1993 - 1996: Nintendo (NES)

After my kindergarten period ended, i became completely obsessed with gaming. My parents bought a Nintendo for me and my brother. I must have been around 4 years old. I recall vivid memories of spending hours playing Super Mario Bros.
And having Super Mario Bros as the first 'real' game you actually remember playing, is a perfect introduction to video gaming.



The NES played a big role in my youth and upbringing.
It replaced the parenting and attention i largely did not receive from my parents. The moral fibre that was conveyed through the message of Super Mario Bros. became my morals: Be a good person, through good actions, and you will become a hero. Persevere in what you want to achieve. Bad guys are defeated and will not be rewarded in life. The similarities to life were evident to me, even at this fragile pre-mature stage of my early life. I realized, life itself has it's levels, ranging from easy to difficult. And that it is more rewarding to conquer difficult levels than easy ones.



Ofcourse, i also owned different games for the NES, like Duck Hunt, that included 'a toy gun' called the NES Zapper, which was absolutely a revolutionary piece of technology at that time, it was the first 'advanced' accessoiry being utilized for attempting interaction between two seperate devices that were connected. It was uncomparable with keyboards/controllers, since this was actually a prop that required skill to master, the Zapper allowed players to aim at the television monitor and shoot various objects.
Although this game was not very child appropriate, it was hella fun.




The NES was released around the same period as the Commodore 64 although the Nintendo game console was far more superior in both the graphics and gameplay department. Nintendo was a fully developed gaming company that focused all their attention on delivering good quality games. Whereas playing games on the Commodore 64 was just a gimmick, something you could play besides other functions of the C64, although the technical specs and capabilities of both systems were approximately similar, Nintendo was releasing far superior games where C64 games remained one-dimensional, Nintendo was two-dimensional.


Even nowadays where graphics are gradually becoming more impressive with each released game, and different consoles are trying to overtake each other as the dominant player in the gaming industry, Super Mario Bros. is still considered one of the best video games of all time and the Nintendo as the best game console of all time.

And rightly so, it's simplicity in the gameplay did not take away from its sheer excitement and joy. Virtually everyone can play on the NES, even if you never have played a game before.

Maybe people are too nostalgic of nature, and desperately clinging on how things were 'better' in the past. The fact remains: The Nintendo was revolutionary, every single game console that is being released nowadays is basically 'the same' as the other. (Could you tell the technical difference between the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3?)

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My question for the day:
Did you own a NES, what memories do you have of it?