Video Games
I’ve always been fascinated with video games. I remember seeing them in the arcade at the old Woodhaven mall and wanted to play then and also understand how they worked. Any time I had quarters if we were there, They disappeared into the machines. Spent a ton of time playing Defender there. The arcade version was so much better that the Atari one. Also played Spy hunter every chance I got! Asteroids was cool as shit too!
At some point in the Early 80s my aunt bought us an Atari 2600 for Christmas. We had it hooked up to a little 13 inch black and white TV. For some time it was in the basement on a shelf, and we had to sit on a bar stool to play it and see it. Pitfall, Yars’ Revenge, Defender were the ones I played the most on there.
My neighbor across the street had a Nintendo and she’d let us come over and play it sometimes. She introduced me to Tetris! That was such a fun game to play and of course she had Super Mario Brothers. I really liked that one too! I was amazing by the graphics. She had and was addicted to Zelda but we couldn’t play that. One year for Christmas we got a Nintendo of our own.
Some of my favorite games for that NES that we had were naturally Super Mario Brothers 1 and 2. The water levels were annoying but different. Duck Hunt which came with the Nintendo that our parents had bought us was pretty fun too except for the fact that you couldn’t shoot that fucking dog that laughed at you. I really enjoyed the Castlevania games. I can still sort of here the Castlevania II music. They were slightly different. Along that line I really enjoyed Metroid. I enjoyed the Megaman games a lot too. I never did get my own copy of Zelda which I realize now was a huge mistake.
At some point we got a Commodore 64. My dad bought it from someone he knew. It had a ton of games included with it, which I now realize were mostly if not all cracked games but didn’t know then. Maniac Mansion comes to mind with this. I spent way too much time on that game and I think I ended up with all the possible endings eventually. Another one I really enjoyed on there was dig dug
Some time later we got a Super Nintendo. I spent way too much time playing that and beating various games. By then I was renting games. You could get an extra day if you rented them on the weekends at Pharmore so that’s What I did and picked up a bunch of used ones over that time.
One summer I picked up a Sega CD at the pawn shop. First time with a non Nintendo since we had the Atari but those were all gifts so you couldn’t complain too much. Loved playing Sonic and there were some other games I liked a lot. There was a racing game that played good music or at least some good choices. Maybe it was called out run? I remember the motorcycles and picking your city.
I eventually would get a Nintendo 64, and we played that quite a bit. I’m not sure why we stopped. I think it got put away when we moved I I never got it back out. There were some awesome games for that, but I do remember the weird 3d glitches happening at times. To some extent the games were starting to become too graphically intense for my eyes. They looked awesome but lost a lot of contrast with the prettiness. Same thing happened with PC games.
Next I wound up getting a Wii. Enjoyed that a lot. Just brought it back down from the attic this past summer and hooked it back up.
Sadly I no longer have the Nintendos. We were having work done and one of the guys workers saw them in the garage and asked if we wanted to get rid of them. He said how he has 4 kids and they’d really enjoy them. I was nice and gave them to him. We weren’t using them at that point and if it made a kid’s life a bit better that would be a good thing. The fucker came back the next day bragging about how much he sold them for. No doubt my niceness bought him drugs. Oh well, nothing can be done about it now.
As of 2021 I’ve joined the modern world again. I got an Xbox Series X for Christmas and I have to say I have really been enjoying it a lot. I am really blown away by how good the graphics are but I haven’t had anything more modern than the Wii so that doesn’t really say a whole lot.
I’m liking Watchdogs: Legion a lot and have been slowly playing my way through it over the past couple of months. I’ve really liked the story line and the twists in the plot for sure. It’s not the type of game I really ever expected I’d play and enjoy but I have been. I don’t play ever day or for long periods of time. Lifting and enjoying the nice weather are more important to me.