NEWS: Wil Wheaton's Geek in Review: 8 Bits High and Rising

GEEK: Wil Wheaton's Geek in Review: 8 Bits High and Rising

I first played NES on a department store display in 1986. It was in a place called Zody's, which in the mid-80s preceded and was then made obsolete by Target. I don't recall why we were in the store, but it was after school, and my parents had dropped off me and my brother in the toy department while they shopped for the various things we took for granted, but were load-bearing staples in the Wheaton household.

After briefly browsing the action figures and board games, we turned a corner and saw it: the Nintendo Entertainment System, sitting at the end of an aisle, waiting for some lucky kid to pick up its controller and take it for a spin.

We stopped short, and looked at each other, marveling at our good luck, before quickly bolting down the aisle and grabbing the controllers, before anyone could get between us and unlimited video game bliss.

We started with something weird called "Wrecking Crew." Though it would eventually become one of my all time favorites, the 13 year-old version of me was unimpressed.

"Pick a good one, Wil!" My brother said.

There were sixteen different games to choose from. It was magnificent. My eyes raced across the colored titles spread out before me:

Golf? No. Golf is lame.

Ice Climber? No. What happened when you played that Wrecking Crew game that you'd never heard of before?

Clu Clu Lan? That sounds like math. Next.

Kung-Fu? Bori -- wait! Kung-Fu? Like in the arcade?!

"Let's play Kung-Fu," I said.

"Is it cool?" He said.

I didn't appreciate it at the time, but in writing this now, I wish I had: this was near the end of the time in our childhoods when my little brother looked up to me, and I not only thought I was a cool guy, but looked to me as the arbiter of what was and wasn't cool. Over the next two years, after I booked Star Trek and became temporarily consumed by Hollywood and all its attendant bullshit, he and I drifted apart, and he grew to (rightly) resent and dislike me. It wasn't until we were both in our late 20s that we came back together.

"I'm pretty sure it is, Jer," I said. "I think I've played this at Shakeys."

I pressed the select button repeatedly until an LED next to Kung-Fu lit up, and hit start.

The game began, and I was blown away. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen on a console. It made our Atari 2600 feel as technologically advanced as a set of alphabet blocks, and its recreation of the arcade game I loved was even more faithful than the Colecovision version of Donkey Kong I'd declared "the most radical game ever!" when I played it at a friend's house five or six years earlier.

"Oh my god, Jer! This is just like the arcade!"

"Yeah!" He said, spurred on by my excitement as much as his own.

We alternated between Kung-Fu, Excitebike, and Pinball until our parents dragged us away what felt like hours later.

"Mom! Dad! That Intendo is so great!" Jeremy said, once we were in the car.

"It's Nintendo, Jeremy," I said, in my very best Serious and Mature voice, "and it's probably the most advanced computer that will ever be made."

My parents looked at each other. My dad's eyes found mine in the rear view mirror.

"Is that a fact," he said.

"Yeah," I said, "and --"

Before I could explain to my parents all the reasons we'd be stupid not to buy a Nintendo Entertainment System, my mother said, "we don't need another video game in the house. The Atari you already have is very nice."

I opened and then closed my mouth. This was not a battle I could win.

In the Big Trak campaign of 1980, the Omnibot offensive of 1982, and too many Game and Watch battles to count, I'd been as successful arguing these matters with my mother as I was at beating the "unbeatable (?) pterodactyl" in Joust. My brother and I shared a look that matched our parents': the discussion was over. I took comfort in the knowledge that, when I was eighteen and I could buy it for myself, the NES would take a place in my house next to a tower of comic books, all the cool Star Wars figures, box after box of Cookie Crisp cereal, and a pretty sweet fort (which, as it turns out, describes my current office pretty accurately. Minus the cereal. I’m too old for that shit now.)

However, a few months later, everything changed when I was invited to a celebrity charity thing in Hollywood, which was sponsored by Nintendo. In addition to all the usual photographs and teen magazine interviews, shoulder pads and Aqua Net, there would be a Super Mario Bros. competition.

This wasn't some silly Starcade competition with modified versions or timed levels on certain games. It was a serious high score competition, and Jeremy and I were determined to take down the Grand Prize: a complete NES system, featuring a light gun, a robot, over twenty games, and possibly First Prize: a 20 inch color TV. While all the other young teen heartthrobs were busy being seen, signing autographs and getting their picture taken, my brother and I prepared to claim what was rightfully ours. You see, we'd been unintentionally preparing for this very moment all summer long.

Since that fateful day in Zody's, my brother and I had developed an affinity for Nintendo games. In fact, you could say we were protofanboys. We'd always liked Donkey Kong and Punch Out!!, but when a Super Mario Bros. machine was installed between Arkanoid and Pinbot at our local 7-11, we played with a cult-like dedication. Over that summer, we were those guys who nobody could beat, thanks largely to a trick we learned from one of Jeremy's friends at school. He called it "the turtle trick," and it was a way to earn almost limitless free men by freezing and jumping repeatedly on a turtle at the end of world 3-1. Though we never managed to actually beat the game during that time, using the turtle trick, we obtained and held the high score for months. (For you damn kids today, not just earning – but maintaining – the high score on an arcade machine was a very big deal back in those days.)

The competition rules were simple: every kid in attendance could play twice and keep their highest score. At the end of the afternoon, the four highest scores would win prizes.

Thanks to the turtle trick, a lot of patience, and a singular focus that the presence of several young starlets tested (Christina Applegate, Alyssa Milano, and Nicole Eggert among them,) my brother and I completely obliterated everyone else there, and took home the the grand and first prize. My NES was in my possession almost five years ahead of schedule, and my brother and I spent the bulk of the next eighteen months playing it, talking about playing it, and wondering when we would get to play it again. I will never forget the night we stayed up until dawn and beat Metroid:

"OH MY GOD IT'S A CHICK!!"

Pause. Pause. Pause.

"COOL!"

"Want to play again?"

Pause. Pause. Pause.

"No."

The rest of our time was spent playing Legend of Zelda, Castlevania, Blades of Steel, Mike Tyson's Punchout!!, and, yes, Wrecking Crew. We loved it, and to this very day it remains one of my favorite and most cherished systems, which I reluctantly put down a few years ago after no amount of blowing or smacking on the cartridges could get them to work.

From around 1990 until last week, the only Nintendo products I owned were an evolving collection of Gameboys that I always ended up using for Tetris, until 2005, when I got a Gameboy that was styled to look like the classic NES. It came with Excitebike, Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, and Legend of Zelda. It was, again, in the middle of the night, (this time next to my slumbering wife,) that I finally defeated Ganon and saved the Princess. It had been nearly two decades since the first time I picked up a sword (it's dangerous to go alone!) and walked across Hyrule, and though I woke Mrs. Wheaton up and got The Wrath as a result of my celebration, it was entirely worth it.

Last week, I got a Nintendo Wii (which is actually a very cool story for another time all on its own.) From the moment I plugged it in and started playing Wii Sports, I felt the magical excitement and pure joy of playing that I haven't felt since my brother and I stood in the toy department in Zody's twenty-one years ago. When I bought Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda on Virtual Console yesterday, I'm not ashamed to admit that I got a little teary as I gripped the controller in my hands, pushed start, and let the muscle memory take over and guide me through the first few levels of them both.

I was having such a great time, I asked my seventeen year-old stepson to play Super Mario Bros. with me, eager to share with him some of the joy I'd experienced when I was just a few years younger than he is now.

As I entered level 1-4, he said, "Wil, remember: you have to jump over the chain of fire and onto the top of the box."

"Listen here, sonny," I said, in my best Very Grumpy Old Man voice, "I was playing this game when you were in short pants!"

"Yeah," he said, "so was I."

I jumped over the chain of fire, and onto the top of the box. I paused the game, and laughed for several minutes.

"That's funny," I said, "because it's true."

I've never really considered myself much of a Nintendo fanboy, but if the company continues to bring this much happiness into my life, I may have no choice but to become one.

Wil Wheaton's Princess is in another castle.

How DARE you not love cookie crisp.... thats like Kid Crack!

My Nintendo is still in circulation.... my cousin is playing it with 30 of my games

Oh this is too true. I find myself now a day's reveling in the same excitement as I did when I was younger. Now its just with the younger crowd and I'm still having as much fun as I did when I was eight.

That whole article was a teen-years flashback.

You're the bestest.

God bless the NES...I remember asking for one in 86, right after they came out, and getting an Atari 2600 instead. My parents eventually bought me one...right before Fred Savage showed off the world premier of Super Mario Brothers 3.

Dude... what kind of geek are you? You ditched an NES for something that was a cheap fix? Ugh. For shame. Now you shall never be allowed to touch my very coveted, original grey NES light gun.

You're never too old for Cookie Crisp. As a matter of fact, I've been consuming mass quanities of Double Chocolate Cookie Crisp lately - it makes the milk chocolaty just like Cocoa Crisp and Cocoa Puffs.

Virtual Console may bankrupt me as they continue to bring on TG-16 games. Bonk's Adventure was my first purchase.

Another fun return to yesteryears write! We still have nes in a moving box in the basement. Thanks.

I never had a NES. I graduated from my Atari directly to my Commodore 64...I didn't inaugurate myself into the Nintendo fold until the SNES...and I still play Super Mario World to this day. Heck, I pass over my PS2 to play it a lot of nights.

+wf+

Wow this brings back memorys. I love my nes.

I still find myself, when hungry, muttering "Red Warrior needs food badly."

I still have my NES. Got it for Xmas one year.

word.

Blades of Steel is what tore friends apart when you destroyed them by 10 points every game, then "skated" around your living room holding up your "trophy"

Gotta love the turtle trick though, nothing like having (crown)(heart)(crown) lives

Dude, Samus is a chick?!!

Spoiler that stuff, man!

Dude, Justin Bailey told me about it. That bitch will ruin every ending.

Nostalgia causing brain to hurt...

i don't think i can properly express how important Blades of Steel (and later NHL '94 and NHL '96) was to canadian kids around my age. it was like a religion, only instead of crusades, we'd just jersey each other to score cheap goals.

last year when my old roommate threw a bunch of NES games on his hacked xbox, i proceeded to goalie loop* into oblivion anyone who dared to pick up the controller. for the few games before they caught on, i was an NES god again.

*goalie loop: you know the trick where you can skate diagonally across the slot then loop back super quick and hit a high-angle shot past the goalie every time? i always called that a goalie loop.

You would love this book.

-T

I remember *renting* a Nintendo, and then being in a kind of digitally induced orgasmic coma for whole weekends. Great stuff.

I remember the first time I played Super Mario Bros. on the NES, at a department store display in an also since-gone store called Luria's, in the mall next to where my mother still lives. We had an Atari 5200 already, but this was like a whole new world.

What followed was an NES system that Christmas, a GameBoy the following year, a Super Nintendo two years later, and an N64 six years after that. I haven't really been into gaming, or at least modern gaming since. I still play NES, SNES, and arcade games both on my laptop and at Ground Kontrol here in Portland.

I remember furiously stomping on the Power Pad in my friend's basement. 100M dash FTW!

My old NES has a hole in the top of it, where I hit it with a baseball bat when I was a kid. I don't remember why I hit it, but I guess I was really mad.
But somehow it still works.

Ah, those were the good old days, back when life was much simpler. I miss playing NES, NES was just plain good old fashioned fun.

*runs to his living room and hugs his working NES*

it made my week last summer when i found a working copy of Dragon Warrior for 2 bucks at a local thrift store.. For 2 bucks expected to smack and blow and shake it for hours to no avail.. One thump from the heel of my hand and away I went..