Monday, May 12, 2008

Goombas and Troopas and Bowzer, oh my!

Back when I was a kid, Super Mario Brothers was the greatest game that ever existed and to this day, I would still rank it pretty highly. My brother and I would spend countless hours in front of the tv playing this game with the hopes of saving Princess Toadstool. For whatever reason, I don't think we ever actually accomplished this task. It certainly wasn't for a lack of trying, and we probably only gave up when the SUPER Nintendo was released and we were in awe of the amazing 16-bit graphics that this new system provided.

I recently got a Nintendo Wii for my birthday (thanks Mom and Dad!) and one of the neat features of modern gaming systems is the ability to purchase games online and download them directly to the gaming system. The online catalog of games contains both newer releases as well as classic favorites. While scrolling through the selection, I came across the original Super Mario Brothers. It was at that moment that I realized resistance was futile. I was going to download this game.

I've put in a decent amount of time playing this game lately too, and it is truly remarkable how much of it I can remember. I sometimes look back through my high school and college classmates on Facebook and can't remember a decent number of them, and I have pretty much no recollection of anything I learned in Organic Chemistry (assuming I ever really understood anything in that class anyway). Heck, I usually can't remember what I ate for lunch the previous day. But for some reason, I immediately remembered the exact brick to jump into in world 1-2 in order to get the 1UP mushroom, and that the warp zone to world 4 was hidden at the end of this level. And while it may seem to be a trivial accomplishment to some, I can finally say that I have rescued the princess! An accomplishment over 20 years in the making....




Oh yeah, and I STILL hate those little hammer-throwing turtle guys.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I bought myself the Wii as a graduation present. One of the first things I did was download Super Mario Bros. After all of this time, the game is still lot's of fun, and level 8 is still a bit hard. I might have to leave work early today to go home and play!!

Anonymous said...

Man, are you and Jenelle still in different states?

Anonymous said...

I guess a congratulations is in order?

It is funny how, come test time, you can't remember a damn thing, but 20 years later you remember where a tiny invisible mushroom block is.

Anonymous said...

And being that you all have Wii's, here is my Wii number
7797 7138 2853 1751

Post yours so I can make your people march in my parade. Hopefully someday they'll actually have something useful for their online capabilities.

Anonymous said...

The Brew Crew ID is 1530 5251 6554 7175...

-NB

Jason said...

Our Wii number is 3265 6157 1737 8916