12/02/2014

Czaros' Advent Calender - Day 2 - Earliest Gaming Memories

Today I would like it briefly talk about my earliest gaming experiences. The very, very first encounter with a video game was when we visited some relatives. All I remember is that it was Super Mario Bros. and I didn't understand how to play at all.

It looked identical to this
Some time later, when I was about 5-6 (I think), my dad asked me if I would like a "TV game". Believe it or not... I didn't really know what he meant, but I wished for it and got it one Easter morning when we were celebrating easter at my Grandparents' old place in Gdansk, Poland. It was an NES-clone, a thing that was quite popular with kids at the time, mostly because it was really cheap and the cartridges (which everyone called cassettes) where easy to find on marketplaces for like 10 PLN (about €3).

If you have seen JonTron's latest video on Bootleg consoles,  you might have seen one where Jon made fun of a 70000-in-1 console and that they might have as well called it 1000000-in-1. Believe it or not, the cartridge included with the console was very close with 999999-in-1 which in reality was like 10 games with many variations. The cartridge had some pretty good games. Super Mario was one of them and the one I liked the most and my first game to fully beat, though at first I would be scared of the lifts in World 1-2. Other games were Duck Hunt, Pinball, Clay Shooting, a racing game very similar to one that ProJared played (the one with Superman flying at the side of the road) and Circus Charlie.

My second cartridge was a weird one. It had a Mario World sticker on it, but it was some weird bootleg hack called Super Mario 14. I was like: what is this thing? But the game was still kinda good, though I never beat the final level

As the time went on, I got more cartridges, borrowed games from friends and so on, so in the end I've played tons of games like Adventure Island 1 & 3, Dr. Mario, Contra and Super C, Popeye, Ice Climbers, a hack of Tiny Toons with Pikachu, Chip & Dale 2, Darkwing Duck, Bomberman , Castle Excellent etc. Many good memories. Later I would "jump" straight to the world of PC gaming with Harry Potter 1, Bejeweled, Rayman 2 and so on, but this NES-clone era is without a doubt an important part of both my childhood and the gamer I've become.

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