[EN] My NES Journey: Part I

WELCOME TO MY FIRST BLOG POST!

Originally, this was going to be short, but I realized afterward how long it has become, so I'll be doing parts of it until I finish it.

I'll be talking about my experience with the NES and how it opened the doors to the world of gaming for me, I hope you like it!.

A few days ago marked the 37th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. 3 and the 40th anniversary of the launch of the NES, and despite being an old console, it was the one that opened the doors to the world of video games for me.

I was only four years old at the time, and the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii were already on the market, but I knew practically nothing about them except for two things: That a friend of my brother's had a PlayStation 2, since my brother kept telling me how excited he was when he played Dragon Ball Z, a game where cars destroy each other with missiles, which turned out to be Twisted Metal, a game where you can do “whatever you want,” referring to GTA: San Andreas and Spider Man 2, and another, when he had 2 TV Plug & Play’s, two of them had two Sega Genesis games, one included FIFA 96 and NHL Hockey 95 and the other had Street Fighter II and Ghouls 'n Ghosts, and the last one was Spider-Man, which had a collection of mini-games.

Since those TV Plug & Play’s weren't mine, they wouldn't let me touch them at all.

And speaking more about Spider-Man 2, I remember that his friend came to our house very happy to show it to my brother when they had just bought it for him, and that, along with what my brother told me, made me really want to have a PlayStation 2 at home and ask for it many times for Christmas. Sadly, I couldn't go and play and hang out with them because I was still too young. I didn't even have the opportunity to see the console, but I wanted one at home because I was so curious to play those games.

What started as wanting a PlayStation 2 turned into something unexpected. One day my dad came home with a Nintendo NES and immediately connected it to the TV. Years later, he told me he got it very cheaply at a place he "doesn't remember," which is why he brought it home. I feel another factor was the nostalgia he felt for it, even though he grew up playing computer games and arcades in his teens.

I did some research on the NES on Google, and I'm pretty sure he bought the 1988 "Action Set" but without the box, because it contains exactly what I remembered: Two controllers, the Zapper gun, and the Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt combo cartridge.

He also bought a separate game that wasn't in the box, Super Mario Bros. 3.

It all started with that small gray brick-shaped controller that my dad gave me when he put in the combo cartridge and turned on the console, the rest is history.

My brother didn't seem very interested, but I was very fascinated to see what it was all about, so, Super Mario Bros. for NES was the first game I ever played, on a console from 40 years ago (which at that time, was 22), too many hours dedicated, and that was enough to make me fall in love with video games.

The game I do regret not playing much back then was Super Mario Bros. 3 because I didn't appreciate it much despite it being better than the first one in practically every way, but from then on, I was never disappointed to have an NES instead of a PlayStation 2.

The console met a sad end when my brother did the stupid thing of unplugging it to "paint" it black with liquid shoe polish, rendering it completely unusable. It was the only console we had at home, and we didn't get a new one until two long years later when we got a different console for Christmas.

Days after it happened, I learned what emulation was when my dad downloaded PlayStation 1 games on the family computer. That was my first experience with 3D games, and when I was seven years old, I rediscovered it with my brother when we downloaded a Super Nintendo games on the same computer.

Despite that, I wanted to play NES games one more time and I was starting to miss their simplicity, even though they were very outdated and obsolete…

That's the end of part one!

If you've made it this far, thank you so much for reading about my NES journey. I might do the same with other consoles and games. If you want to see more, subscribe to my blog; I'll be posting more things here.

PART TWO WILL BE PUBLISHED SOON!