My life with Nintendo – Part 2

Here I am again with yet another post. This time I’ll be talking about the Nintendo 64!

My discovery of the N64 was a strange one. If I’m remembering correctly, I was at my cousin’s house. He didn’t own many games for it at the time, but he did have Pokemon Stadium in his possession. Now, looking back, I realize how boring of a game this really was. I mean, it was essentially a stripped down version of the Game Boy games. But at the time, I was freaking out that it was on a TV screen and not my tiny handheld.

I begged my parents to purchase an N64 for me. It took a few months, but there it was for my birthday – with two games in fact! Pokemon Stadium and the original Super Smash Bros. SSB was one of the greatest games I played for the system. It inspired many grudge matches between my friends and I that usually ended up with us playing for five hours straight in a one-on-one ninety-nine life match. Back then my prized character was Pikachu (duh), though with each new game, my main characters have changed.

The next big title was the sequel for Pokemon Stadium. It included all of the new Pokemon that had just come out in the new Game Boy games, Gold and Silver. I waited eagerly for it; again I have no idea why. There is an interesting story to be told here, however. Do you guys remember the Game Boy connector that allowed you to plug Game Boy games into the N64 controller? Well, in games like Pokemon Stadium, you could play your Pokemon games through the television by doing stuff like that.

One day, while playing around in my Silver version, my game glitched (Pokemon Stadium 2). It filled my PC boxes (where you store your extra Pokemon) entirely with Dittos… I have no idea why or where it came from. It also corrupted a few of the PC boxes, so if I ever put any Pokemon in there, they would change to a steel/bug type and know sky attack and water gun. Oh, and they were level zero… It also convinced my game that I owned Pokemon I know I didn’t. I won the top prize at the radio tower contest because of a Zapdos I didn’t own.

Alright, I have a confession to make. This is about the extent of my time with the N64. I owned around one or two other games – Pokemon Snap and Mario Tennis, I believe, but I never bought many of the prized games on the system. I played titles such as Golden Eye and Ocarina of Time, though I never actually owned them. The story behind Zelda was simply that I had friends who were overly into the games and it drove me nuts, kind of turning me off to the series for quite some time. GoldenEye… I have no idea why I never purchased it. I also enjoyed games like Mario Party, but again, the title never ended up in my collection. At the time, I was too in love with PlayStation to bother with the N64 too much.
Of course, now that I have a Wii, I can go back and play all those great games I missed. I’ve already downloaded Ocarina of Time, and am well on my way to finishing it.

My time with the Nintendo 64 ended when I sold the console, along with my Dreamcast for the GameCube. That story will come in my next chapter.

I hope you all enjoyed this post! What wonderful memories do you have of the N64?