Dear Original Nintendo,
It's been awhile, so I should probably formally address you as Nintendo Entertainment System, but to me you will always be simply Nintendo. As a child of the early 80's, I remember hearing your name for the first time at my rich Jewish friends' house. It was radical, foreign and fun to say. You sounded like something invented in outer space by people from the future, possibly involving large rubber bands. His rich Jewish older brother wouldn't let us in his room to play, so you remained a distant mystery.
Then you came into my life on December 25, 1986. Various Christmas mornings of my childhood all blend together in a haze of die-cast toys that are just now starting to become nostalgic and ironic. But once I laid eyes on that perfectly square, wrapped box, I knew it was you in the same way that a husband returning from war knows the faceless woman approaching in a rainstorm from far across the street is the love of his life.
Your rigid casing and Soviet cold-war-era color palette belied the power that lay hidden inside, ready to be unleashed in the form of Gyromite or Duck Hunt. Despite your hunk-of-concrete design and myriad cords (nowadays things are wireless!) you integrated perfectly into our bustling family multimedia center, which consisted of a wooden-cased television and a black plastic VCR that featured an endlessly blinking pale green digital clock that had never been set to any time other than 12:00am in the six years we owned it.
You turned my world upside down. There were two fucking buttons on your controllers! A and B!
You were also low maintenance and required the mastery of one simple troubleshooting process: forcefully blowing gulps of air into the game cartridge or console resolved all hardware and software issues. I once left you running for three days straight just to beat Ikari Warriors, pausing you at night with the television off and waking up early to sneak in a few levels before the bus came.
Sadly, as the years passed you quickly and unwittingly became obsolete. Technology started accelerating and your rear-view mirror filled with the likes of Sega Genesis and Turbo Grafix 16. Personally Sonic the Hedgehog was probably the last nail in your coffin, but we had so many great memories. Remember when I missed a week of school with lice and we beat Zelda? I seriously cried with joy.
You changed my life, Original Nintendo. In today's world of wi-fi, iPads and Androids, you seem like a distant relic in the same way we used to examine an antique telegraph machine, or an old-fashioned rotary telephone from the 1920's. Was it really that long ago? Are we really that old?
Yes, original Nintendo. Yes, we are.
Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Select Start,
Jose Brando
No comments:
Post a Comment