Gamerama

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I can't seem to find any inspiration anywhere for another blog post (or whatever it is you'd like to call it). I have three unfinished posts started at various points over the last month and saved in case I felt like going back to finish them, but I never quite went back, and obviously, now I've completely lost my trains of thought. And, to make my amateur-writer's block more bearable, I've gone and installed my favouritest video game ever, the one that made me want to start gaming in the first place, and the one that is the inspiration for my internet pseudonym, Neverwinter Nights. So, in the spirit of nostalgia, I'm going to be writing various random tidbits about my games.

I think that the earliest video game I can remember playing was Super Mario Kart for the SNES. I know I played games before that, because I remember there being a DOS computer with huge floppy discs and games at my grandma's house, but I don't know what the games were. My brothers would always kick my ass at Mario Kart, and I hated that. Especially in battle mode. I wasn't completely hopeless in the racing department, but as soon as we got into battle mode, my sorry little balloons would just pop and pop and pop. But, I still had fun playing that, and (surprisingly enough, considering my age, which must have been about 5 or 6 I think) watching everyone else play. My dad is colour blind, so he'd get me (and/or whoever else had to sit out that round) to tell him what colour his shells were; red or green. I loved getting to help him play. It wasn't until years later that I found out that despite his colour blindness, he knew damn well what shell was what the whole time.

Around the same time as Mario Kart, my brothers and I would play Mario (and of course Kirby Superstar - that's the one cartridge I can ever remember losing. It just vanished). The ones that stick out in my memory are Yoshi's island and Super Mario Brothers 3 (I'm not even sure that one was actually for the SNES - it's on this four-in-one cartridge that I think were all NES games ported). Those stick out for me because I wouldn't play them, I'd "play" them. I'd go along until an enemy confused me or hit my character, then I'd pause it and hand it over to my brother, who would get past that part and hand me back the controller. Looking back, I don't know why he put up with all that. He would basically beat every level for me, and all the bosses too. I guess he's a better brother than I ever knew.

Next came - wait for it - the N64! But that will have to wait for another time. I'll continue this random stream of thoughts and memories later.