First experiences with videogames

April 25th, 2008 asgoodwin

I remember when I was younger, we always had video games. This isn’t literally true, but as far back as I can remember we did. Here’s a picture of me at about three playing with a computer (wasn’t I cute?). We used to have Lemmings and Wordtres, both of which were on 5 1/4” floppies.

After that, my older sister got a Nintendo (original) and I remember watching her and my dad play Dr. Mario before going up to bed. She and my dad also made their way through Super Mario 3, and I remember there were days when we couldn’t use the downstairs TV because they’d left the game on paused, since of course you couldn’t save. We also used to play the Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers game together. She was always Chip, and I was always Dale. Even now when I go to Disney and they have Chip & Dale out and about, I’m more excited to see Dale because he was my character.

Then we got Super NES. That lead to games like Nintendo Tennis, which we played without end against each other (my younger sister sometimes joined in, but not as often). We played F-Zero a lot too, which made me greatly excited when it came out for the Gameboy Advanced (my sister was very excited to play it too). We also got our first Mario Kart for that, and in that game we were the most competitive and vindictive. Hitting each other with red turtle shells could cause a fight that would last for days.

Our next system was Sega Genesis, and again we went back to cooperative games, and I would take the second fiddle. I was always Tails when we played Sonic the Hedgehog together – not that I minded, because Tails was cuter and could fly, and I was Donald when we played The World of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. World of Illusion was the first game I remember beating. There was this connected excitement between us as we worked together and finally beat it. This was during a time when we’d fight at the drop of a pin, and it was the one thing we really connected between.

Later we got Nintendo 64, which was our last shared system, but we didn’t really play much together. A few years later I got a Playstation 2, which stayed in my room, and my younger sister got a Gamecube, which stayed in the family room but was still primarily “hers.”

I look back fondly on those times we played video games together. It was probably the closest my older sister and I ever were - at least, it was the most time we spent together just playing.