My Life of Gaming, Part 2

Now that we had an NES, we were "into" gaming. We never did buy a lot of games for it, mostly the sequels to Super Mario Bros. and that incredibly challenging game Rad Racer, which started you over at the very beginning of all the courses if you screwed up. Our parents, of course, never got into the whole "gaming revelution" in our family, but us kids sure did. We tore through those SMB games like wildfire and then played through them again and again. I remember showing off my brand spankin' new Super Mario Bros. 2 cartridge to a friend while I was on the way to his house, like I was the king of gaming nerds because I had it before him.

Shortly after we got our NES, we subscribed to a start-up magazine called Nintendo Power. The very first issue, if I recall correctly, had SMB2 on the cover. Those magazines got worn out with us reading about all the games we'd probably never own. One game in particular stood out to me, but convincing our parents to buy it for us was another matter entirely. Finally, though, they broke down and we were the proud owners of a game called Dragon Warrior. This was my first experience with RPGs and the begining of a lifelong obsession with them. It first introduced me to the concept of turn-based battles, experience points to level and a host of other RPG staples. I played that game at every opportunity, killing slimes and pursuing the evil Dragonlord, all the while being fully engrossed in the game's simplistic story. Well, simplistic by today's standards. But back then, in 1989, it was gold. A whole new world of gaming opened up at that point, when I realized the story of the game was what I enjoyed the most. I needed more than a blanket statement of "find and rescue the princess". Even at that young age, I wanted good dialog, deep stories and a whole world that I could freely explore. Gameplay mattered little at the time, the story is what grabbed my attention and did a darn good job keeping it. Coincedentally, Dragon Warrior was originally published and distributed in Japan by a little company called Enix Corporation.

A few more titles followed, including sequals to the Dragon Warrior and Super Mario Bros. franchises. Eventually, through our rapt attention to Nintendo Power, we learned about a new console that the game company was going to release - the Super NES. We were never one for being early adapters of anything, and the same held true here. The Super NES was released in the U.S. in 1991, but we didn't get ours until at least a year later. It, of course, came bundled with Super Maro World, the latest and greatest in the Mario Bros. series of games.

As for myself, I remember the day we got it. I happened to be grounded and couldn't play it at all for a few weeks. It was driving me insane watching my brothers play SMW. I longed for those more ergonomically designed controllers. Look at all the extra buttons they had compared to our old NES controllers! Eventually, I did get to play. It was a bit of a blessing, actually, because by time I got to play it, my brothers were already done with SMW and I could enjoy it in relative peace and quiet.

After that, for quite some time, nothing real exciting happened. The SNES kind of got left alone a bit, there weren't many games coming out for it that interested us and, even if they did, they were $30 each and that was just way too expensive for a video game - our parents wouldn't usually budge and buy us one. We still subscribed to Nintendo Power and still kept up on what was happening in the world of Nintendo. It wasn't until around 1994 that things really started taking off again.

Dragon Warrior was definitely a memorable experience for me. It introduced me to a whole new genre of games that would have an impact on me for years. However, the most fateful gaming experience of my life was yet to come.