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Secret Origins: Aero The Acro-bat 2

Longtime readers know that I have a certain fondness for the wannabe mascot wars of the 16-bit generation.  I've championed for Bubsy and Plok, after all.  Today it's time to direct your attention to Sunsoft's attempt at cashing in on the "radical mascot with an attitude" era of gaming history, or rather Sunsoft's continued attempt.  The company pinned its hopes on Aero the Acro-bat for the Super NES and Sega Genesis, and while the first game in the series was relatively easy to find, the sequel that was produced a year later in 1994 was downright elusive.

I spent many near-sleepless nights trying to finish the first Aero and had even stumbled upon the stage select code before it had been published in the gaming magazines of the day, so I knew I had to have the second.  I went to every store in my little hometown and surrounding areas that sold video games, but nobody even knew the game was created, let alone for sale.  Remember, this was the pre-Amazon.com era.  Finding obscure games such as Aero today is as easy as punching up eBay, but at the time I was limited to the whims and sales trends of retail stores.  As much as I loved Mario and his pals, the Mushroom Kingdom characters had taken over the shelves. There was no room in the Nintendo section for a plucky little aerobatic bat. 

Months after I’d given up hope on finding the game, my parents and I had decided to spend a week’s vacation in Atlanta, and it quickly turned into the vacation from Hell.  The hotel had an infestation of critters, abstract paintings of a previous guest done in hair gel were plastered to the wall, the Six Flags Over Georgia theme park made us all ill with bad food & nauseating rides, there was an murder attempt near the Coca-Cola Bottling Plant tour that scrapped our plans to venture downtown to stroll around like tourists in full bozo mode, and the rain just hadn’t stopped pouring for the duration of the trip.  Eventually we decided enough was enough and ended the vacation two days early.  So there we were, driving south on I-95 back to Florida through the post-rain haze when a loud bang shook the car and it veered off the road onto the shoulder.  A flat tire marked a fittingly horrible end to a particularly horrible trip.

After affixing the spare donut tire to the car, we limped to the next exit down the highway which led to a small mall with a Sears auto department.  It was the crummiest mall I'd seen in quite some time.  There wasn’t a single major franchise store to be found beyond the Sears, the floors were caked with mud, and the air had a stale musty scent to it. Unhappy people trudged around from The Dollar Store to The Dollar Tree to The 99 Cent Store and back again.  I decided to kill time in a book/game shop that seemed to specialize in yesterday’s books and games.  Moreover, these were yesterday’s unpopular or undersold books and games.  Want the novelization of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier?  This place had it.  The shelves were sloppily constructed and inventory fell to the ground as I walked by as if merely displacing the air in passing was attacking these shelves and dismantling them.  The video game shelf (well, what was left of it; it leaned to the left and all the games had tumbled to one end) caught my attention, but based on what I’d seen of the rest of the store, I didn’t have high hopes of finding anything remarkable.  I began reading the cartridge labels.  There was a whole row of used Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt cartridges (heh, who didn’t have that one?), a few stray copies of SimCity in battered boxes, and the absolute worst that the Sega CD had to offer, but at the end of the row, still shrink-wrapped in a new equally dusty untouched box was – could it be? – Aero the Acro-bat 2.

I reached for it, convinced it would turn into more of the dust that covered everything in this place as soon as I neared it, but it held its form as I grabbed it and pulled it from the shelf.  It certainly seemed to be the real deal, and aside from the box being a little dusty, it was in perfect condition.  I checked the price tag and not only was I lucky enough to have found the game, but it was marked down to a mere twenty dollars.  I had just enough spending money left from the aborted vacation to make the purchase, and although the entire trip itself was pure horror, at least it had a happy ending.  Nearly fifteen years later I still play it from time to time, but it’s become more than just a plastic case with some computer chips inside.  It's become a symbol that it's possible to discover something special on some long-forgotten shelf and that anything truly worth playing eventually comes back around in some form.

Secret Origins: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow

I haven't always been a popular game journalist.  Yes, it's true.  Once upon a time I was just a regular gaming guy who grew up with dreams of working in the video game industry, but getting my foot in the door seemed impossible.  Pursuing the idea was always one of those things that I'd put off for "later", but then one day it looked as if there would not be a "later" for me.  After a long illness and a brush with death I threw myself into working towards my goal of becoming a video game reviewer, and if you've been a long-time PTB reader then you already know how the story ends.  What you probably don't know is how the whole thing began, and ultimately it's the tale of how I acquired Tom Clancy's Splniter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow for the Nintendo GameCube.

After spending nearly my entire childhood with a game controller in my hand, it was time to move on from the Mushroom Kingdom.  It was 1999, a time when high school was ending and college was waiting.  I moved away to my own apartment in the big city, got a real job, went to classes, and did the whole college routine.  This left little time for gaming as the assignments piled up and the classes became more involved, and with the Nintendo 64 era winding down there really wasn't much worth playing that caught my eye.  Gaming slipped into the background and life went on.  Everyone has to grow up sometime (or so they told me).

Things started to fall apart for me four years later.  As I've said before, I've lived with Crohn's Disease since the age of thirteen.  In early January of that year my illness flared up more than it ever had before which led to me having to drop my college classes, take a leave of absence from work, and stay home for nearly six months while I waited for my doctor to assemble a surgical team that would remove a section of my damaged intestine.  During this time I dealt with crippling pains and was unable to eat anything.  I kept my sanity with long journeys across the Hyrule sea in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, the first time I'd put in any major time with a video game in years.  I honestly believe that Wind Waker kept me alive during that difficult time because it gave me a purpose beyond laying in bed and waiting for the whole nightmare to come to an end.

After the surgery I was told that with all of the damage to my digestive system and my low nutritional levels, I should have been dead some time ago.  I lived on, obviously, but I came away from the experience with a changed outlook on life.  I wanted more fun in my life than college classes and a day job could provide, and I wanted that fun to involve gaming in some way beyond just consuming new adventures.  After recovering from the surgery and getting my life back on track I started exploring just how a person such as myself could get into the game reviewing business.  Having a vast knowledge of the Castlevania timeline isn't enough, surprisingly.  I spent several months writing reviews just for myself to work on my writing skills and to assemble a portfolio.  It was April 2004 before I started applying for reviewing positions at my favorite gaming websites, and before long I was welcomed aboard GameCube Advanced (which eventually expanded into the Advanced Media Network) as a product analyst with an eye for GameCube games.  My first official reviewing assignment?  Tom Clancy's Splniter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow.

Now, I'm not much of a Tom Clancy fan, but part of why I wanted to get involved with reviewing was for exposure to new genres.  When the game arrived in my mailbox I eager tore into it and played for days and days, taking notes and planning out what I wanted to say about the game and how to say it.  There were many more games to review after Pandora, of course, but like they say: you never forget your first.

Secret Origins: Bubsy in Claws Encounters Of The Furred Kind

I'm ready to admit it: I once clamored, begged, and schemed to acquire Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind for the Super NES.  I'd read the Nintendo Power and Electronic Gaming Monthly previews and reviews of the game just before June 1993 hit, and as the sixth grade at elementary school was coming to an end for me, I began calling local stores and scouring shop shelves for the game.  I'd gathered up all my loose change and allowance savings into a $50 pile and gave standing instructions to my parents that if they found Bubsy in their travels, they should buy it and I'd pay them back.  I even had the Nintendo Power character poster hanging on my wall next to all of my other gaming decorations.  All of this fuss over a game that just about everybody decried as yet another animal mascot platforming rip-off, but so what?  I knew I was destined to save mankind from the Woolie invasion. 

The closing days of the sixth grade were marked with a special pool party at the local country club.  I and my ninety-nine classmates were dropped off at the pool one morning and spent the day being splashed and stuffing ourselves full of pizza and Pepsi.  Six hours in a public pool packed with extra chlorine does a number on one's vision, and so at the end of the day I found my eyesight blurry and my eyes burning so badly that I could barely keep them open.  Exhausted from the wild blowout, I was ready to go home and sack out in front of the television.  I may not have been able to see it, but I could certainly listen to it.  Arriving home, my wonderful mother gave me my "graduation" present, and of course it was a box adorned with a certain smiling bobcat.  At least, that's what they tell me, because I really couldn't see so well at the time.

"Rest your eyes," I was told, "You can play tomorrow," but for a dedicated Bubsy fan such as myself, that just was not an option.  After months of searching and waiting I finally had the game.  I wasn't about to let a little thing like temporary near-blindness stop me from enjoying my prize.  I shoved the game pak into the Super NES, fired it up, and spent the next hour ramming poor Bubsy into every possible obstacle and enemy I could find.  Wow, my eyes are totally shot, I thought, taking my mother's advice and turning off the game until my vision healed.  I'd never played anything so badly before, but I knew I'd make up for lost time in the morning.

The next day I turned on the game with fresh eyes and found out that it wasn't my stinging vision to blame for Bubsy's mishaps.  No, it was the game's horrendous controls that led to the out-of-control bobcat slamming and sinking to his doom time and again.  Bubsy isn't a bad game, just one that takes some adjustment.  Once I figured out that my newest hero was a complete spaz, I learned to go with the flow and, by the end of the summer and the start of middle school, I'd defeated the twin queens Poly & Ester of the planet Rayon and put the quipping cat out to pasture for good (save for an occasional return in my weaker moments).  Bubsy's adventures went downhill from there into mediocre sequels and an animated TV show that nobody demanded.  It was through Bubsy that I learned that not all animal mascot platformer characters are created equal and that I should focus my gaming efforts and budget on more solid, original adventures.  With this lesson in mind I turned my attention to finding the next game on my wish list: Aero the Acro-bat 2.  That, however, is a story for another day.

Secret Origins: Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga

Considering that this week would have been the week of E3 2007 had the grand event not been scaled down to the new "business summit" format, it seemed only appropriate to share the story of the game I bought to play during my week in Los Angeles back in 2005.  You see, as a child it was a family custom that my parents buy me a new Game Boy game to play while riding in the backseat on our family road trip vacations.  Each year while tagging along with my parents while they bought vacation supplies I was allowed to pick out the game of my choice to enjoy during those long stretches of endless interstate highway.  The practice came to an end when I became old enough to drive and, appropriately, didn't have the opportunity to save the princess while taking the wheel myself.  For our final family road trip in 1999 I didn't even bother to bring the Game Boy.  It seemed that the traveling game tradition was dead.

Then I acquired a Nintendo DS, my first portable game system since that original Game Boy.  When the long flight to California for E3 came up I knew I'd have plenty of time to kill on the plane, so it seemed as good a time as any to revive the old practice.  Seeing as how I was catching up on some of the Game Boy Advance games that I'd missed over the years, I went in search of something from my wish list: Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga. It took some doing to track down a new copy of the game in the weeks approaching May 2005, but I finally found one lone sealed and dusty copy at a forgotten Circuit City near my home.  I packed the game box away in my carry-on backpack, respecting the tradition by promising myself that I wouldn't crack the seal and play the game until the journey had begun.

While waiting in the airport to board the flight to Los Angeles, I decided that I was officially traveling, eagerly slid the game pak into my DS, and fired it up, headphones kept at half volume so I could hear boarding announcements.  I then proceeded the play the game for just about the entire five hour flight across the country to the befuddlement of the people around me.  At the time a Nintendo DS was still a most unusual sight.  "Is that Game Boy DS?" one woman asked (at least, I believe that's what she asked; I was engrossed in exploring the Beanbean Kingdom at the time).  Then the plane landed in California, the DS went back into the backpack, and it was time to join the AMN staff at the hotel and get to work on covering the event.

Of course, if things had worked out that way, this would be a short story.  I wound up playing plenty of Superstar while on the E3 show floor.  Walking back and forth across such a massive place as the Los Angeles Convention Center is a very tiring affair, so it wasn't unusual for me to take a break between trekking from booth to booth.  Two or three times a day I'd pull over from the rush of people to a fairly empty hallway adjacent to the Nintendo booth, sit myself down near the flow of air conditioning, and pull my DS out of my pocket to play a little before getting back to my assignment list.  It was refreshing to spend the week playing such a lengthy and rewarding game, as by the time I returned home I still hadn't finished the adventure and the game hadn't become a chore like so many games do near the end.

In 2006 I chose Metroid: Zero Mission for my "week of E3" game and wound up finishing the whole damn thing on the flight to Los Angeles, but that's another story...

Secret Origins: Super Smash Bros. Melee

Prepare to be shocked: at one time I very nearly walked away from video gaming.  After graduating high school in 1999 at the age of eighteen I moved away from my childhood home to the big city to go to college, meaning that my spare time was spent on studying and my spare money was spent on setting up my new life.  I had all of my classic Nintendo consoles hooked up at my new apartment and still enjoyed time with my Nintendo 64, but as the line up of compelling new games began to dry up I began playing less and less.

When the Game Boy Advance debuted in 2001 and the only new Super Mario game available was a port of Super Mario Bros. 2 (a game I already owned twice over in different incarnations), I expressed a mild interest, but was in no great hurry to pick one up (in fact, I never actually did).  Then the Nintendo GameCube landed in 2001, and once again without a big new fantastic Super Mario game to back it up, I just couldn't work up enough interest to spend $200 on a new console.  There was something on the horizon that I wanted, and that would be the game that eventually became known as Super Mario Sunshine.  Until it was released, however, I decided to sit things out and wait.

By June 2002 a date for Sunshine had been set and when the price of a new GameCube dropped to $150 I decided to make my move.  While picking up the console from the store I made a snap judgment to buy Super Smash Bros. Melee as well.  I chose it primarily for the positive buzz about its single player adventure mode and because, at the time, it was the only game available that seemed to contain the most fun.  I wasn't expecting too much.  I'd played the original Super Smash Bros. for the N64 and wasn't exactly overwhelmed.  I took my new purchases home, hooked it all up, and turned on the game.  The game's opening video clip started up, and in that single moment the metaphorical giant white-gloved hand of Nintendo reached out from the television and yanked me back into the world of video games.

Super Smash Bros. Melee kept me occupied until Super Mario Sunshine arrived later in the summer.  I ran through the adventure mode with each available character which just unlocked more characters with which to run through the adventure mode.  I built up my smashing skills in order to whomp the CPU-controlled characters so I could unlock new stages.  I went hunting for trophies.  I dived into the whole Smash Bros. experience, unlocking and exploring as much of the game as I could possibly discover.  Aside from a game rental here and there, Smash was the game that ate up my GameCube time (and I absolutely loved every minute of it).

I don't play the game as often these days, mostly because I've unlocked just about everything and done all I can do in single-player mode.  I do get a little multiplayer mayhem in now and then, however.  At E3 2006 a few of us from AMN had a friendly little after-hours tournament one evening at the hotel.  It was a perfect way to blow off a little steam and recharge after long days of pacing up and down the convention center, proving once again that Super Smash Bros. Melee is the perfect party game.  I bought the GameCube for Super Mario Sunshine, but it's Smash Bros. that brought me back into the gaming fold.

Secret Origins: Mega Man 4

For some reason a lot of people like to be the first to do something.  In the old days that meant being the first to climb a mountain or the first to walk on the moon.  Many of us will never have the chance to do those things and are limited to the little firsts in our own lives.  For some people that means clinging to getting the "first post" on a blog entry, but for those of us in the position of reviewing video games, we often get the chance to be the first among our circle of friends to play the latest hot game.  Look around the Internet and you'll find a bunch of game journalists posting photos of themselves (or their hands) holding the newest craze about a week before you'll get the chance to buy it for yourself.

I try not to shoot my mouth off about what I have that you do not (although I am still shamefully guilty of bragging from time to time), but back in 1991 on the elementary school playground I had the need to own the hottest new game before my friends.  It was a lofty goal that seemed almost unattainable, but then two events came together came together one week with remarkable timing: my father was about go on a business trip, and Capcom was about to ship Mega Man 4 for the Nintendo Entertainment System to stores.  I gathered my saved allowance money and handed it to my father as he left for Raleigh, North Carolina with a simple request: find that game!

Back in the day it seemed as if new video games took forever to reach my small hometown of Titusville, Florida.  It was as if games were shipped to the northern parts of the country first and would then slowly trickle down south.  Sometimes it took around three weeks for a supposedly available game to reach the local Wal-Mart or Sears.  If my father could find Mega Man 4 in North Carolina and bring it home, I'd be a good two weeks ahead of the curve on this one.  I'd have the blue bomber's latest adventure before my friends who had long lorded over me in the past with games such as Super Mario Bros. 2 and the original Mega Man.  At last, I would be "first"!

Dad came home a few days later with a fresh copy of Mega Man 4 in his suitcase.  I eagerly tore into the game that afternoon and battled the likes of Toad Man, Bright Man, and Pharaoh Man until it was time for bed, gloating gleefully as I fell asleep.  Tomorrow at school I would share the news of my latest acquisition and would gain the respect of my peers for playing a certain video game before they had!  The circle was almost complete... but then it all came crashing down the next day when I discovered that, for whatever reason, Mega Man was suddenly yesterday's news.  Nobody cared that I had Mega Man 4 a good two weeks before it'd show up in local stores.  Nobody wanted to come over and play.

I learned a valuable lesson that day at school, and it's a lesson I try to keep with me as time goes by.  It doesn't matter who has something "first".  Acquiring video games shouldn't be a race for acquisition; the game itself should be its own reward.  Mega Man 4 wasn't any better or worse because I had it before those around me, and looking back on it all what matters is that I spent a lot of time playing and enjoying it.  First, second, last... so what?  Snagging a new game before those around you is fine, but don't waste time bragging about it.  Use that time wisely and go play it.  Your friends want to hear what you think of the game, not the fact that you have it and they do not.

Secret Origins: Ghostbusters 2

All this recent talk of a possible new Ghostbusters video game for modern consoles has me thinking of the old games based on the franchise that I played as a child.  It would be far too easy to praise the fantastic Ghostbusters game for the Commodore 64 that I played relentlessly once upon a time, so instead the time has come to share the story about how I acquired what has to be the absolute worst game in my Nintendo Entertainment System library.

I was devoted to the Ghostbusters franchise in my youth.  I got my start with The Real Ghostbusters cartoon, and somewhere around the age of six or so I found out that there had been an actual Ghostbusters movie that preceded the cartoon.  My parents had kept that little fact from me for quite some time, concerned that the film would be too frightening for someone of my young age.  Eventually the movie turned up on television one Saturday night, and since all movies are edited for broadcast, they decided to let me watch since the truly frightening stuff would have been removed or toned down.  After seeing the film I became even more hooked on the franchise.  I started reading The Real Ghostbusters magazine every month, and it was in an issue from late 1988 I learned of the film's upcoming sequel, Ghostbusters 2.  As you can imagine, euphoria set in.

I began to amass all kinds of Ghostbusters merchandise.  I had the action figures (and their vehicles!), the slime in a can, the plastic drinking cup (still have that, actually), the novels based on the films, the Ghostbusters 2 activity books, the stickers, the pins... all kinds of things.  While thumbing through the other magazine I subscribed to at the time, Nintendo Power, my paranormal interests collided with my Nintendo obsession in a mention of an upcoming Ghostbusters 2 video game for the NES.  Predictably enough, rapture set in.

The Nintendo Power blurb wasn't very descriptive.  The two paragraphs of text spent more time talking about the upcoming movie than the game itself, and the lone screenshot revealed the Statue of Liberty swimming in the Hudson River.  Once I saw the movie in the theater on opening night (which, I admit, turned out to be too scary for me at times) I eagerly awaited the full Nintendo Power blow-out on the game that I knew just had to be coming.  So I waited.  Waited a long time, in fact.  No additional word ever came on the game beyond a brief mention in the "Pak Watch" list of upcoming games (where it was marked as coming in open-ended "future").  I had my allowance saved up and set aside for the game, and considering how amazing the original Ghostbusters game had been, I expected nothing but greatness from the sequel.

Sometime over the summer of 1990 while browsing the shelves at Wal-Mart I came across the game.  It had been released silently as far as I was knew, as Nintendo Power had not mentioned it again, nor had The Real Ghostbusters magazine offered up any useful information.  Still, there it was, hanging on the rack up for grabs.  True to form, I grabbed it.  Fifty dollars later I was gleefully headed home to play.  As it turns out, that moment would mark the most enjoyment I would ever get out of Ghostbusters 2 for the NES.

The game was a disaster.  The basic structure of the film was retained, but the soul was missing.  The game was a side-scrolling platformer that lacked platforms.  Ghostbusters moved from right to left across levels based on locations from the film, such as Van Horne station under the subway and the courtroom of Judge Wexler.  Ghosts flew overhead at times, and shooting them with slime from the slime blower could slow them down.  Dropping a ghost trap with the Start button sucked in any ghost that happened to fly overhead down into defeat.  The main issue, however, were the many random objects that bounded and flipped across the level.  For some reason things such as errant cowbells and flying irons dive-bombed our heroes, and neither slime blower nor ghost trap could slow them down.  Essentially, the characters spend the game being pummeled by unavoidable junk.  A single hit costs one life, meaning that the game was unbelievably unbalanced.

Levels that involved driving the Ecto-1A to the next destination faired no better, and the Statue of Liberty levels were a sub-par shooter trapped in a shoddy platformer game.  If our heroes somehow made it to the museum level, each individual Ghostbuster must traverse the level to make it to Vigo the Carpathian's painting.  Yes, that's right: in order to win the game I would have had to complete the same frustrating level four times in a row, each time with a different Ghostbuster.  I never have finished the game.  As a kid I grew far too frustrated to continue the madness, while now as an adult I find that I no longer care.

There is a happy ending to my Ghostbusters obsession, thankfully.  In 1999 I bought my first DVD, and of course it had to be the fifteenth anniversary edition of the original Ghostbusters film.  All those years later I finally saw the movie uncut and in widescreen for the very first time.  The franchise may have stalled, but the good times and happy memories are far from dead. 

Secret Origins: Maniac Mansion and Gremlins 2

Ever since the Nintendo Wii was released I've been flooded with games to play.  Reviewing games during a new console's launch window is hectic, as every week something new lands on my doorstep, plus let's not forget all of the games that I want to play for myself.  The little game cases are stacking up, some of which are still shrink-wrapped.  I've had Red Steel in my home for a month now and haven't had a chance to crack the seal! I picked up Psychonauts cheap for the Sony PlayStation 2 and haven't even thought about when I'll have the time to tear into it.  All of these games atop my television remind me of the time first time I was (from my young point of view) flooded with games to play and was faced with that eternal question: which game to play first?

As a child I would save up my allowance until I had enough money to buy a new Nintendo game.  Then I'd go with my mother on one of her monthly shopping trips to the Big City where we'd stop by Toys R' Us so I could pick out a new game from my ever-growing wish list.  It was a simple, unchanging clockwork-like process: save up $50, go to Orlando, get a new game.

In the later months of 1990 I had once again saved up $50, so the time had clearly come for another trip to Toys R' Us.  For some reason I cannot remember my father had to go to Orlando, so I arranged to tag along so we could stop at the toy store on the way home.  I confidently led Dad past the action figures and board games to the massive Nintendo aisle where dozens upon dozens of games were up for sale.  I began browsing the selection, seeking out the games on my list.  Fifty dollars... one game... what's it gonna be?  Alright, they have Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System!  And what's this?  It only costs thirty dollars...

Thirty dollars.  My young mind shivered for a moment.  This was new.  Games were supposed to cost $50.  They always cost $50!  How can a game only cost $30?  Why, I could buy this and still have $20 left over!  Unless...

I turned around from the NES games and looked at the Game Boy games on the opposite wall.  My eyes locked on to another game from my list, Gremlins 2.  And could it be?  Somehow?  Yes!  Gremlins 2 only cost $20!  I could afford to buy both games!  Two games at once... never in my wildest dreams had I ever imagined such a thing.  I mean, it's the kind of thing that you see on TV and in the movies and stuff, but you never think you'll have that chance for yourself.  I grabbed sale tickets for both games and was all set to go.  I excitedly explained to Dad how I could afford to buy both games with my savings, and after he said something along the lines of "it's your money; spend it how you want," we were past the register and I had two brand new games in a plastic bag.

Back at home I discovered the dark side of buying two games at once: which should I play first?  How could I ever decide?  There are just some decisions that a nine-year-old should not have to face.  In the end I tore open Maniac Mansion after considering the ramifications: if I played Gremlins 2 later, I could play Game Boy and watch TV at the same time, whereas Maniac Mansion would tie up the television, robbing me of the evening's prime time network lineup.  That was my decision and I stand by it all these years later.

Today the quandary lives on in the new generation: Red Steel or Psychonauts? 

Secret Origins: Castlevania

With the Halloween season fading into recent memory I cannot let the holiday pass completely without recounting my first exposure to my favorite of all "horror" games, Castlevania.  While your Resident Evil and Silent Hill may give more outright fright for the dollar, Castlevania has always relied more on theme and environment to give chills rather than an angry zombie eager to eat your brain.  While the series has evolved into a Metroid-type adventure in recent years, my first Castlevania was, fittingly enough, the original Castlevania, but the encounter didn't take place on the trusty Nintendo Entertainment System.

As a child growing up in the tiny town of Titusville, Florida circa 1987, the entertainment options were small.  We had a dinky two-theater movie cinema, one dead shopping mall, one nearly dead shopping mall, and (for a brief while) mini-golf.  Every now and then my parents and I would go out for dinner to the dead mall (home to a drab Sears and the aforementioned dinky cinema) and walk past all of the closed out and empty stores to a little local Italian place, Valentino's.  While most of the place was filled with tables and a bar, the back of the place was home to two arcade games, one of which was Castlevania.  I was well versed in platformer games by this time, so while waiting for the food to arrive I was allowed over to the games to drop in a few quarters courtesy of Mom and Dad.

I learned quickly that Castlevania was no Super Mario game.  Jumping on the skeletons and zombies didn't work.  By the time I reached the end of the first level I was fully taken in by the castle's torn red curtains and memorable music.  Everything about the experience just felt "right" somehow, and each time we'd go to Valentino's I'd set up shop at the Castlevania machine for a while before the pizza reached our table.  Time was always a factor while playing, because as soon as dinner had arrived it was time to walk away and eat.  In the year or so I spent playing the game before meals I'd only ever managed to reach the third level of the castle.  That's the point where the difficulty began to increase and, inevitably, dinner would be ready.

Eventually I learned that Castlevania was available for the NES.  At the time I was borrowing the NES on loan to my father from Nintendo, and since actually buying games didn't make much sense at the time (since the NES would one day have to be returned), I rented them instead.  Once I found Castlevania at the local Movie Gallery I rented it as often as I could.  It was during the rental sprees that I finally reached the mummy bosses of the third level.

After the NES was returned I saved up my allowance and gift money to purchase my own console.  For whatever reason, by the time I could afford my own copy of Castlevania in 1988 the game was nowhere to be found.  Leave it to my parents, however - they found a copy late in October and slipped it in with the other goodies I'd gathered on Halloween.  Now that I had my very own copy of Castlevania I knew I could surely work my way to Dracula!  Unfortunately the bosses of the fourth level, Frankenstein's Monster and Igor, put a stop to that plan, and it was actually ten years later that I finally defeated the ghoulish pair and moved on to the next level.  I started my Castlevania training at the age of seven and didn't actually finish the game until I was seventeen.  How's that for gaming longevity?

I moved on to the sequels, of course.  Most of them are great in their own special way, but I always find myself returning to the original Castlevania.  Maybe it's the relative simplicity of the game that keeps me coming back, or maybe it's the familiar music, or maybe it's the fact that after all these years I know each and every passageway, monster, and power-up in the game.  For a game about the undead Castlevania definitely has a lot of life in it.

Secret Origins: Darkwing Duck

By 1991 the Nintendo Entertainment System had become the center of my entertainment universe.  I had a closet full of old Nintendo Power magazines, had slept on the Super Mario bedsheets, carried notebooks and folders with Link on them to school, and consumed my share of snacks shaped like famous Nintendo characters.  One afternoon my Dad and I were out running errands, and somewhere while driving from one store to the next we started talking about the future of video games.

Now, this wasn't a very deep conversation.  We weren't talking about how someday in the future we'll all be waving controllers around in front of a sensor bar and downloading optional levels to store on a hard drive.  Instead we were talking about video games and how, someday, they might be able to teach as well as entertain.  Now, even by this point there had been edutainment titles.  My elementary school was loaded with Apple IIe machines that taught spelling and math skills, and my own Commodore 64 at home was used for learning as well as fun.  But the issue at hand was about the actual NES itself and how, according to my father, it had no educational value.  His opinion was that it would never be able to teach anything of value.  I countered that not only could it teach, but there were already games to do so.  We went back and forth on this for a while, and eventually he proposed a bet.  If I could prove that there were educational NES games, he'd buy me the game of my choice.

Now, everyone should know never to make a bet with a child.  Dangle a free video game in front of a child (especially myself at age ten) as a prize and you will lose that bet.  Sure enough, once we returned home I plunged into my Nintendo Power archive and pulled out the proof of educational gaming: the Miracle piano developed by Software Toolworks.  The magazine had recently published a small feature on a piano keyboard that could be connected to the NES and a special game pak that actually taught people how to play the piano.  The Miracle was a very specialized piece of equipment, certainly, and you wouldn't find it in your local store, but that didn't matter in the terms of the bet.  I presented the article to Dad, he read it, and then admitted defeat.  The next time we went to the store, he'd buy me the game of my choice.

While Nintendo was the center of my universe, one of the non-gaming characters in orbit at the time was Disney's Darkwing Duck, an animated spoof of superhero characters that pit the egotistical Darkwing against a variety of comical Batmanesque villans such as Megavolt, Liquidator, Dr. Bushroot, Quackerjack, and F.O.W.L agent Steelbeak.  Capcom had just released a NES game based on the cartoon, so it was obvious which game I snatched from the display case on the next trip to Wal-Mart.  The game, while fun, turned out to be woefully short.  After just seven levels the game came to an abrupt end, and while it doesn't see much replay these days in my home, it still reminds me of one of the times that I outsmarted my father.  Thanks again, Dad!