Yes, I was a child in the 80s. Guess what? I had a NES.

System: We lived just outside a much nicer neighborhood, where it seemed like every kid in existence had a NES. My parents, wisely, deemed that we were allowed video games, but they would never fund the purchase of a system or games. Thus, my brother and I would frequently pool Christmas & birthday checks, along with allowance supplements, to obtain these altars of digital worship. I can remember as we proudly brought back the (at the time) ridiculously oversized box from the nearby K-Mart. My brother Andy had many friends who had already amassed wide collections of NES titles, and indeed, had gotten TWO copies of some games due to clueless relatives (we were waayyy behind the curve on NES acquisition). I can remember, on the same night we obtained the system, I plunked down a fair amount of a reserve copy of Mega Man III from one of his friends.

Favorite Games: Mega Man III was definitely put through its paces. I was not a very coordinated child (or adult), but I do remember an intense rush of pride over beating the Hard Man level by myself when my brother was away for the weekend. Ultimately it would be Andy who would triumph over Gamma, the titanic final boss. I remember a summer day, with us on the phone with Andy’s friend Ralph, saying, “How do you beat him? Nothing’s working!” The trick is, of course, to get close and fire Search Snakes at his head. Also great about Mega Man III: Rush Jet.

A robot dog that turns into a rocket-powered surfboard is perhaps the epitome of 80s childrens’ entertainment.

Crystalis was an excellent action-RPG that was extremely long for a NES game. I don’t think we ever beat it. It had an excellent soundtrack though, and a bunch of different elemental swords and magic powers to use. Pretty dope all-around, and then I found out the original Japanese name was “God Slayer: Sonata of the Far-Away Sky.” Come on, that is awesome.

It would be wrong not to mention the time my friend Cliff and I bought the original Final Fantasy from a local yard sale and got destroyed for an hour, until we grasped the concept of the “equip” command. Once we figured that out, I think we played it for ten hours straight. Harbinger of things to come!

Least Favorite: My brother and I bought each other games one year for Christmas. We frequently went with the cheapest, because we were not rich children. This lead to some… interesting choices. One year, I gave him Dragon Spirit. Pretty decent shooter game, where you got to be a dragon. You got powerups that gave you extra heads. He gave me Dash Galaxy in the Alien Asylum. See the cover art on the Wikipedia page? Nice, you’re like Flash Gordon, right? Think again, chum.

That’s you – the angular, blue, gas station attendant in what looks like a bastardized Super Mario Bros. level. Worst. Game. Ever. Terrible graphics, no plot, bizarre gameplay, and of course, incredibly hard.

Personal Quirks: We also had a subscription to the best gaming mag of the 80s/early 90s, Nintendo Power. One issue came with stickers to put over your controllers, which were actually kind of cool.

Ok, not this one, but there was another one that made it look like exposed circuitry, and that one was cool.

I believe my brother has now disassembled our original NES, but it remains functional. My last memory of it was playing Legend of Zelda in 2001 with a can of tuna holding down the game and pressing it against the circuitboard, because Andy had removed the case.

Next up: the Sega Genesis.