Everything Retro is New Again

I’ve been saying for years that Nintendo should rerelease the original Nintendo Entertainment System.  There are plenty of game cartridges floating around, but in my experience, fewer and fewer well-functioning consoles.  Well, it’s happened.  Sort of.

Shopping yesterday at a trendy store in downtown Toronto (Urban Outfitters), I came across a display of retro-inspired items: books on the history of video games, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pint glasses, and so on.  But what really caught my eye was a trio of gaming devices that are new products, but play old games.  I surreptitiously took a (blurry) photo of the display so that I could look up these items once I got home.

The first one I picked up to examine was almost the exact device I’ve been predicting.  It’s a console that looks like a hybrid of NES and Super NES, and plays both types of cartridges.  It comes bundled with one NES and one SNES controller, and is compatible with the decades-old controllers from the original consoles.  It’s not manufactured by Nintendo, but rather by some company called Hyperkin.  At around $70, the Retron Two-in-One Gaming System seemed like a great buy.  I already have reasonably-functional consoles of my own, so I didn’t get one, but I still felt a bit wowed by the fact that this things exists, and is being sold in a store aimed at people in their teen and early 20s.

Next to this retro hybrid beast was a daintier offering: a Sega-branded handheld gaming device, preloaded with 37 Sega Genesis and 3 Capcom games, including heavy hitters like the Sonic the Hedgehog and Street Fighter series.  (Also featuring an SD slot for further downloadable games). If the screen hadn’t seemed a bit small (I can’t recall the exact spec), I might have bought this delightful little jewel.  I didn’t play a lot of Sega Genesis (other than Sonic games) and would probably enjoy discovering some new old favorites.

The third and last console was the most surprising one: an honest-to-goodness branded Atari, with 75 preloaded games, two wireless old-timey-looking joysticks, and ports for genuinely old joysticks, in case you have some kicking around.  (Personally, I have a few that are a whisper away from nonfunctional.)  Seriously?  I feel like the Venn diagram of the target audience for this item is not very promising.

I mean, let’s be honest here.  I’m at the very top of the age range of people who might shop at UO, and I’m too young to have played Atari when it was having its moment in the sun.  Who are these potential customers?  Maybe young people buying gifts for their parents?  Furthermore, I like vintage games as much as the next person, but have you actually played an Atari game in the last decade? (Or two?)  It’s fun for about three minutes.   I’m all for nostalgia, but when it comes to gaming, I’m also all for fun.

It was certainly interesting to see these items for sale and to consider the implications.  I wrote a while back on my vague sadness about the fact that the generation of people exposed to early video games (NES specifically) are playing these games less and less.  Maybe the people manufacturing and selling these new-retro consoles know something I don’t… maybe younger people could get into these old games, and save them from disappearing out of collective gamer awareness.

Have you bought or played any of the these new-retro systems?

Duck Hunt & My Childhood Existential Crisis

I was a sensitive child.  As I’ve disclosed previously, I was scared of my first Nintendo Entertainment System.  Which is entirely reasonable when you consider that it was inhabited by a ghost that took control of Mario whenever I turned my attention away for a few moments.  However, that NES console provoked more than terror in me; it also precipitated what was likely my first existential crisis.  What exactly was it that deformed my previously compact and self-contained mind into a warping tunnel extending infinitely in all directions into time and space?  It was Duck Hunt.

I was five years old.  Prior to my discovery of the Mario-demo-ghost, I spent some time playing Duck Hunt.  Undoubtedly sitting a mere few feet from the screen, clutching the futuristic NES Zapper gun*, shooting green and purple pixelated ducks and relishing triumph with my co-conspirator, the hound.  Soon I had gotten good enough to zap easily through the first few levels.

As I reached whatever I considered at the time to be a high level (was it five? ten? I don’t know), it seemed to me that the game should, at some point, reach its conclusion.  That was how games worked.  They had endpoints.  In the other NES game I played, Mario Bros., every level had a clear endpoint and I confidently believed that were I skilled enough, I could reach the end of the game.  For whatever reason, I did not have this sense with Duck Hunt.  Maybe it was the repetitiveness of the levels.  So although I lacked the vocabulary and theoretical reasoning to properly articulate this thought, I began to fear that Duck Hunt was infinite.  In the clearly-delineated world of a five-year-old, the concept of infinity may exist in some vague form (the sky never ends!).  However, the idea that I could keep shooting ducks for ever and ever, and the game would keep playing that bit of jaunty music and loading a new level, brought the concept of endlessness crashing down onto me with a force that shook me to my very core.

I asked my mother when the game would end.  She said that if I turned off the Nintendo, the game would be over.  She did not understand.

I had to put my theory to the test, and find out if Duck Hunt was, in fact, infinite.  To accomplish this, I could not trust my still-developing hand-eye coordination and risk a few missed shots resulting in game over and an aborted experiment.  I moved in and put that orange muzzle right against the screen.  I zapped through level after level, struggling against a crescendo of anxiety.  I reached higher levels than ever before, and by the time the erratically-flying ducks got fast enough to end my close-up game, I felt queasy with incomprehension.  It was clearly true: the game was infinite.

I tried to understand.  I liked things that I could understand.  I knew that if I understood, I would feel more comfortable.  But I just couldn’t.  I felt tiny and insignificant in the face of this eternal game.  I closed my eyes and imagined the ducks flying, falling, held as trophies by the hound.  More ducks, more music, the hound sniffing the ground and leaping into the grass to begin a new level, ducks flying, ducks falling, over and over and over.  I tried to come to terms with the idea that this process could go on forever.  What would happen to a person who just kept playing?  Would they stop eating and starve?  Would they actually die?  I believed that they might.  Who would create such a sinister game?  What were their motives?  And I wondered most desperately… what did forever actually mean?

I did not resolve these questions.  I stopped playing Duck Hunt.  I turned my attention to Super Mario Bros… and we know how that turned out.  My video game career was off to a rocky start, but in retrospect, I think it was ultimately a positive thing for me to be so truly affected by my early gaming experiences.

By the way, a quick Wiki search has finally put my mind at ease… Duck hunt glitches out at level one hundred.  Phew.

(*It wasn’t until a brief resurgence of interest in Duck Hunt during my high school years that I ever considered the mechanics of the gun, and realized that it works by acting as an input – registering the area on the tv screen at which it is pointed in order to determine if a shot is a hit or miss.  This realization came in a flash of clarity, and once again, Duck Hunt had succeeded in making me question everything in the world I took for granted… for example, that a gun is fundamentally an output device.)

The Haunted Nintendo: A True Story

I got my first console, the Nintendo Entertainment System, when I was five years old.  My parents bought it for me for Christmas, and it came bundled with the classic Mario Brothers / Duck Hunt dual cartridge.  I’m not certain, but I don’t believe I had asked for an NES; I just had a forward-thinking mother who knew a good toy when she saw it.  What she didn’t know was that the NES was haunted*.

(As an aside, I really have to thank my mother for consistently buying new consoles and games for my sister and I throughout our childhoods and teenage years.  Without her support, I’m sure I never would have gotten so involved in gaming.)

My first few times playing Mario went smoothly; I quickly grasped the concept of using the controller to move the cartoon man on the screen, and probably spent a lot of time on level 1-1.  My growing fondness for the system was shattered, however, the first time that I turned on the NES and for whatever reason, didn’t start playing right away.  As the idle console began showing the recorded demo of Mario playing through the first level, I watched in confusion.  I knew that I controlled Mario with the gray rectangle-thingy.  So who was controlling him now?  How could he move without any button-pushing from me?  I must have asked my mother, and whatever response she provided did not fully put my mind at ease.  I looked with suspicion on the NES, but managed to put that first creepy experience behind me.

I played Mario at least a few more times before accidentally seeing the demo again.  The second time was the clincher.  I watched, transfixed and with growing terror, as the ghost in the machine gleefully hopped around level 1-1, my level, on my game.  How was this possible?  The only explanation I could fathom was some kind of supernatural one.  I don’t believe I worked out the exact details of the Nintendo ghost, but I didn’t need to.  Even after turning off the NES and the tv, I couldn’t look at the console without feeling the fear. The Nintendo had to go.

I explained, somehow, to my mother that I wanted her to get rid of the NES.  She didn’t understand exactly what the problem was, but offered to put the offending console away in the attic until I was ready to try it again.  That solution was NOT acceptable.  It needed to be OUT of the house.  She told me she would take care of it, but when I went up to the attic later that day, my suspicions were confirmed; it was indeed tucked away, in its box, in a dark corner.  I was enraged that my mother had lied to me, and after the ensuing tearful confrontation, she gave the NES away to a couple of friends with kids of their own.  Kids who were not afraid of the NES.

I’ve pieced this story together from a combination of my own recollections and my mother’s.  The strongest memory I have of this episode is an emotional one, a memory of the true and deep-seated unease, escalating to real fear of the NES.  It’s hard to understand, as an adult, how I could have actually been terrorized by a game demo, but that is what happened.

It was three years later, at age 8, that I apparently decided I was over my fear and wanted a new Nintendo.  My wonderful mother bought me one for my 9^th birthday, this time bundled with Kirby’s Adventure (a favourite game to this day).  My relationship with the second NES console was excellent from the start, and bloomed into a lifelong love affair with games.

But part of me still wonders what exactly was going on with that first console.

This photo was taken at my 9th birthday party. My guests are apparently not having a super fun time watching me try out Kirby’s Adventure. I’m pretty sure I eventually gave everyone a turn, but belated apologies for my terrible manners nonetheless.

*Not actually haunted.