Part Two: The Super Years
I remember being told to sit down in the kitchen one Christmas by my parents. All I wanted that year was a Super Nintendo. I don't remember what year it was, but the system wasn't brand new or anything. Anyway, I had already opened all my presents from "Santa" and there was no SNES to be found. But my parents had news for me. Apparently my cool Uncle (same uncle who got me a video game for my Communion present) was going to get one for me. But he didn't have it just yet. That was fine. I waited excitedly for my Super Nintendo to arrive, and when it did I set it up myself. My parents were very impressed. Nothing was about to stand between me and my new system.
I had played a little SNES at friend's houses and the one game I always played was Super Mario World. Well my bundle came with a game titled Super Mario All Stars. Included on the cartridge was Super Mario World, Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, and 3. And The Lost Levels, or the real Super Mario Bros. 2. I thought it was great to have all those Mario games in one place. Once again it seemed Mario would be the dominant game series for this console, but a new kid was coming to town.
But I had Super Mario World now, and that was what I played. I thought it was a great game and I still do. Yoshi quickly won me over. I liked to take him with me wherever I went. Yoshi, unfortunately, did not feel the same way, because he didn't care to join me in the haunted houses or the fortresses. Even after I fed him all those berries. Ungrateful dinosaur. I remember I was almost to the end when my cousin came over one day and somehow my save got erased. I still don't know quite what happened with that, but I was pissed. I remember saying something like, "Well I better start playing now! I want to get to the Forest of Illusion by tonight!" That's something only a nerd child would say.
This was the first game where I really wanted to do EVERYTHING. I was determined to beat all the Star World levels and find all the Star World entrances. I found all the secret exits for all the red levels. Some gave me more trouble than others. I remember finding out how to actually get to the secret exit for the Butter Bridge level drove me nuts. The first time I tackled the Special levels that had all the total 90's expression names (Tubular! Awesome!) I found them all really hard. I especially remember being frustrated by Tubular. In that level you basically had to float the whole time using those p-balloons, and of course there were tons of enemies and other stuff in the way. I felt like I played that level hundreds of times before I actually beat it. But I finally finished. I got through all the extra levels. And I was rewarded with...a different color scheme for the map, and some of the enemies changed their appearance. Not so great. But at least I could say that I finally finished everything there was to do in a video game.
Super Putty - This game was a gift. Super Putty was like some kind of alien or something. He was a blue ball of...putty that wasn't very interesting. It wasn't a horrible game but there was nothing about it I really found too interesting. I'd play it, get to a certain point, die, and then put it down. Not so super.
Zoop - They showed commercials for this game on TV all the time. Whoever made it totally wanted it to be the next Tetris. Only they failed. Zoop is a puzzle game. Only it doesn't have blocks. I think it had like circles, or something. As you can tell by my awesome description I didn't play this game too much. In fact I don't even remember how to play at all. Shows what an impression it made on me.
Donkey Kong Country - Mario was the main man in my video game life until the monkey came along. I don't remember exactly how I got introduced to Donkey Kong. For some reason I vaguely remember my dad renting it for me, and when I liked it, he bought it. At the time the graphics on this game were absolutely amazing. I'll never forget being so in awe of how "real" everything looked. At the time, this game really was pretty great graphics wise. And it was pretty great game play wise too. I liked the dynamic of Donkey and Diddy being a team and you could switch between them at will. The levels were fun, but not too easy (for me at the time.) I remember a level called "Barrel Cannon Canyon" that I'm pretty sure was one of the last levels in the first area of the game. Towards the end of the level you jumped in a barrel and then had to keep shooting yourself into different barrels to get across the way. There were a lot of barrels there, and they moved in all kinds of directions. I was not used to this kind of game play, and I could not shoot those monkeys into those barrels for the life of me. I even went as far as holding a ruler up to the screen so I could see when they were in a straight line. I'm embarrassed to admit that ever happened, but I eventually got the hang of it and I'm now proud to say I'm a monkey barrel shooting pro. I loved this game, so of course I grabbed the sequel that followed it.
Donkey Kong Country 2 - This game, obviously, is the sequel to DKC. Except this one was even more fun. Out of all three games for SNES I like your two playable characters in this game the best. Why? Because Diddy and Dixie are both small and easy to move. There's no hulking mass of a character in this game. Plus Dixie can use her ponytail to hover for awhile. I've always been a fan of that. This game had a 'Lost World' you unlocked with coins you earned from the bonus games. In order to complete the Lost World you had to pretty much complete every bonus game. Not such an easy task, considering they hid some of those barrels pretty damn well. My favorite world in this game was the Kremling amusement park. What I didn't like about this game was how if you wanted to save more than one time in a level you had to PAY for it. WTF, Wrinkly Kong? Fallen on hard times?
Kirby Super Star - 8 games in one! I remember that being plastered on the outside of the box. I liked Kirby so I was very excited to own this game. Especially when there were 8 games. Some of them were more like mini-games, but there were several longer 'full-length' games as well. Kirby had more powers than ever, and you could even have a friend play alongside you (or the computer.) My favorite of the games was the one where you had to find the treasure chests. I don't think I ever found them all.
Donkey Kong Country 3 - The third game in the ever awesome Donkey Kong series, and my favorite of the SNES bunch. This game just had so much to it. There was more than just completing levels and collecting bananas. There was even more to do than finding bonus barrels. This time you had to collect different items and banana birds and interact with bears. Yeah. Bears. Plus you actually needed Funky Kong in this one! Previously the probably pot smoking Kong had been kind of useless. But now you had to rely on him to update your ride in order to move onto to new areas. There was also a Lost World in this one, and it was the hardest one yet to find. I remember you had to ride around these four rocks that were in the middle of the water. And you had to do it in the right directions and a certain number of times and stuff. This game had some tough levels in it too. I remember one of the later levels had all the controls inverted. And I'm pretty sure you had to swim. There are two things I don't do well in video games - swimming and flying. So for me, swimming with inverted controls wasn't the easiest thing in the world at first.
This was another game that I wound up completing in full, but I have to admit it wasn't until years and years later when I had access to the internet. Told you that Lost World was hard.
Yoshi's Island - Oh, a game about Yoshi! And annoying, crying baby Mario! This was a solid title. I liked playing as Yoshi. What I didn't like was chasing down the sobbing baby Mario every time you got hit by an enemy. After awhile you just wanted to let the bad guys have him. I remember how you got a score at the end of each level based on how much stuff you managed to collect. It would be out of 100 points so I would equate the scores to school. So if I got 75 on a level, Yoshi got a C.
Street Fighter II - I don't know why this is even on here. This wasn't even really my game. It was my sister's, and I don't even know why she got it. This was the first fighting game we ever owned. I almost never played it. I could never really get into fighting games. I didn't have the patience to memorize all those different button combinations. Whenever I played this game I would play as E. Honda and just use his hand slap attack repeatedly. That always seemed pretty effective.
Zombies Ate My Neighbors - I didn't own this game, my cousin did. And together he and I teamed up (he as the boy and I as the girl, of course) to take on the masses of zombies, monsters, killer toys, vampires, giant babies, and chainsaw wielding maniacs that roamed the levels of this game. This game was awesome but it was hard. Whenever we were together we played it and tried to get a little bit farther than we did last time. We turned down the sound in level 4, the first chainsaw wielding maniac level, because it freaked us out. It took us a long time to beat the level with the giant baby stomping around. And the level with the freaky giant snakes in the ground really had us stumped. Plus if you ran out of bazookas, or god forbid keys, you were in a lot of trouble. And the worst part was there was no saving in this game! Instead there were long, convoluted Bomberman style codes that had whoever was watching (my sister and other cousin usually) fumbling for a pen. But these codes we did save carefully. We would need them for the next time we took the zombies on. This game is a classic.
Kid Klown - You probably know by now that me and circus related games don't go together too well. And this is no exception. This was another game that belonged to my cousins, and they didn't really like it. I didn't really like it either, but everyone got such a big kick out of me playing it (because of my constant cursing the name of Kid Klown) that I played it a lot when I was over at their house. Kid Klown is this stupid Klown that is trying to save this girl (who I think was another clown) from this evil guy who keeps trying to blow things up. There were different kinds of themed levels like they have in every other game. Stuff like a woods level, a lava level, a city street and an ice level. I remember the woods level best because it was the first level and there was no saving to be had in this fantastic piece of gaming history.
Anyway, at the beginning of this level, just like every other level, you see the evil guy setting up his explosives and dragging the beginning of the fuse really, really far away from it. If this guy really wanted to blow some shit up he shouldn't have made such a long fuse. Anyway, your job is to beat the fire to the explosive before it can blow the bridge the hell up. Along your route there will be many balloons. You have to grab the end of the balloons to see what's inside. Your object is to get the 4 suits: hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs. Some of the balloons hurt you and some give you coins and stuff. All you basically can do is move forward and jump. You cannot move backwards. So if you move past the end of a balloon even a little bit, you can't get it. This is where most of my cursing stems from. Also the fact that this game is just stupid. If you beat the fire to the end but don't have all the stupid suits (the point of this being...?) you literally watch as the bad guy sets up his explosives all over again! You literally stand there catching your breath and waiting for him to be done! Why not just kick him in the crotch and steal the stupid explosives?! No. No. Because that would make sense. The lesson - games involving circus things are bad.
Mario Kart - Wow. I seriously suck for almost forgetting about this game. Aside from Red Racer, which I played a couple of times on the NES (ugh), this was my first real racing title. And I loved it. Partly because of the the Mario characters, but mostly because it was just plain fun and not too hard. I like how there were different ranks you could play and there were plenty of different tracks. I fell off Rainbow Road tons of times before I got it down. I loved the Bowser's Castle and Ghost House tracks as well. The multiplayer aspects of this game also rocked, and I'm not talking about a second player in the Grand Prix. My sister and I loved to try and destroy one another's balloons. We could play that game for hours. It was one of the few games she'd play with me. Oh, and my character of choice? Toad, or Koopa. Give me small and speedy any day.
Yes, the super years were good years. From Mario I moved onto to Donkey Kong, gaining a new game obsession. I had to have all the Donkey Kong games. So when I heard there was a game coming out for Nintendo 64, I had to ask for one for Christmas. My parents, however, had other ideas...
Stay tuned for the final section of this saga - Part Three: Another Game In Town
No comments:
Post a Comment