Dear Santa....

Remember all those years when I asked for a Hoverboard and ONLY a Hoverboard?

Well you owe me. This Omega-awesome shirt from GlitchGear.com will do.

You got three months, get crackin'.

Signed,

The Nicest Boy in the World.

Old School Gaming Rekindled

As of late I have been simultaneously enthralled and challenged by the glorious specter of the Angry Video Game Nerd. The premise is simple, a nerd plays old school video games and points out how much they suck. He occasionally reviews some classic mainstream games but mostly it's games that I've never heard of. And I have played a lot of games. More than you think.

After his review of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, I felt the need to give the game another try. I had been stuck at the same point for probably years. That game is so ridiculous because of its non-linear gameplay and absolute lack of in-game advice. Everything the NPCs (non-playable characters to the jocks) tell you is useless and probably a lie. His sarcastic review, however, provided several clues that have allowed me to get to the last level.

The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES is a demon and another classic game that I devoted HOURS of my life to. It is ridiculously hard. Plain and simple. The farthest I've EVER gotten is level 4. Before puberty I was an epic gaming monster and was capable of intuitively wailing on any game you handed to me. Now, not so much. I blame boobs. But the subsequent sequels were less difficult, more rewarding with better action and geared toward playing with friends. If I had only had friends, it would have been great.

The biggest thing that grabs my attention about this web-series though is the nostalgia. I remember fondly renting a video game every Friday and staying up to the wee hours of morning for a couple days just playing games. The games that immediately spring to mind for these weekends of juvenescence: Super Mario 3, Rampage, Bill & Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure, The Adventures of Bayou Billy, Excitebike, Jaws: The Video Game, Faxanadu and a specific Mega Man title that escapes me. It was a good one, but easy enough that I could beat some of the bosses...Nevermind.

The Nerd captures this nostalgia perfectly with his Game-Cave. But seeing his walls o' NES cartridges has roused some long-dormant gamer feelings in me.

Though I wholly love my Wii and its contemporary games, one of the reasons for its purchase was the promise of being able to play my old favorite NES and Super NES titles. There have been a few essential titles that have come over for the wii, but for the most part they have barely scratched the surface of the 600+ titles for the NES and the 700+ titles for the Super NES. As of today there are 89 NES titles and 58 Super NES titles available for download from the Virtual Console. Instead Nintendo seems to be focussing on the Wiiware original titles rather than the classics. I guess they need to focus on the games that bring in the big bucks and leave their older fan-base to play with ourselves.

To this end however I have started to research obtaining a used NES and/or Super NES. I have no room for this trove nor the financial means to procure it. But the idea of coming home from work on a Friday night, strolling through a massive library of titles and picking one to play well into the night fills me with a giddy, nerdy anticipation and almost a sense of tranquility.