Posted on September 2, 2011
28 Years Later…
Today is my 28th birthday, and I spent the day looking up old NES games… not for any particular reason, and not necessarily because it’s my birthday, but because I can. Wikipedia is a wonderful place to kill time.
Just looking at the black NES boxes gives me a sense of nostalgia that almost makes me sad. Sad for all the years that have gone by, sad that I never truly appreciated certain things as I grew up, and even perhaps even sad that I couldn’t own them all! Not only that, but why oh WHY couldn’t I have kept the boxes all my games came in??
Early NES titles had that huge, pixelated picture of the game right in front of you, telling you what the game was all about, and only two small screenshots in the back for good measure. Even for the games I owned, I’d sit at our local Co-Op store and stare at the boxes they had for rent… maybe I thought the game would jump out at me if I stared at it long it long enough.
What's hilarious is that Mario is seen here, dying a fiery lava death somewhere in Bowser's Castle, shooting a fireball as a last ditch effort to kill... the wall. We didn't care, though. These boxes were awesome.
It struck me that I have pretty much grown up with Nintendo characters. Donkey Kong was released in ’81 to ridiculous success, and pretty much single-handedly revived a dying industry. Mario games surfaced shortly thereafter, and I’ve been able to follow almost every step of the way from there.
Scary thought, even though some would argue they remembered more, just from playing Atari and Intellivision as kids… a fair argument, I suppose.
Not much of a post, but a real one will come later!
Happy birthday again! I love the old-school NES boxes and wish that more companies had done that. Though Capcom and Konami had their blue and grey, respectively, which I always liked.
Today’s games should have throwback covers like this. I’d love to see Bioshock or Halo done in that style.