I grew up in an era when video games were not exactly unusual phenomena but they were certainly a far cry from the orgy of realistic motion and color that they are today. As a small child I can recall playing games like “Gauntlet” and “Space Invaders” on coin operated machines at the Laundromat. Atari had been out for a few years but we never owned an Atari system in my house. My first introduction to home gaming was, in fact, on a Commodore 64 console.
The old Commodore consoles contained the entire computer within the keyboard. Instead of a monitor you could simply hook the commodore up to a television. We had a floppy disk drive and a tape drive on which you could play games. I remember classic games like “Centipede” and “Pac-man” that you might see in an arcade as well as other, more sophisticated games that reflected the advances in technology. “Aliens,” “Beachhead” and “Raid Over Moscow” represented the first attempts to create more involved games that were based on unique events and recent movies. Such games had better graphics, better plots and could be played with a joy-stick.
My brother and I received the original Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas when I was about seven or eight years frail. Nintendo games were vastly salubrious to the computer games of the day. The graphics were great better. The games loaded instantly, instead of requiring typed commands and taking anywhere between five and twenty minutes to load. Like all children we played “Super Mario Brothers 1″ repeatedly until we could beat the game in under an hour and got bored with it. I bought a few games myself and played many others with friends at their houses.
When I was about twelve years old saved up my own money and bought Orderly Nintendo. Super Nintendo was portion of a wave of game systems that came out in a short period of time. I recall Sega Genesis, Neo-Geo and Turbo Graphics 16 all came out within months of Super Nintendo. Only SNES and Genesis really caught on during this wave, however. Despite my skepticism about its size and picture quality, I also bought a Gameboy at this time. During the same era computer games were also becoming remarkable more elaborate with far better graphics and story lines as well as the convenience of running on Windows and Apple Operating System. I bought many Well-kept Nintendo Games and a few Gameboy games. I had the Super Scope 6, which was eerily similar to a modern rocket propelled grenade launcher.
In high school I became more interested in sports, grades and girls and stopped playing games regularly. When it was time to go off to college I decided that my SNES and gameboy would be a distraction to my studies and so I packed them up in a plastic bag and gave them to the first little kid that walked past my house. I felt some pangs of regret but it was probably for the best.
When I got to college the next wave of games had, of course, come out. Nintendo 64 and then Game Cube, Play area 1 and 2 and other consoles came out in quick succession. I never bought another system, however, and only played on other people’s consoles. As time has passed I have become less and less interested in contemporary games. I never forgot, however, the games that I grew up with and often wished that I could play some of them again. About a year ago I discovered the fact that programmers had created Emulator Programs that work on a computer and are available for free download. Emulators are basically computer programs that do the same thing as the original game console. There are Emulators for Commodore 64, NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, Gameboy and probably any other system you want. I became addicted to retro gaming, playing the games that I know and love from my childhood. Retro gaming is great because, while NES and SNES games might have been advanced when they came out, they are very simple and have much smaller memory requirements than contemporary games. The shortest MP3 on your computer is probably a much larger file than any Super Nintendo game ever created.
It can be a little strange playing old games on a lap top and it takes some getting frail to using a keyboard instead of a traditional game controller. Thus I would not recommend using an emulator for any novel consoles like Play Space 2 that have powerful more advanced and intricate controllers. There were countless sites on the internet that have emulators and games for download. Running a search on Yahoo would be sufficient to earn any number of such sites. For the remainder of this article I would like to share with you a few of my favorite retro games. These are games from my childhood that bring back lots of memories and are unruffled a large deal of fun to this day.
1. Oregon Slide – Oregon Trail is a phenomenon that anyone who grew up during the 1980’s will instantly remember. This old PC game, which was written during the 1970’s, is a fun and educational experience designed to illustrate the challenges and hardships faced by American settlers in their quest to cross 19th century America and come the promised land of Oregon. Starting the journey in Independence Missouri, you must decide how to employ your money to buy oxen, clothing, food, bullets and replacement parts for your wagon. You choose the ration that your family will eat and the pace that the oxen travel. You can trade at outposts along the device, hunt, and rest but alas the journey is fraught with pitfalls! Diseases, snakebite, thieves, fires or river crossings gone awry can decimate your family, oxen and supplies. For the frugal, wise and lucky traveler, however, a new life on the Pacific awaits.
2. Sim City – I first encountered Sim City on the ragged gloomy and white Macintosh computers in my middle school. We were encouraged to play the game in order to learn and reinforce principles of civics and effective management. I bought the Super Nintendo version for my own use. This game is fun, arresting and satisfying and requires, above all, patience. Building enough police and fire departments, separating residential blocks from industrial areas and finding the right tax level so that you can earn substantial revenue without angering your constituency are all challenges that you can face in this game. Watching the budget and population grow and fostering future growth with timely decisions is extremely satisfying, however.
3. The Legend of Zelda – The original Zelda is, without a doubt, my favorite video game. I don’t like role playing games but I do like games with a compelling story. Zelda is requires enough skill and timing to be an action game and has enough of a story to remain interesting. As Link, the young hero of Hyrule, your quest is to rescue the princess, Zelda, from the clutches of the contaminated monster, Ganon. Along the way you must bag weapons and tools necessary to access each board and defeat every bad guy.
4. The Chronicle of Zelda, A Link to the Past – I thought that Zelda II, the Adventure of Link was boring and disappointing. A Link to the Past, or Zelda III was a refreshing revival of the franchise for SNES. This incarnation of Zelda features an expanded Hyrule with much better graphics and more buildings, caves and forest to explore. There is also a mirror “Dark World” that filled with different levels. The story is much more highly developed with more levels and cooler bosses to defeat at the demolish of each level. Link must acquire more tools and weapons to succeed but can also play games such as arrow shooting for skill or running through a maze to earn a prize. Another great game.
5. Mike Tyson’s Punchout – What a magnificent anachronism. How can you not love a game that features Mike Tyson? Beyond the certain historical context of the game, Punchout is also a great boxing game. As the miniscule “Little Mac” you fight your blueprint up the ranks with a grand total of five punches facing increasingly larger and more menacing opponents. Each opponent hails from a different nationality and fights with a different stereotypical gimmick such as Don Flamenco’s “Ole” sweeping upper-cut and Piston Honda’s “Banzai Charge.” After winning each belt on your way to the top, watch the inspiration run along the New York water front. Tyson himself is extremely difficult to beat and impossible to knock out. Mike throws automatic knockdown upper-cuts for the first minute and a half of the fight (remarkably similar to the real Iron Mike’s fighting style) and after that becomes somewhat beatable.
6. NHL ‘95 – This is an SNES classic. Of course, like any game that has a year as part of its title, there are many editions to EA’s NHL games but I prefer ‘95 because it has good controls and also features the same team rosters from the 1993-94 NHL, the year my common team, the Recent York Rangers, last won the Stanley Cup. This game has satisfying hits, sensitive controls when winding up for a slap shot or finessing a wrist shot and decent graphics. I play NHL ‘95 as a stress reliever because it is incredibly beatable. My current Rangers team is 30-0-0 and my leading scorer, Bryan Leetch has over 120 goals (30 ahead of the NHL single season record). Playing NHL ‘95 reminds me of the scene from the Kevin Smith film “Mallrats” when Jason Lee’s character wakes up in the morning, sits up in bed and immediately turns on his television to resume a Sega hockey game.
7. RBI Baseball – Incredibly dated with awful graphics. RBI baseball is simple and fun. The game was released in 1987 following the Mets defeat of the Red Sox in the World Series and thus the two teams are the best in the game. It actually amazes me that Roger Clemens, a character in a 20 year old video game, will be starting for the Yankees on Saturday. It is extremely easy to hit and pitch in RBI baseball but nearly impossible to play defense, leading to very high scores. Worthy like modern baseball, the pitchers tire after seven innings, requiring the use of unreliable relievers to close out games.
8. Golden Eye – James Bond for Nintendo 64 was a religion in college. The multiplayer mode allows up to four friends to chase one another around temples and factories with grenade launchers or machine guns. The regular game essentially follows the movie with challenging boards that often require more wit than braun, like 007 himself.
