My Nintendo turns 20
By Will Bartos
Monday. Jul 09, 3:22 PM
The system that started my downward spiral into video game fanaticism is two decades old.

Wow, it’s really been that long! Honestly, if it weren’t for the giant gray and black box, I probably wouldn’t be writing this.

I still remember the day I actually got the system: June 14th, 1987. I don’t remember a whole lot of birthdays that well, and I often forget when Father’s Day is, but that date sticks to my head like hot glue.

I was living in Arizona at the time. I was introduced to Nintendo’s 8-bit powerhouse back in 1986, and I just HAD to have one. By 1987 I was introduced to many of Nintendo’s beloved franchises and crazy games, including Super Mario Bros., Mario Bros., Kid Icarus, Ice Climber, Metroid, and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!. I wanted a way to get it, and my parents didn’t just want to give me one.

I actually earned my money every day from my parents. I did this for about a year until I had about 48 bucks: nowhere near the amount of money needed to get a NES. Then came the godsend I wanted: my grandparents decided to fork over the rest of money. With saved money and check in tow, we went to get my NES, which turned out to be a sort of present for making it through the second grade (yeah yeah, I was an eight year-old only child: of COURSE I wanted the stupid thing!).

I ended up getting one of the more popular sets that Nintendo released: the Nintendo Action Set. For those not familiar, the Action Set had the deck itself, two controllers, a Zapper light gun, and a double cartridge holding Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. This set was also released before the toy gun laws came into effect, so my old Zapper is the old Nintendo gray as opposed to the florescent orange guns that would come out later.

My library would increase many times over the next 20 years, mostly through Christmas and birthday presents. I also ended up getting lucky many moons later and raided a local Funcoland (before Gamestop ate them completely), picking up about 10 games a visit. Currently, I own about 99 individual titles. I still have people come over oogling the vast collection, all of them saying the same things: “YOU HAVE THAT?” “I REMEMBER THIS!” Or “HOLY SHIT!” The facial reactions are all the same. If they could get their jaws to drop like in the cartoons, they probably would.

My original NES deck is still around, even though it has been long since replaced with another deck, as well as the next generation systems that followed it. I’ve also taken apart the system, finding mass oxidation on the contacts, finally understanding why the blinking screen comes up so much now. I’ve found kits on the internet claiming to get rid of the oxidation. If this is true, believe this: my 20-year-old Nintendo Entertainment System will live again.

Will Bartos

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