Back In Time; The Old School

by Shawn Conley

I was thinking to myself last night as I was booting up my Xbox 360, how come this takes so long to load up. The thought has entered my mind many of times as I sat down with a nice cold Pepsi to play the latest and
greatest video game. I mean I have to sit here and wait for the system to boot up, then I need to tell the dumb thing to play the game disk, then I have to wait for the game to boot up, then I sit there and hit start at least 40 times just to get to the menu. Once at the menu, I need to sign in my profile, then I have to select the saving device either hard drive or
memory card, then it has to load the save game, so ten minutes later I am finally playing my desired game.
What am I getting at? I don’t know just rambling. But I do remember those days when I would take close to 30 or 40 minutes blowing in a dang cartridge, banging on my Nintendo Entertainment System, taking out a Q-Tip
with alcohol and grinding that solution into the bright golden teeth. Only to finagle the cartridge in, push it down and then receiving the blinking
red light of death. Nowadays everything has to happen NOW. If it takes more then 3
seconds for my cell phone to load the ‘New Message’ screen for a text, I get frustrated. The Internet, don’t get me started. I am ready to reboot if it takes more than 5 seconds to load the dang google.com site. It was simpler times back then. I mean I could sit down right now,
take Super Mario Brothers, and still play through it like riding a bike. I remember every time to jump, where all the hidden coins are, and the 1-Up mushrooms. Back then when having 3 games to play was a royalty, I would be happy playing the same game over and over again, trying new things. Like Super Mario Brothers 2 for instance, did you ever try to beat the entire
game using only Luigi.

Nowadays I have the finances to play and buy basically any game I want. Even if I don’t leave my house I can download games to play. But I find too often not having anything to play, how is
that possible?

I remember back in grade school, and this is a true story. We were on a field trip; I want to say to a museum, as you can tell I never paid attention. Anyways, I had two pennies in my pocket as we walked past a wishing fountain. First wish was to have every single GI-Joe action figure.
That dream never actually came true; it could though if I wanted it to. I use to have a WWE wrestling ring. Forget trying to use the stupid WWE wrestling figures to wrestling with. None of them ever moved. Okay so Savage could do his off the top rope elbow, but could I really justify an entire match between JYD and Savage, with Savage only performing that move.
Brutus Beefcakes ‘bendy’ figure had one finger pointing on one hand. Okay finger to the eye, that is cool once or twice, but the whole match. Now that I think about it. Did Brutus even have a finishing move? I remember him getting a pin against Windham and Rotunda by using their manager’s lit cigar on his cheek. But I think Valentine always got the pin.

Back to the GI Joe’s I had my own wrestling league. I created my own roster, my own champions, every night I would have my own matches. The new Storm Shadow was my heavyweight champion. He was the veteran of the group. I can tell you that Iceberg, I think that was his name, he gave the best dropkicks. Don’t ask me why. Dr. Mindbender reminded me of Tito Santana. Man he would hit you with the flying burrito ‘forearm’ from anywhere in the
ring. My dad had an old little stool from WMMS with the buzzard on it. I used that for Scaffold matches. It worked perfectly. I even created a belt out of notebook paper and covered it in electrical tape. Sorry.

Alright back to the wishing fountain. I launched my last penny into the fountain wishing to own arcade copies of Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace. I accomplished the Dragon’s Lair game, had it for PS1 I think. Space Ace I downloaded for MAME on the PC. To be honest I downloaded arcade games that I remembered I use to pump quarters into at Chuck E Cheese or that damn
arcade next to the movie theater at the Great Lakes Mall. I still have the games. Do I ever play them, NO.? I probably should. I mean infinite quarters for Ikari Warriors or UN Squadron? Midnight Resistance, one of the best arcade games of all time, if you haven’t played it, check it out. I have all these games at my grasps but never play them. I mean playing with
a PC controller on a 19 inch monitor is not the same as standing at a cabinet, having the smell of B.O. in the air, smashing the fire button and drinking an 80 oz soda.

Anyways just some of my random thoughts. Nothing has to make sense on a blog does it? I will leave you with this. Watch Robot Chicken. If you have the chance. Hilarious. It will take you back to yester-year. I just saw a remake of Cannibal Run, with a guy from M.A.S.K., Bo and Luke Duke in the General Lee, some GI Joe’s in a vehicle. Etc…… Funny stuff.