Random Gaming Memories

[Leo656]

The latest AVGN episode has me in a fairly nostalgic mood, and the part where he describes frantically trying to beat Contra before the school bus came had me thinking back to times where I had almost the same experience (our town was only one square mile or so, so there was no buses for the elementary school; your parents drove you or if you were most kids you walked).

Specifically, it reminded me of the time I was in 8th Grade, either couldn't sleep or woke up early (I had awful insomnia until I started smoking pot in my 20s, then it cleared up immediately), and decided that That Morning was the time I was finally gonna buckle down and beat Bill & Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure (NES). That's a terrible game, but we kids were less savvy back then. So I grabbed one of my NES guidebooks that had a map showing you where all the Historical Items were - it was misprinted, though, so I still had to essentially "do it all myself" and write my own corrections in the margins, but at least I wasn't flying completely blind; that game is 100% unbeatable without a guide - and got to work. Suffice to say, it was far from my favorite gaming experience, but there was still a deep satisfaction in finally seeing the ending to a game that had been the bane of my existence for so many years. Seeing Bill and Ted rock out at the concert was good enough for me to justify all the time wasted on such a lame game, and it sent me to school in a great mood.

And as James alluded to in his anecdote about selling his original copy of Contra for a sandwich, beating Bill & Ted on NES is the ONLY thing I remember at all about that day, aside from having walked to school. I don't remember if it was snowing or sunny, Fall or Spring, if my Mom still lived with us or anything. I remember absolutely nothing about the school day or what I did when I got home. ALL I remember was that it was the day I finally beat that game. He really isn't kidding that some moments really become part of who you are while others just slip away, lost in the ether.

I have a ton of awesome (and less awesome) gaming memories, far too many to list in one shot.

One of my earliest-ever vivid memories is bonding with my Dad over the Atari 2600 version of Frogger and Donkey Kong. I wouldn't have been older then 3. I remember him saying Donkey Kong might be "too hard" for me, but very soon I got better at it than he was. For a while those were the only games we had, until we got Ghostbusters. And then shortly after that one of his friends gave him a whole big box of Atari games and joysticks just to be rid of them; this would have been in the time between The Crash and the NES saving the industry, so a lot of people figured games were "done" and were either throwing out or giving away their stuff, so we really lucked out in that. Tons of great games in that collection, really awesome memories.

I didn't actually have a 2600 before that; we had the much sexier Coleco-Vision with the 2600 add-on module. A "regular" 2600 with the wood-grain finish was in the box of stuff my Dad got from his friend, but it didn't work right. There were a ton of third-party joysticks that were much better than the standard tiny Atari sticks, though. I wore them out but they were awesome.

My Dad wasn't actually much for video games - "Too complicated", he said - but he always thought they were neat and he could play really simple ones. We spent a ton of time on Atari Pinball, Baseball, Football, and that kind of stuff. Obviously they look awful to anyone who's younger than me but at the time they were pretty special. My Dad and I didn't have a ton in common either so anything and everything that could help us spend time together really meant a lot to me. I still remember the first time I ever got a higher score than him on Atari Pinball; he had this visible and odd mix of pride and disappointment. That might have been the last time we played any game together, come to think of it.

Starting in 1988, my sister and my cousin would spend every Summer vacation and Christmas break at our house until we moved in 1995. They were both 8 years older than me, so again, one of the few things we had in common was video games. They weren't anywhere near as into it as I was, but we still spent almost every night playing various Atari games (mostly Megamania, I remember we all loved that one to death) or Super Mario Bros. on NES. We'd stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning playing those games sometimes.

Christmas 1992 was incredibly special, as I got the SNES (and Game Genie). That whole vacation, my sister, my cousin and I took turns playing the absolute hell out of Super Mario World, finding almost every possible secret. I managed to find (and conquer) the Star Road before either of them did so that was a huge point of pride. We rarely turned it off; we'd leave it on pause to go eat, then come right back to it. Again, that was pretty much the very last game with which we ever had that kind of an experience together, but that week still sticks out in my memory when lots of other things about that Christmas break are just a blur.

I could drop a million more anecdotes, and I'll inevitably do more later. What are some of your favorite and/or most vivid gaming memories, either from childhood or more recently?