Tag: mario

Trinkets from the ’90s

We all have a To-Do List, and every time we make one, there is always something that we inevitably push off to the end. In my case, it was cleaning up the storage room in my apartment.

After months of “surface” organization, I got off my lazy ass this week and put in some real time. Having accumulated an array of materials from when I had first begun my undergraduate studies (and prior), what was expected to be a painful process turned out to be very enjoyable.

Among the mislabeled cardboard and storage boxes, I found an assortment of items that served as references to various trinkets from the ’90s and early 2000s (my childhood and teenage years) in what now seems to be a lost time.

I was hard-pressed to choose my top 10 favorites (in no particular order) in what I found. For those readers among my audience who were born in the ’90s (and possibly earlier) I hope we share common grounds in relating to these memories.

(1) Dial-Up Internet & MSN Messenger

The iconic screeching sounds of connecting (and re-connecting) to the World Wide Web so that I could chat with my friends via MSN Messenger after school is an enduring memory. I used MSN Messenger up till 2011 (when I was in the second year of my undergraduate studies at university) by which point it was done and dusted and Facebook had taken over.

(2) Trackballs/Boxed Computers/Floppy Disks

My family had one shared PC system hosting Windows XP and man was it the hoot to get some game time on it. The trackballs would get broken often and replacements were a frequent necessity. Floppy disks were the fashion while I was in elementary school, and it wasn’t until middle school (around 2006) that I got my hands on CDs (700 MB were certainly big storage back then), but it wouldn’t be long till  the USBs (and the GIGA-bytes) came into fashion.

(3) Cassette Players/Discman

On that vein, I would carry cassette players and discman all the way up to my early high-school years. These were the bomb, and unlike my first I-pod which seemed so fragile, these looked like they could withstand anything (and on many occasions, did).

(4) Boxed Television

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Not much different from the boxed computers. Boxed TVs were the fashion in my family until only very recently. In fact, the basement I lived in a few years ago, had a boxed TV that was compatible with my PS3. The graphics, on the other hand, were certainly not.

(5) 240p/360p

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Kids these days make too much of a fuss for videos that lack 1080p resolution. Back in my days, 144p was the king. Our eyes never really necessitated the measurement of focusing on resolution until the culture of pixel diversity kicked in.

(6)  Siruvar Malar

A callback to my childhood in India, I grew up reading the Tamil counterpart of what were children’s newspapers/comics. These magazines were my weekly entertainment and would be delivered with the Friday newspapers. The magazines would be peppered with folktales, crossword puzzles, brain twisters, and just about everything that made a kid happy. My grandfather collected over thousands of these magazines in what was a treasure trove of memories that I shared with him in my childhood. I can certainly attribute the origin of my aspirations to become a writer and comic-book artist to these magazines.

(7) Spinning Tops /Beyblade

In my hometown of Madurai, India, you weren’t a cool kid if you didn’t know how to spin a top. I would spend many hours learning the art, much of which initially involved slamming the top on the ground, before eventually becoming a street master. Dueling tops in my childhood in the ’90s would later transform into my love for Beyblade in the early 2000s.

(8) Slap Bracelets + Tazos

While I didn’t get to wear a watch frequently, I did get to wear these slap bracelets  along with a few of my “bracelet buddies” throughout my middle school days in the early 2000s. I would also host a gigantic collection of tazos during the Nintendo Pokemon craze of that time period. My family lived in Egypt back then, and unfortunately, my mother would throw the tazos away prior to our departure from the country. Despite their loss, I will always remember the memorable fights I had with my younger sister bargaining between Pokemon tazos as we became Lays chips (through which they were promoted) junkies.

(9) Multicolored Pens

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As a kid, I felt a certain amount of authority after buying a multicolored pen, especially when I had been frequently told that red/green/blue colored pens could only be utilized by teachers! These pens were just that cool. Even now, I would love to buy one just for the sake of it.

(10) Simpler Pleasures

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In conclusion, I got my storage sorted out, and in return inherited a flood of nostalgia on the simple pleasures that is my experience of the ’90s and early 2000s.

Retro Gaming: NES Classic Edition Review

My first experience of a video-game involved assisting a prince, hailing from Persia, on his mission to defeat his enemies and reunite with his beloved princess (third-wheeling taken to the next level). I achieved this while sitting on a plastic chair in a makeshift computer room built out of the lobby of our rental home in India. Not too shabby for a kid.

In retrospect, I count myself lucky that my parents were able to afford a computer, albeit secondhand, with such technology being a luxurious commodity in the neighborhood we lived in (this was around the early ’90s). A few years later, my parents would purchase their own home, and following my eighth birthday my father would gift me a SEGA Genesis Console. The console came with several game cartridges detailed with vibrant pictures and game titles.

Each cartridge supposedly held 1000000 titles. For a kid who loved video games, this was jackpot. I was awestruck. I realized that even if I were to play all day long, I could never finish all the games. Instead, I decided to finish them one at a time. Sadly enough, the console itself wouldn’t last the challenge, crapping out a few months down the road. A decade later, I realized that this console was a bootleg version of the original. I should have known better especially since the 1000000 titles in 1 cartridge was pure hogwash, but 1000000 repetitions of the same 30 games (I have to give props to the varying permutations they used to make it seem that there were actually 1000000 games).

A perfect April Fool’s gift for your kid…I wonder if my father had been planning the same. 

None of the games even belonged to the SEGA platform but instead originated from the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console, otherwise known as the Family Computer or Famicom. Fast-forward to 2019, I would go on to purchase the small bundle that is the NES Classic Edition. Sold at a very reasonable price, the miniature version of the original Famicom, comes loaded with 30 classic Nintendo games (I made sure) in what is a retro blast from the past.

The original NES as launched in 1985 (Left), and the NES Classic Edition (Right) released in 2016.

My father once stated that I would eventually grow out of video games. He was partly correct. My current half-life playing a game on a console/PC is about 30-45 minutes before my brain switches off. It wasn’t the same with these classics though.

In modern gaming, one has the option to selectively spawn at particular levels and save their progress through a game. Things weren’t the same in the ’90s, where failure in a game literally meant you start again from square one. I’m guessing those countless failures contributed to my inherently stubborn nature to successfully finish any job that I’ve started be it household cleaning to actual experiments in the lab.

In that sense, the NES Classic Edition, provides a bout of nostalgia for all the 80’s and early 90’s kids who wish to re-indulge in the fantasy worlds that made our childhood. An added bonus is offered in tempering our unchecked anger when our character fails a jump and falls under the screen only to resurface back at Level 1.

Yeah…not gonna make that one alright. 

The NES Classic Edition remains available largely through Amazon for 100 USD (make sure to purchase the ones distributed by Nintendo and not by other third-party distributors) which offers the lowest price rates compared to other retail outlets such as BestBuy, GameStop, or Walmart.

Along with the classic NES controller (extension cords have to be bought in addition), the NES Classic Edition does offer a few updates. One can now save the game using suspend points with four slots allotted for each game, thus allowing one to save a perfect run for as long as it lasts with no danger of losing your progress. My personal favorite feature of the NES Classic Edition console is the option to switch between three different display filters:

  • CRT Filter: makes your display similar to that of an old TV, with its characteristic scan lines.
  • 4:3 Filter: the original NES game look
  • Pixel Perfect: each pixel is displayed as a perfect square providing a vision of the game exactly as it was to be visualized.

So, for those “old-time” gamers in my audience, and for those who are just as much interested in having a peek at the ’80s and early ’90s gaming landscape, give the NES Classic Edition a try.  It is no E.T. (the game) so I can guarantee you will enjoy it! For those who swing with SEGA or PlayStation, the classic variants for these consoles have also been released with preloaded representative games of their genre.

All in all, my review of the NES Classic Edition console is 5/5 in what is a fun ride through the past, and perfect for passing time during that lazy afternoon over the weekend.