wondermega
Member
Does anyone have any strong gaming memories of Thanksgivings past? These go way back for me, but I have a clear couple that will stick in my head until the end of my days.
1st up is Super Mario 2 on NES. A Google search says the US release was in October 1988, but I remember not being able to actually find one in a local store until just before Thanksgiving. I freaking HAD to have this game. I'd long since blown through the first one and anyone with a heads-up about this was expecting great things. I guess the first issue of Nintendo Power must have released some months earlier, so there was some expectation about what the game would look and play like; that is to say, quite different than its predecessor, but then we in the West didn't really have much knowledge that this was different than the SMB2 that had released awhile ago in Japan. Maybe, it's been so many years now, if I wasn't aware of it at the time, it probably wasn't much long after that word had spread.
Anyway getting my grubby mitts on this was a big deal. Even though it felt.. PROFOUNDLY different than the previous game, it was really exciting, it looked and sounded great, it was really weird, really fun. Mind you, this was released in a time when a sequel to a game (even a big one) sometimes meant a game that only thematically shared things in common with what had come before, so it didn't feel like a crazy slap in the face or anything. I feel like I must have played through the game pretty quickly and got to that beautiful ending game fairly soon, I remember the smell of my mother cooking the Thanksgiving turkey as I was putting Wart out to pasture.
It's pretty weird to think that it was only a year later that I got my hands on this magnificent beast. In my memory, it feels like a bunch of years had passed, but I guess it was only the one year, hard as that feels to admit. It had probably been nearly a year since I had heard of Genesis (originally referred to as Sega Mega Drive over here, as well, before the name change closer to release). I first got a look up-close at the machine behind glass at the Toys R Us display that summer, and a friend's neighbor actually picked one up and we played through the pack-in game Altered Beast shortly after that. It felt insane to see graphics that looked that detailed & colorful on a TV at home! And the control pads were just so huge and futuristic-feeling. I loved the NES with all my heart but even I had to admit that this felt like it was really the next big thing that I needed to get more intimate with!
Late in the summer, the game magazines started trumpeting about the new 16-bit systems (Genesis and Turbografx-16) and at center stage was Ghouls 'n Ghosts, it was touted as THE closest arcade-to-home conversion ever made, completely trouncing everything else by a long shot. I remembered playing the first iteration early on NES, and it was pretty neat, but this game looked like that on crack. Again, all these huge enemies - giant, wild level designs - all these crazy different weapons. We had plenty of games like this on NES for years, but never with anything approaching this degree of production value.
Of course by this time I had picked up EGM's holiday buyer's guide, where they gave you the heads-up on what the top games and systems were to look out for. I read that thing cover-to-cover probably 45 thousand times, I still have my much-loved, ratty-ass copy lying around in a box in the garage I'm sure. My excitement was through the roof - it was the probably the day before Thanksgiving break had begun, I remember going to a newly-opened Child World in my town (they were clearly taking aim at Toys R Us at being the biggest & best toy store at the time) and fueled by my EGM-enthusiasm I grabbed the Genesis and Ghouls. My two best friends came over that following Friday night, and we went through a bag or 2 of Doritos and just passed the controller back and forth for a couple of hours before finally killing the Devil at the end of this game. Again, our jaws on the floor "how can a home game look this good , and be this much fun?"
1st up is Super Mario 2 on NES. A Google search says the US release was in October 1988, but I remember not being able to actually find one in a local store until just before Thanksgiving. I freaking HAD to have this game. I'd long since blown through the first one and anyone with a heads-up about this was expecting great things. I guess the first issue of Nintendo Power must have released some months earlier, so there was some expectation about what the game would look and play like; that is to say, quite different than its predecessor, but then we in the West didn't really have much knowledge that this was different than the SMB2 that had released awhile ago in Japan. Maybe, it's been so many years now, if I wasn't aware of it at the time, it probably wasn't much long after that word had spread.
Anyway getting my grubby mitts on this was a big deal. Even though it felt.. PROFOUNDLY different than the previous game, it was really exciting, it looked and sounded great, it was really weird, really fun. Mind you, this was released in a time when a sequel to a game (even a big one) sometimes meant a game that only thematically shared things in common with what had come before, so it didn't feel like a crazy slap in the face or anything. I feel like I must have played through the game pretty quickly and got to that beautiful ending game fairly soon, I remember the smell of my mother cooking the Thanksgiving turkey as I was putting Wart out to pasture.
It's pretty weird to think that it was only a year later that I got my hands on this magnificent beast. In my memory, it feels like a bunch of years had passed, but I guess it was only the one year, hard as that feels to admit. It had probably been nearly a year since I had heard of Genesis (originally referred to as Sega Mega Drive over here, as well, before the name change closer to release). I first got a look up-close at the machine behind glass at the Toys R Us display that summer, and a friend's neighbor actually picked one up and we played through the pack-in game Altered Beast shortly after that. It felt insane to see graphics that looked that detailed & colorful on a TV at home! And the control pads were just so huge and futuristic-feeling. I loved the NES with all my heart but even I had to admit that this felt like it was really the next big thing that I needed to get more intimate with!
Late in the summer, the game magazines started trumpeting about the new 16-bit systems (Genesis and Turbografx-16) and at center stage was Ghouls 'n Ghosts, it was touted as THE closest arcade-to-home conversion ever made, completely trouncing everything else by a long shot. I remembered playing the first iteration early on NES, and it was pretty neat, but this game looked like that on crack. Again, all these huge enemies - giant, wild level designs - all these crazy different weapons. We had plenty of games like this on NES for years, but never with anything approaching this degree of production value.
Of course by this time I had picked up EGM's holiday buyer's guide, where they gave you the heads-up on what the top games and systems were to look out for. I read that thing cover-to-cover probably 45 thousand times, I still have my much-loved, ratty-ass copy lying around in a box in the garage I'm sure. My excitement was through the roof - it was the probably the day before Thanksgiving break had begun, I remember going to a newly-opened Child World in my town (they were clearly taking aim at Toys R Us at being the biggest & best toy store at the time) and fueled by my EGM-enthusiasm I grabbed the Genesis and Ghouls. My two best friends came over that following Friday night, and we went through a bag or 2 of Doritos and just passed the controller back and forth for a couple of hours before finally killing the Devil at the end of this game. Again, our jaws on the floor "how can a home game look this good , and be this much fun?"
