With the upcoming demise of Nintendo Power magazine, I have been swept up in a wave of video game nostalgia, breaking out some of my old N64 games and playing myself a little blocky Donkey Kong and Mario Kart goodness. My daughter is fascinated by the fact that Super Mario Brothers 3 is playable on our Wii, but hasn’t got the patience to play through the levels, instead cycling the first two worlds over and over because she has the threats mostly memorized. Either way, we’ve found some nice cheap entertainment in old-school games, even though she is bother by (in her words) “the much lower polygon count” of the 64. Yes, I am proud, thanks for asking…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) is sorry that your princess is in another castle, asking:
What is your favorite “old-school” gaming experience? (Imaginary bonus points will be allotted for 8-bit games.)
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$150 worth of quarters (50-cents at a time) dumped into Dragon’s Lair during a six hour stint of boredom in 1983.
It’s a tie for me between old school Mega Man 2, Contra and Super C.
Mega man just had those imaginary levels with all those great bosses and the Contra games, well just had such replay ability even with the Konami code. But after finally beating it, I wanted to go through the games without it and after some time, I did.
Even though I was a Sega/Genesis man, one of my all-time favourite games was Super metroid. Ironically enough, I’m currently playing it, via an emulator, on my PSP.
One of my very first memories is of me sitting on my babysitter’s lap as she sat on the couch and played Duck Hunt for hours. Seriously, this girl was amazing at Duck Hunt.
Another great memory is the first time I played through Super Mario Bros. 2 by myself. I don’t care what anyone says, that game was great.
I played a NES game called 3D World Runner. It defied the Nintendo status quo by having mushrooms kill you and was notable for it’s 3D being horrible. That said, the music will randomly pop into my head more than any other game from that era. That’s right, more than Zelda, Mario or Tetris, my musical video game happy place goes back to a game that nobody else may remember.
The oldest games I still play are the original Starcraft and the Baldur’s Gate games.
My most recent nostalgic moment came from playing the game 3D Dot Heroes as it was an 8-Bit/3-D experience that reminded me of the days of playing Zelda – A link to the Past for the super nintendo as a kid.
Since then I went back to play every Zelda game in existance.
My first gaming experience was “Dig Dug” on my Apple ][. That game as addictive. It has the ‘Hi-res’ graphics. All 8 bits of them.
The other memorable game was a very primitive version of Sub Hunt with the low resolution graphics (4 bit).
Looking back at these games, they are primitive now, but totally amazing at the time.
I still enjoy a good round of Mega man 2 now and again.
I also actively seek out bands that do covers of the Mega Man 2 level themes.
I loved Metroid, and played it a lot. One day I decided to start a fresh game, and managed to beat the game without once dying. That was pretty epic, and gave me some bragging rights among my buddies.
I still put in a good round of Castlevania 1 and 3 now and then. I ran through all of the Mega Man and Mega Man X games recently and have been burned out on them a bit. I’m also very partial to Link’s Awakening on the Gameboy
Loved Star Fox 64. Had to be my favorite game for Nintendo 64. Another one of my favorites was Sol-Feace for Sega CD.
Good call on that one. I put a lot of hours into it. Also, “Do a barrel roll!”
One weekend, my parents were kind enough to take us to the local Blockbuster and rent a Sega Genesis for a couple of days. We rented the most popular game at the time: Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
My older brother and I played that game nonstop all weekend. Being an older brother, he always made me play as tails, but I didn’t mind (much.)
Come Monday morning, we were up early and raced through our getting-ready-for-school-routine so we could play a little Sonic before school. Both our parents had to work that day, so we were reminded not to be late for the bus which came in about an hour.
We had the greatest run we’d ever had. Level after level, we worked our way through, crushing baddies, until we reached the FINAL BOSS. We lost, but it was still amazing! Until we looked at the clock and saw that it was 11:00. Mom had to come home from work, pick us up, and explain to the school why we’d missed half a day. We were grounded for a week, and didn’t have any video games in the house for the next year.
Worth it.
Working through Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max: Hit The Road without an internet walkthrough. It was damn tough, but oh so worth it.
Chrono Trigger for the SNES; it’s still the gold standard for a console RPG in my eyes, mixing an intriguing story & likable characters with enough freedom to explore time & space all you want instead of being derailed by pointless cutscenes or tiresome story points that block off your exploration. Runner up would be Streets of Rage 2 for the Genesis, the only “fighting” game my mother would willingly play; it was mindless but it was fun & dang, did it have a great soundtrack.
Playing Tecmo Bowl with my brother on NES. I still curse the Montana to Rice connection to this day.
The various Zelda titles. My first gaming system was an old school game boy, the Gray Brick style, and I had only a few games that I recall. Of them, I best remember the Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. That and Megaman 2 were my introductions to gaming.
I still like to power thru X-Men 2 on Genesis as Nightcrawler. Except the levels where Psylocke or Magneto can destroy the boss in two or one hit, respectively.
Sierra’s Space Quest III on a friend’s IBM PC with slow-fading green-monochrome monitor. I’d played text adventures for a while up until then, but interacting with a graphical world was incredible! Even if I couldn’t tell what any given collection of pixels was supposed to be…
I still load up Super Mario Brothers on the Wii once in a while–it’s kind of my gaming zen. I went to an old-school amusement park in western New York last week, and it had the arcade version of the game. For some reason, controlling Mario with a joystick (as opposed to the NES gamepad) was next to impossible–the slight differences in the maps and item locations didn’t help.
I have lots of fond memories of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game on the NES. That was an amazing game.
My two would prolly have to be Legend of Zelda and Shining in the Darkness.
Shining was the first game I ever played and LoZ still has some of the hardest puzzles I’ve ever found in a game.
Super Mario Brothers 3, Chrono Trigger, the old Atari Ghostbusters game and the old NES Final Fantasy titles.
excitebike, kung fu, and maniac mansion. on atari, kaboom and advent.
Looking everywhere for a copy of Harvest Moon on the SNES. And finally finding one a month later at a Toys R’ Us near my uncles.
My sense of gaming is really off as I didn’t game much until college and then made up for lost time by playing whatever people let me borrow past and present. That said I do remember playing Zelda: Links Awakening at a cousins when I was younger and enjoying it.
Venger, Super Breakout & Pitfall for the Atari 2600.
Mario Brothers on the Atari 5200 ( My Cousins)
Metroid, Castlevania and Rygar for the NES.