way for the terrified people inside to escape is to fling themselves from the window on the top floor. Luckily for them, expert person catcher YOU is ready on the scene with your trust person catching trampoline. Position yourself under these amateur base jumpers in time, and their mad descent would end comfortably in your very capable hands. Fail to reach them in time and… Well, that fire hose certainly isn’t being used to extinguish the building. Three pedestrian pancakes and your license to hold a trampoline is revoked indefinitely.
Chef: You are the top rated chef in the city. Your specialty? Sausage and Eggs stacked one on top of the other in an unlikely continental monstrosity that reaches the ceiling. Oh but woe is you, it would seem that today your esteemed restaurant is filled to bursting with curmudgeonly food critics. Each one holding as much sway over the public’s opinion as the next, each one with an appetite large enough to starve and entire village, and each one with so short a fuse that a single mistake would be enough to condemn your eatery into oblivion. No pressure. However it would seem that a rival has tipped off your soux-chef in order to assure your failure, his grubby hands tossing each sausage into the air with wild abandon, your only hope is to make a mad dash across the kitchen and catch them in your cast-iron catcher’s mitt. Hell even if you do mess up and miss one, you could probably make a decent career in baseball.
Donkey Kong: That crazy gorilla is at it again! First it was the flinging poop everywhere, then it was the wild parties that continued on way into the night. His campaign for worst neighbor of the year continued when you started finding your garbage cans filled to bursting with banana peels. All of this you could more or less live with begrudgingly, but now that maniac monkey has gone and kidnapped your girlfriend! That’s crossing a line right there buddy. Youre not just going to sit there and take this any more. Youre going to march right up to that ape and show him what for! Youre going over there right now to teach that stupid simian a less- whoa wait a minute. When did he turn his house into a construction yard? Doesn’t he know what that’s going to do to your property value? Man if you were angry before, youre absolutely seething now. That chump of a chimp wont have a hole to cram bananas into once you're through with him.
Helmet: Man, what a day. Work was long and boring, your boss was a total ass, and traffic was a nightmare. At least you’re finally back to your own apartment building. A few flights of stairs later and youll be able to relax. Even the annoying renovations going on upstairs wont be able to bother you once youre recline in your favorite chair with an ice cold one and the game on tv. Whoa hey whats going on? Some moron on the top floor must have knocked their tool box off a ledge or something. Its raining wrenches! No time to get back to your car, youre going to have to make a mad dash for the door. Blast it all you forgot your key! Youll have to wait for your neighbor to buzz you in, but at her age who knows how long that will take! Youre just going to have to try and dodge this downpour of drills until the door opens. Don’t slip.
Vermin: Your garden. Your pride and joy. The accumulation of the last 8 years of your life and really the only thing that brings you joy any more. You just love showing it off to any and everyone you can. Friends, family, passersby, and your favorite, neighbors. Though they don’t always appreciate your gloating, they usually cant disagree that your garden is absolutely stunning. That new neighbor that just moved in next door seemed particularly impressed. He says its nice to see someone who actually takes care of their yard for a change, and that his last few neighbors always had an absolute mess of a yard. For some reason this carried a weight of foreboding when he said this, you aren’t sure why. Oh you think you hear him now, on the other side of the fence in his backyard. Maybe if you talk to him a bit more you can put your mind at ease. But what’s that hes doing there? Looks like he’s letting his pets out. What are those cute little thinOH GOD NO. MOLES. And theyre making for your beautiful yard! You grab the nearest object you can find to fend them off, a mallet you use to pound posts into the ground. You ready yourself at the fence. Not a one of these
Ball: Its finals time at the local clown college. While the recent fire has most people a bit frazzled, you don’t have the luxury of such things. Your mind has to be sharpened to a razor’s edge. Its time to choose this year’s valedictorian and so far its an even tie between you and your long time rival. Today is the day you finally decide which one of you is the better entertainer. The trial? Juggling. While you are pretty good at it, you happen to know that it’s his specialty. A natural prodigy at the act, he’s going to be hard to beat. A ball dropped is a death sentence to your dreams of Head Clown. The pressure isn’t helping any either. Well, here goes nothing.
The game was a basic rehash of a handful of classic Game & Watch games, in one handing portable bundle. It also replaced iconic, but then unnamed, Mr. Game & Watch, with various Mario Bros. protagonists, AND updated everything from static black and white, to a slightly more dynamic interface with bright, vibrant 16 bit color palette. A welcome sight to tiny, easily bored me. You cold, however, switch back and forth between this bright and colorful Mario new-ness, and classic black and white at your leisure. This little cartridge blew my mind when I discovered that it was comprised of not just one, but FIVE whole games for me to sink countless hours into. These five masterpiece were as follows:
Parachute: The premise was simple enough. There is a building on fire (likely a clown college, given the impossible number of people inside), and the only way for the terrified people inside to escape is to fling themselves from the window on the top floor. Luckily for them, expert person catcher YOU is ready on the scene with your trust person catching trampoline. Position yourself under these amateur base jumpers in time, and their mad descent would end comfortably in your very capable hands. Fail to reach them in time and… Well, that fire hose certainly isn’t being used to extinguish the building. Three pedestrian pancakes and your license to hold a trampoline is revoked indefinitely.
Chef: You are the top rated chef in the city. Your specialty? Sausage and Eggs stacked one on top of the other in an unlikely continental monstrosity that reaches the ceiling. Oh but woe is you, it would seem that today your esteemed restaurant is filled to bursting with curmudgeonly food critics. Each one holding as much sway over the public’s opinion as the next, each one with an appetite large enough to starve and entire village, and each one with so short a fuse that a single mistake would be enough to condemn your eatery into oblivion. No pressure. However it would seem that a rival has tipped off your soux-chef in order to assure your failure, his grubby hands tossing each sausage into the air with wild abandon, your only hope is to make a mad dash across the kitchen and catch them in your cast-iron catcher’s mitt. Hell even if you do mess up and miss one, you could probably make a decent career in baseball.
Donkey Kong: That crazy gorilla is at it again! First it was the flinging poop everywhere, then it was the wild parties that continued on way into the night. His campaign for worst neighbor of the year continued when you started finding your garbage cans filled to bursting with banana peels. All of this you could more or less live with begrudgingly, but now that maniac monkey has gone and kidnapped your girlfriend! That’s crossing a line right there buddy. Youre not just going to sit there and take this any more. Youre going to march right up to that ape and show him what for! Youre going over there right now to teach that stupid simian a less- whoa wait a minute. When did he turn his house into a construction yard? Doesn’t he know what that’s going to do to your property value? Man if you were angry before, youre absolutely seething now. That chump of a chimp wont have a hole to cram bananas into once you're through with him.
Helmet: Man, what a day. Work was long and boring, your boss was a total ass, and traffic was a nightmare. At least you’re finally back to your own apartment building. A few flights of stairs later and youll be able to relax. Even the annoying renovations going on upstairs wont be able to bother you once youre recline in your favorite chair with an ice cold one and the game on tv. Whoa hey whats going on? Some moron on the top floor must have knocked their tool box off a ledge or something. Its raining wrenches! No time to get back to your car, youre going to have to make a mad dash for the door. Blast it all you forgot your key! Youll have to wait for your neighbor to buzz you in, but at her age who knows how long that will take! Youre just going to have to try and dodge this downpour of drills until the door opens. Don’t slip.
Vermin: Your garden. Your pride and joy. The accumulation of the last 8 years of your life and really the only thing that brings you joy any more. You just love showing it off to any and everyone you can. Friends, family, passersby, and your favorite, neighbors. Though they don’t always appreciate your gloating, they usually cant disagree that your garden is absolutely stunning. That new neighbor that just moved in next door seemed particularly impressed. He says its nice to see someone who actually takes care of their yard for a change, and that his last few neighbors always had an absolute mess of a yard. For some reason this carried a weight of foreboding when he said this, you aren’t sure why. Oh you think you hear him now, on the other side of the fence in his backyard. Maybe if you talk to him a bit more you can put your mind at ease. But what’s that hes doing there? Looks like he’s letting his pets out. What are those cute little thinOH GOD NO. MOLES. And theyre making for your beautiful yard! You grab the nearest object you can find to fend them off, a mallet you use to pound posts into the ground. You ready yourself at the fence. Not a one of these
Ball: Its finals time at the local clown college. While the recent fire has most people a bit frazzled, you don’t have the luxury of such things. Your mind has to be sharpened to a razor’s edge. Its time to choose this year’s valedictorian and so far its an even tie between you and your long time rival. Today is the day you finally decide which one of you is the better entertainer. The trial? Juggling. While you are pretty good at it, you happen to know that it’s his specialty. A natural prodigy at the act, he’s going to be hard to beat. A ball dropped is a death sentence to your dreams of Head Clown. The pressure isn’t helping any either. Well, here goes nothing.
Game & Watch Gallery 2 was something of an eclectic interest. One day I wouldn’t be able to put it down for a second, completely enthralled by its brightly pixilated glory. The next day it would be as boring and bland as counting the little paint drops on the ceiling. The very thought of playing it would elicit an audible groan from my lips. But no matter what I would always eventually end up coming back to it. Originally because I had no other games to speak of, but eventually because I still found it fun to play. When my friend borrowed it and never gave it back, claiming that he had never had it in the first place in fact, I was beyond pissed. It was one of those games where the only real goal was beating your own score again and again. Becoming more challenging as you got better. Depending on your preferences this could either be really great, or completely terrible. I liked the game and would recommend it to fans of classics.
Mike
Spy Fox In Dry Cereal
My first game was Spy Fox In Dry Cereal. A Humongous Entertainment Point-and-Click game aimed at younger kids. I poured hours into that game, although I often got stuck. My favorite part had to be the laser reflection puzzle and the SpyWatch minigame called "Happy Fun Sub", which in spite of how it sounds, was actually a pretty challenging side-scrolling shmup.
Josh
Super Mario 64
My first video game is an interesting one for sure. However, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what my “first” video game ever played was. I’m pretty sure my first video game was some arcade game, Super Mario World, or Toy Story for the Game Boy Pocket. The time in which I played these were fairly close and intertwined which is why it’s hard for me to pinpoint my first game. Even though these were technically the first games I have played, I like to call Super Mario 64 as my “first video game.” My time with the games before Mario 64 was very limited thus lacking a proper impression and leaving not too much to elaborate on.
Compared to the other games, Mario 64 left a planetoid sized impression in my mind. When I first picked up the controller and played it at my cousins, that’s all me and my cousin did for the rest of the day. I also remember clearly my eyes being pretty red from playing all day and night which even my aunt took notice to which she then said “you really must like that game”, it’s funny to me how clear that memory is in my mind. At the time, I remember just thinking “I have to get this, video games are amazing” and this overwhelming feeling just washed over me. A feeling keeping my love for gaming alive ever since, and sadly, that’s a feeling that can never be recreated in my eyes. After I got a Nintendo 64 to call my own, Super Mario 64 was there from the beginning keeping me glued to my CRT tv and N64. This monumental game also hoisted the platformer genre to my favorite genre that still holds true to this day.
Compared to the other games, Mario 64 left a planetoid sized impression in my mind. When I first picked up the controller and played it at my cousins, that’s all me and my cousin did for the rest of the day. I also remember clearly my eyes being pretty red from playing all day and night which even my aunt took notice to which she then said “you really must like that game”, it’s funny to me how clear that memory is in my mind. At the time, I remember just thinking “I have to get this, video games are amazing” and this overwhelming feeling just washed over me. A feeling keeping my love for gaming alive ever since, and sadly, that’s a feeling that can never be recreated in my eyes. After I got a Nintendo 64 to call my own, Super Mario 64 was there from the beginning keeping me glued to my CRT tv and N64. This monumental game also hoisted the platformer genre to my favorite genre that still holds true to this day.
Kam
Duck Hunt
You know, unlike most people for their first game, I don't have any kind of warm fuzzies for Duck Hunt. According to the internet, I filled in each box on the check list of what you should of experienced to have truly played Duck Hunt.
Play the game with the first edition gray Zapper over the lamesauce orange one? Check.
Touch the screen with the gun so you can kill ducks easier? Check.
Play it upside down on my couch to get a true challenge? Check.
Secretly try to kill the dog? Check.
Play the game with the first edition gray Zapper over the lamesauce orange one? Check.
Touch the screen with the gun so you can kill ducks easier? Check.
Play it upside down on my couch to get a true challenge? Check.
Secretly try to kill the dog? Check.
Basically, Duck Hunt wasn't the catalyst for my love of gaming. The real catalyst would probably be a three way split between Battletoads, Little Nemo: The Dream Master, (Law of gaming #26: If it has “master” in the title, you know it means business.) and Bubble Bobble. Maybe Zelda II for a different reason.
Battletoads didn't actually click with me until 15 years after the fact. It's basically a 16-bit game that runs on an 8-bit system. Saying that alone is impressive, but what it did to accomplish that is something I took for granted for years.
Little Nemo was a perfect game for me. Not only was I a stubborn child who would play difficult video games no matter how much they beat me down; I also loved dreams. Killing two stones with one bird? You bet.
And Bubble Bobble introduced me to how fun cooperating with someone else is.
If anything, those are my real first games, Duck Hunt may have been the actual first, but I remember clicking with those stranger, imaginative games instead of the one with the stupid dog that laughed at my mistakes. Something, for the longest time I was ashamed of for liking, because my “friends” said what I liked was a waste.
Eventually I outgrew that, dug my NES out of the basement, and went back to my roots. I popped in those cartridges and realized that I love the classics. I love their cuteness, I love their challenge, I love their music, and most of all I love their cohesion.
Even if we get to a point where we can play these game through our eyelids, I'll still hook up my NES, blow in the cartridges, and cherish where it all began.
Battletoads didn't actually click with me until 15 years after the fact. It's basically a 16-bit game that runs on an 8-bit system. Saying that alone is impressive, but what it did to accomplish that is something I took for granted for years.
Little Nemo was a perfect game for me. Not only was I a stubborn child who would play difficult video games no matter how much they beat me down; I also loved dreams. Killing two stones with one bird? You bet.
And Bubble Bobble introduced me to how fun cooperating with someone else is.
If anything, those are my real first games, Duck Hunt may have been the actual first, but I remember clicking with those stranger, imaginative games instead of the one with the stupid dog that laughed at my mistakes. Something, for the longest time I was ashamed of for liking, because my “friends” said what I liked was a waste.
Eventually I outgrew that, dug my NES out of the basement, and went back to my roots. I popped in those cartridges and realized that I love the classics. I love their cuteness, I love their challenge, I love their music, and most of all I love their cohesion.
Even if we get to a point where we can play these game through our eyelids, I'll still hook up my NES, blow in the cartridges, and cherish where it all began.
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ReplyDeleteEnjoyable read guys!
ReplyDelete