Damn this brings back some good ol' memories!
Here's my story. Read on:
The first game console was the 8-bit NES gifted by mom for my 10th birthday when I was in my 5th grade. Dad was posted at Trivandrum back then. She took me and my sister out for a dinner, we walked into a duty-free shop (which was right besides her bank) and the guy at the counter handed me over the box covered with the fancy packaging. Upon reaching home, it came as a shocker to me that I was gifted a frikking TV game console! There wasn't any cartridge, the console had some games within the chip. Plugged the cables into the TV, plugged the light gun into the console and began the first game -
Wild Gunman!
Thereafter every month, with her monthly salary she used to get me a cartridge from the duty-free shop.
I could still hum the tunes of SMB (esp. when the time counts down to 99 seconds that special tune that plays as the warning, when Mario dives into water, the first stage, the second one which is mostly a warp with that bluish shades of level design). Used to play co-op with my sister who sucked and sometimes I used to reset the console if I lose a health. Then we started discovering those green mushrooms (1-up) that gave us an extra life if we were to hit that particular space. I realised I got stuck at the 4th stage of Level 6 and just couldn't get to the boss turtle - Bowser. Later, I swapped my sister's place with the then tenant's son who used to be good at console games (he had a Sega Mega Drive!). We used to get back home from our school, quickly freshen up and sit in front of the TV! We figured out that we could warp from 4th stage to the 7th one and then to the 9th one. And finally, after a lot of tries, retries we finally got to the final boss but he used to throw a bunch of hammer-like thingy (or was it nails? Don't recall much). We beat him and got to the princess. Damn it was one satisfying day!
Other than SMB,
Adventure Island I & II were awesome. I recall there used to be hidden eggs, skating for sometime etc. Time passed by and I had this friend at school (he is still in touch on FB!) with whom I used to exchange cartridges. He once gave me a cartridge that had
Ninja Gaiden, the side-scroller. I couldn't get past the boss of the 3rd stage. Then figured out a way after almost a week, got past him (had to throw some shuriken) and finally completed that game. Then for TP gaming, I used to make some nasty tracks on
Excitebike and attempt a race. Used to be real fun with those huge ass hills, pools and other obstacles.
Double Dragon - one of the best beat-em-up titles played till date other than
Spartan-X and
Splatterhouse. The second title had a bug. Select 2-player and either of them could beat the other player and claim his life. Discovered this when I was playing co-op with my friend. Later I used this exploit and played as a single player.
Then ofc we had
Contra!
After a year, the controller became faulty and wouldn't work properly. Had to wait till the month-end for a new controller. Later the connector became loose. Then ripped open the console and with my l33t soldering skills, I had the cable soldered directly to the board. IIRC there were some 9 thin cables for the connector. It remained permanent and worked well without issues. Today I've no idea where this console is. We have changed our residence at least 5 times (dad works for SBI!). It must be somewhere in some stash gathering dust.
I owe my mom a lot for having gifted that console. The first step into gaming and it became my most loved passion till date.
