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> Garett's Gaming Past
ARTICLE - I probably have a different video game past than most gaming... yeah, I think I count as a gaming veteran. I've always been true to Nintendo, since they've served me some good game meals since I was in about Preschool, but I still never owned that many systems until recently. That's all this article is about. Nothing special, just my gaming past. Hopefully it will catch a few of your eyes. It started probably about when I was in Preschool and my brother was in Grade 1. It could have happened when I wasn't in Preschool and my brother was in Kindergarten, but who gives a shit? I was living in a little town called Osoyoos in the Okanagan Valley of B.C. We had went a few times to visit a friend of my dad's in Vancouver. He seemed pretty old to me and my brother at the time, but he loved computer games. He was always showing us new games, and then, one day, he pulled on the... Famicon/Nintendo Entertainment System. It didn't take long until my brother and I were hooked. We played Mario Bros. for hours, even though we both sucked. As young as I was, I didn't fully understand the controls, but I knew what I liked, and this Nintendo was that. So, after hours of asking our parents when we got back, we finally got our own NES. I don't know if it was for Christmas or just a gift, but that doesn't really effect the story. So we played and played. We bought quite a few fun games along the way. We bought a few cheap or used games, but the only one I remember now (other than Mario 3, which will be explained below), was Star Tropics. I must have played that almost every day. We rented games alot, too, but it was kind of funny. We NEVER rented new games. Our video store was small enough that we hardly got any new ones either way, but it was still pretty funny that we always rented the same two or three. The main two I remember us always renting were Yo Noid! and Chip N' Dale. Yo Noid! was a funny game where you controlled Noid, the guy in a red, rabbit suit that was the mascot for Domini's Pizza. You can use special "powers" and attack with your Yo-Yo. The whole game was about, of course, pizza, but also about tracking down some guy that looks just like you, with a green suit. It's wierd, but actually really fun. Chip N' Dale is a simple but fun sidescroller with a few puzzle elements where you can control Chip (surprise, surprise) and... Dale! Both of the games were really fun, but it was still funny that we only rented those and maybe another one or two. But, really, that's all we needed. Some kids moved in down the street that we didn't really like, but they lent us NES games every once in a while, so we were nice to them, and we got to borrow Megaman 2 lots of times, so it actually worked out pretty good. When we went over to our actual friend's houses, we got a chance to play other games like Mario Bros. 2 and other popular games, and I think that's all we needed. The Wizard came out in theatres. It was a great movie, and if you don't remember or even worse, haven't seen it, I'll explain. It was about a kid who was amazing at video games, and could beat anyone. In the end, he even played against a guy with a "Powerglove". Anyways, in this movie, the kid played, and won a copy of, Super Mario Bros. 3! Now this was really cool, especially since the game wasn't out until 2 months AFTER the movie. After seeing the Wizard lots of times, my brother was extremely stoked for Mario Bros. 3. He asked my parents constantly, always reminding them, always making sure they knew. And then came his birthday, and he got it. He was ecstatic. We played it and played it hundreds of times. My brother was alot better than me, but I still loved playing the game. My cousin, Mark, would come over and we'd play it all the time, constantly yelling "Pee Wing!" It was a great game, and still one of my very favourites, especially on the NES. Then it happened. I asked my parents for a Game Boy all the time, until they finally said, "Ok". They took me to the store, and I, unfortunately, fell into the marketing ploy of the Sega Game Gear. The system was colour. It was horizontal. It was, or atleast we thought at the time, great. So we took it on our trip to Ontario. We went to Cornwall and Kingston and visited our relatives. When we went to Mark's house. He had a SNES with a huge game library. We immediately fell in love with Mario World, but even more so, Donkey Kong Country! The game had just come out and the graphics were amazing. We also found out about Nintendo Power, and of course, RPGs! I didn't quite get RPGs at the time, I was still pretty young, probably about Gr. 1 now, but I thought what I saw was cool. So, we went back to Osoyoos. By this time, we had got a battery pack for our Game Gear. When we got home, it lasted maybe a week or two. Then it stopped working. At first we thought it was the battery pack, but then we realised it was the Game Gear itself. The piece of crap hardly handled a month. Never again (unless of course, I get my hands on Shining Force...). Time went by and soon it was the summer going on to Grade 3, and we were just about to move to Kingston! I wasn't really excited at the time, of course, I loved Osoyoos, but it all worked out good. But, there was one horrible thing. Brendan was going into Grade 6, and I admired him at the time as a "big kid". But, and no offense to Brendan, but Grade 6 still isn't smart enough to know when you're getting a bad deal. So, he sold the NES and all to someone for $20. I never really thought about it, and we just went on our way. Sooner then we knew it, we were in Kingston. Once we moved in, I was having gaming withdrawals, but I still didn't get a system. We just went to school and devoted our lives to anything else we could think of at the time. We went over to Cornwall to visit my grandma and my cousins quite a bit, which was pretty cool. I started playing RPGs at my cousins constantly. At one house, there was my cousin Robbie, who had a Nintendo. I played Faxandu and Zelda II: Adventure of Link (not to mention Ski or Die!) all the time. I started to really like them. Then, there was Mark, who had a Super Nintendo. I fell in love with Earthbound and Super Mario RPG. I played Chrono Trigger too, but I don't think it was at Mark's, and I can't remember where. But I liked it. I loved RPGs. The next summer, Nintendo 64 came out. My brother had actually been saving his money for a while, and he had about $350-400 in the bank. One day, he got my mom to get out enough to buy a SNES from his bank account and we went to the store to buy it. But when he went in, Mario 64 was on display! We played it and couldn't believe our eyes. You could jump in the water and swim. You could wander carelessly. You could jump into paintings. It was 3-D!! So, the next day, Brendan got out enough (the N64 was $300, and came to $360, but my mom payed the $60 tax for her) and he bought the system. Heartbroken that it didn't come with a game (Nintendo, those bastards), I had to dish out my only $100 and buy Mario 64. But we had alot of fun with the game, and started to rent lots. We rented games like we'd never rented before. We got a few games, like Star Wars: Shadows of The Empire but we just liked renting. Sooner or later, a few of my friends bought the system, which was good, considering everyone seemed to have a Playstation. We traded and talked about games, and I had a lot of fun. Now being in Grade 4, I was a little older, and I actually understood the games. I was pretty good for my age, but not amazing. So we just keep buying and playing games. Then it was the summer between Grades 4 and 5. My brother bought a Game Boy with Mario Land off his friend who was going out to buy a Game Boy Pocket. So, when I found out Brendan's other friend was selling a Game Boy, I eagerly went for it and payed $20. I had a lot of fun with it, and I even payed the $70 (which I think was way too much for a Game Boy game) for the Game Boy Camera and my brother bought Zelda: Link's Awakening. Then, I went to a near store called Nomax. It was a pretty bad store, but they had some cheap GB games, so I got a few. The only ones I can remember now are Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Land 3 and Final Fantasy Legends. I played Final Fantasy like no tommorrow, the whole RPG element seemed awesome to me. I was starting crave RPGs and strong adventures like Zelda. But, I was still young, and I still had my cartoony side. I bought some N64 games like Diddy Kong Racing and Banjo-Kazooie, but my heart was still into RPGs. I waited and waited for more N64 RPGs to come out, but they never came. By this time, I was getting impatient. I searched for Game Boy RPGs, but could never find any. This was crazy, there was no RPGs to be found. I played some Playstation RPGs like Final Fantasy 7, but I never really got a huge chance to play them. All my best friends now had N64. So I fell into the trap. I started to forget RPGs. I started to think my favourite types of games were first person shooters like Golden Eye. But then came The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It really snapped me back into place. I started to remember RPGs. Then, Brendan went out and bought a Nintendo. He got Mario Bros. 1 and 3, Star Tropics, Faxandu, Arkista's Ring, Bases Loaded, Hogan's Alley, and Dragon Warrior. I got a SNES Emulator on the computer called ZSNES, and I really got in to Chrono Trigger. Brendan really got in to Earthbound. I played CT, and beat it, twice. Brendan beat Earthbound. After that, I knew we had to get a SNES. I started searching around, asking friends if they wanted to sell their's. No one wanted to, or their price was too high. So, I ended up going back to Nomax. I bought a SNES with Mario World and a Super Game Boy. Brendan bought Mario Paint at Nomax, but then, the coolest thing happened. Not even having to search for it, Brendan found out that one of his friends had Earthbound, but no SNES. So, after a little convincing, he bought it off him. Brendan's friend then gave him Zelda: A Link to The Past, and his other friend gave him Earthworm Jim 2. I searched everywhere for Chrono Trigger, but couldn't find it anywhere, except on Ebay, which it cost way too much. But one of these days I'll get my hands on one. I even saw it at a store a while ago for $150. If only I had that kind of money lying around. If you have it, and would like to sell it to me, please feel free. PLEASE. Send an email to garettbarr@hotmail.com and I'll answer it right away. Thanks! In Grade 6 I started to really get into Game Boy. That was probably started alot because of the Pokémon games. I bought the blue version early that year, and started to play it nonstop. I still loved RPGs so I kept playing them constantly. When Christmas rolled around, I was happy to get a Game Boy Colour in my stocking. I hadn't got a Game Boy Pocket yet, so I had still been lugging around the jumbo, grey box, so I was glad to get something more compact. I played Pokémon on that still for quite a while, and for my birthday I got my first GBC game, Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX. I was extremely surprised by the colour and I immediately loved the game and all of the other GBC games. Because hey... colour! So I started to get lots of different GBC games. I got Crystalis, Worms Armageddon, Pokémon Pinball (played once, now sold, still ashamed), and even Donkey Kong Country. So I loved my GBC, and I took it everywhere for quite a while. Then it happened. I had been starting to go to Pocket.ign.com quite a bit, and one day I saw it: Game Boy Advance. Well, I didn't actually see the system, but I read a bit about it, and saw screenshots of, was that Mario Kart? I immediately knew I would love the system, especially since it looked so much like Super Nintendo. I started to indulge every bit of news I could get about it. As Space World and E3 rolled by, I saw more and more games. Mario Advance, Napoleon, Game Boy Wars Advance and more. Finally, as 2001 rolled by slowly, it came. I hardly had enough money to just buy the system. I bought that, and then started the trade. I traded my GBC with Harvest Moon GB (the original one) and Worms Armageddon for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. When looking through my friend's IGN less than a week after, I found an advertisement saying I could trade in four GB/GBC games for a GBA game. I thought this was pretty good, so I grabbed three games, (Kirby's Dreamland 2, Pokémon Pinball, and I forget the last one) and I bought an old $8 football game at Nomax and traded them in for Super Mario Advance. So, that's how I ended up with a GBA and two games. That's about up to this point. I'm patiently awaiting Super Street Fighter II: Turbo Revival. I hope you enjoyed that quick article of my gaming life up to now. I know that this is probably really bad grammar, but I suck at writing those recap kind of things. It probably sounded way too technical and didn't make perfect sense. But that's okay, it's my life, and I'm the one who lived it. Ha! You bastard, trying to steal my life. Stay tune for more articles by me in the future.
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