Happy November everybody, or whenever you are reading this, welcome back to video game "firsts." A look back at all my memorable video game "first" moments. If you missed part 1, not to worry, you can read these in any order.
So without further delay lets get right into part 2
First: day one launch.One of my most memorable firsts was going to my first day one launch; It was for the brand spankin' new Nintendo 64. My brother and I, at the time, were hardcore Nintendo fans. We had the original NES, Gameboys, Super Nintendo, and a huge library of games for each system; We also had a subscription to Nintendo Power and Gamepro magazine. So when we started seeing ads for the NEW Nintendo 64 we damn near had a seizure due to awesome overload. However there was one thing holding us back from those 64 bits of glory...the price tag. At well over 200 dollars (U.S.D) my bro and I knew our parents would never buy it for us and our mini banks did not nearly have enough (side note: I had an awesome street fighter 2 arcade cabinet coin bank at the time...sigh...I still miss it to this day).
So, broken hearted and downtrodden, my brother and I sulked to our SNES and played killer instinct for a couple of hours. Later that night my father came home and with him was some kind of small newspaper;
It was one of the funcoland pricing guide newspapers. My dad suggested that instead of buying the N64 we should get some of our old games that we weren't playing and trade them in for an N64. Immediately we dug through our bins of old cartridges and grabbed all our duplicates and crappy games that we got at flea markets and garage sales. Remember that this was before Funcoland was bought out by Gamestop, so games were priced fairly and the trade in value was relatively high for most games new and old. So day one of the N64 launch my brother and I waited in line with a crate of mixed games from different consoles and had just enough money to get the system, Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64.
When we got home we turned on the TV, plugged in our brand new console and had our childhood minds blown away by 64 bits of goodness. The graphics were amazing, the sound was almost like real life and the gameplay was just as addicting as I would expect from Nintendo. Having paid for it with our weight in gold (or video games so to speak) just made everything all the more sweeter. A great moment in my gaming life that I will never forget. We miss you funcoland...please come back to us.
First: cheat code
Do you remember your first cheat code? Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, start? Of course you thought the konami code who wouldn't? But for me it was a little bit different. Back in the 80's and 90's I was an avid gamer, what with my nes, master system, atari and colecovision; yeah thats right I had a coleco wassup?!
(BTW: Can you guess all the games here?)
So at the time I didn't really know that there were cheat codes built into the video games; I knew of Game Genie, but that was a device not built into the game it was just a way to modify it. Sure kids on the playground would say that there's a way to jump over the flagpole on mario or that you could get a gun in pitfall if you get a certain amount of points. Now I really paid no mind to these so called "In Game Secrets" cause I thought that when you got the game that was it, but all that would change when I got a certain system with a certain blue hedgehog. One day, after school, my older bro and I decided to play some sonic before we started our homework, but of course my bro just had to get a snack just as I started the system. Sigh! So being the younger brother I had to wait, with the game on, until he showed up. Being the impatient guy that I was, I decided to play around with the controller and started pressing buttons randomly in time with the music. However, unexpectedly, I heard a chime sound and in my disracted mindset accidentally pressed start while holding A and got the surprise of my young life.
I know it sounds a little farfetched, but its true; I had done the stage select code without even knowing it. I of course panicked, thinking that I had broke the game, and hit the reset button on my sega. When my bro finally showed up I tried to tell him what happened, however he thought I was making it up and trying to hide the fact that I had started playing without him. I tried to show him what I did but could not figure out how I did it. It would be many years until I learned how to officially do it, but the memory of that accidental miracle had left a permanent mark on my gaming life.
First: fatalityThis is one of my favorite memories. My famly and I were at round table pizza and had just ordered our pizza's and drinks, when my dad gave my older brother and I two dollars each to play some vidogames in the back of the pizzeria. There was a Street Fighter 2,
a pinball machine
and Mortal Kombat...the original.
After throwing out some hadokens and sonic booms, we couldn't help but notice a couple of guys getting really into this so called Mortal Kombat game. We casually peeked in on their match when suddenly we saw it... The fatality! We had never seen this before! Up till then we had always assumed that after you beat up the guy that was it, maybe he went home and got a coffee I don't know, but definitely not get murdered! That day we saw kano's heart rip fatality, scorpions fire breath fatality and sub zeros infamous spinal rip fatality. Forget Street Fighter, this game had bloods and lots of it! After they left we finally got a chance to try it out and we were hooked. My brother was, of course, the better player; he mastered almost everyones move set within a few matches, except sonya's and kano's. He especially loved raiden's flying attack.
what is he saying?
Naturally I was getting my butt kicked until I learned scorpions spear and teleport techniques. Oh man you should have seen his face when I started spamming the spear attack with an uppercut in tow. Hey if he wants to spam raidens flying attack then so can I with scorpion! There was one thing we could not figure out however...the fatalities. We tried button mashing, rotating the joystick, pushing the start button really fast...you name it we tried it. So this one fight I whoop my brother with scorpion (I crouched and kept sweeping him hee hee hee) and just started wiggling the joystick up and down while pressing the block button over and over until...
success!
The look on my brothers face of shock and awe from seeing his character reduced to a burnt skeleton, was priceless. Of course that is the easiest fatality in MK 1, but for some kid to accidentally find it while fooling around is quite a feat. Over the years I slowly learned all the fatalities to every MK game. Remember the internet was not as common as it is now, so I had to learn these moves from better players, magazines and friends who knew people who knew how to do them. As amazing as the fatalities are nowadays, Scorpions fire breath will always have a special place in my heart as my favorite and FIRST.
So that's part two for ya folks, sorry it wasn't as long as the last one, but don't you worry there's lots more video game FIRSTS on the way. So as always comment, rate and tell me some of your video game FIRSTS.
Beware there's a storm coming...
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