Looks Like Ben Is Buying A PS3 This Month

More info here.

Ben's original love letter here.

My Five Favorite NES Games

Due to personal circumstances, I may be the only dude in the geek universe who didn’t get to see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World this weekend, but I’m super-psyched to get to the theater hopefully next weekend. So as not to feel completely left out, however, I thought I’d bust out a list of my five all-time favorite video games for the original Nintendo Entertainment System, many of which influenced big chunks of both the Scott Pilgrim series and film.

I was the kid who was always about a generation behind when it came to video games. When everybody else had an NES, I had an Atari; when I got my NES, other folks had moved onto Genesis or Super Nintendo; I finally got an N64 in like 2003 when my buddy Matt got bored with his and let me take it to college. None of this ever really bothered me, though, as I had plenty of friends who had the latest goods and it was fun to head over to their houses and check out the latest (even though it always sucked when their moms would yell at us to get some fresh air).

By the early-90’s when I did pick up my first NES, I already had a bunch of titles I wanted to grab myself or borrow from pals. Later on, in college, my main man Jordan brought his system to school our sophomore year when we were (practically) neighbors and he had about a zillion games, so that was a whole new renaissance. From both those eras of Ben’s gaming, here are the five elite jams (and my memory is crap, so as soon as I publish this I’ll remember a dozen others I loved; I’m already wondering if I should have included Nintendo Golf, Double Dragon, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six…).

5. BUBBLE BOBBLE
This was a crazy little game I used to play with my little sister in one of our major sibling bonding experiences of our early years.

You and whoever you played with (it was definitely way better as a two-player game) were two little dinosaurs who could blow bubbles (hence the name) and then use your noggins to move said bubbles around or pop them, solving puzzles and defeating bad guys. There were hundreds of levels to wade through and tons of neat variations that made for a fun lengthy gaming experience and a swell way to kill an afternoon.

4. SUPER MARIO BROTHERS 3
There’s no way you can chalk up the weirdness of the Mario Brothers franchise to just Japanese culture or whatever. Super-powered plumbers in a land of evil turtles who get special powers from mushrooms and flowers? I’m sorry, but there’s definitely more than meets the eye to all that, and some day I hope there’s a tell-all on where the heck it came from.

But regardless, pretty much every game in the series from the 80’s to today is a winner and great fun to play. Especially in the early games—the even-weirder-than-usual second one aside—there was a pretty consistent formula of straight ahead challenges and kinetic fun that carries through to the most recent installments.

Super Mario Brothers 3 is the one I most fondly remember with crazy stuff like the raccoon suit and the sprawling level maps; definitely a prototype of many great games to come.

3. ZELDA II: THE ADVENTURE OF LINK
Years later, I’d whittle away countless hours of my life playing A Link to the Past in my friend Matt’s basement for Super Nintendo, but Adventure of Link was the first Zelda game I really dug and one I’d rediscover years later as a college student.

Most Zelda games appeal to my love of mythology and appreciation for puzzles and other challenges that made you think beyond just jumping on mushrooms or punching bad guys. I never really appreciated the first Zelda because the bird’s eye view was a bigger knock for me than it probably should have been, but this one was mostly side-scroller, so I was all good. I also really liked being able to upgrade my different attributes as Link by beating different levels, something that wasn’t commonplace in games back then.

The other cool thing about Adventure of Link was that I turned out to be insanely good at it when Jordan and I popped it in, so I earned my amigo’s respect.

2. TECMO SUPER BOWL
Football has always been one sport I really enjoy watching and part of me would have loved to have played, but I was both too scrawny and pretty terrible at it, so instead I ended up a wrestler since there you’re always up against guys your own size no matter how tiny you are.

However, football video games have always been the refuge of “love-but-can’t-play” types such as myself, and Tecmo Super Bowl (not just Tecmo Bowl, there’s a difference) remains for me the bar by which all others are judged.

Even back in 1991, most football games were already starting to adopt the QB’s eye view look, but as an avid side-scroller man, I appreciated Tecmo stacking the linebackers on top of one another and keeping it looking like Mario playing football. It certainly made it easier for me to perfect my “run all the way back out of the Shotgun and throw a Hail Mary” strategy as Jim Kelly that I still use to this day playing Madden. TSB allowed crazy junk like that as well as 50-yard field goals and more.

TSB was also one of the very first game to actually work with the NFL to license team and player names, so you didn’t have to ID your guys by just numbers and suffer through generic colors to label your squad. It also made it much more satisfying when you could knock Phil Simms out of action on a nasty blitz. The regular season mode was ahead of its time and you could also pull lopsided trades to create dream teams and enjoy awesome cut scenes whenever you notched a touchdown.

1. MEGA MAN 3
I had the sort of bizarre relationship with Mega Man 3 only a 9-year-old with the beginnings of future anxiety disorders can have with a video game.

It was prominently displayed for months at Wellesley Video (my local video store pre-Blockbuster Invasion) and I wanted to play it in the worst way, but I didn’t have a Nintendo at the time. When we finally got an NES, my parents got me Mega Man 3 as a Christmas present (I think) and for some reason I got really scared and didn’t want to take it out of the package. So it sat in my attic or something for weeks and we ended up giving it away to one of my cousins or something—to this day I have no idea when 9-year-old me was thinking or why this went down the way it did, but oh well.

Down the line, I ended up renting the game, as despite the weird trauma, it remained my holy grail of gaming (clearly my parents were very patient people). I spent hours navigating its extremely tricky challenges and somewhat sluggish controls (man jumping was hard), but it was super-rewarding when I finally got the hand and started taking out Robot Masters.

Years later, Jordan and I would go nuts trying to blast our way through the entire Mega Man series anew, and again I remember the third game, with the debut of Rush and Proto-Man, plus some truly great bosses like Spark Man, Gemini Man and of course Hard Man, standing out.

Even though it could be frustrating as hell, I definitely dug on the fact that Mega Man was more difficult to win than a lot of other NES games of the time. I was also grateful that it was among the first to have a password function—basically the first iteration of a save feature—so you didn’t need to beat it all in one sitting (which would have been nigh impossible, but most early video games did indeed demand just that). I also loved the cartoonish yet cool look of the characters—very comic book-y and indeed very Scott Pilgrim these days—as well as there being a back story I could latch onto with Dr. Light, Dr. Wily, the mysterious relationship between Mega and Proto, et al.

So it took a bit of a lengthy and strange path to find its way to me, but I would say Mega Man 3 is probably my favorite NES game of all-time.

AIM Adventures: Million Dollar Idea

Ben just had a great idea and needs some feedback. Fortunately, Alex is on AIM...

Ben: Let me run this by you
Ben: Idea for a video game: fighting game where you can play as anybody from any Real World or Road Rules ala Marvel vs Capcom or Mortal Kombat vs DC
Alex: ooh
Alex: I'd play that if you throw in the Jersey Shore people as unlockable characters.
Ben: Yes! I was also thinking about incorporating The Hills, but possibly as a second game
Alex: Hm. I'd play that.
Ben: Right?
Ben: Eric Nies vs The Miz? Who wouldn't want to see that
Ben: A Judd Winick/Puck grudge match?
Alex: Judd Winick vs. RACHEL
Ben: Judd Winick vs the world
Ben: He gets the first solo game, like how Sub-Zero got his own game
Alex: I support this
Ben: Glad to have you onboard
Alex: You have my full support with this project.

Remember the X-Men arcade game?

There are those who would have you believe that Pacman or Mortal Kombat or NFL Blitz or Ms. Pacman is the greatest arcade game of all-time, but these people are crackheads, liars and fools. The one and only true claimant to that prestigious throne is the legendary X-Men arcade game of 1992.

Those who experienced the magic in their youth know what I'm talkin bout (I'd include you kids with your emulators, but seriously, this was something you needed to do live and in color). The truly fortunate knew the X-Men game as that massive construct over in the corner that spread its action across two full-size screens in such a manner that characters went dark if they ran across the middle too fast. You recall getting to one of the six joystick arrays as fast as you could and being sure to have plenty of quarters in tow, lest you lose your spot or have to leave to refill and then come back with only Dazzler available to play as (crammed up in the corner spot where it was nigh impossible to see the action no less). You remember not caring that Sentinels were the same size as you as you dispatched them by the dozen and not asking why the Juggernaut needed some sort of bazooka.

The X-Men arcade game followed Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Dazzler--provided you had at least five friends--as they battled through the streets of (maybe) New York, the Savage Land, multiple high tech bases and elsewhere trying to save Professor X and Kitty Pryde, who had been kidnapped by Magneto. In addition to being able to punch, slash and kick, each character got a special mutant power that you stored and saved for the bosses (or when you were fighting too many lizard dudes and got frustrated). Of course since Wolverine just being able to pop his claws wouldn't be too visually impressive and you didn't want Colossus to be flesh-toned the bulk of the game, Wolvie got "adamantium laser claws" that shot big ass beams while Pete flexed his metal muscles to release a huge energy spark and yell like a constipated grizzly bear.

It was awesome.

Another thing that was awesome was the graphics. It was 1992 and we had just barely gotten our minds wrapped around Super Nintendo, so even for an arcade game, X-Men had and incredibly slick, vibrant look plus wicked G.I. Joe-quality animation sequences. But as killer as the graphics were, the sound was even better, as the boom of this game echoed through the arcade, which rocked since it was ridiculously quotable, whether the Blob was insisting "Nothing stops...the Blob!" or Wendigo was screeching his name time and again as you beat the white fur off him.

I've got two very vivid memories of the X-Men arcade game. The first occured one summer somewhere in the neighborhood of 1993 when I was like 11 and at Camp Frank A. Day. At the end of every July, we would take a trip to the Riverside amusement park (today Six Flags New England) for a day of rides, games and bad food. However, what I would get most excited about, being averse to heights and shitty at getting rings around milk bottles, would be holing up in the big ass arcade and stretching out the $15 they'd give us for the day at the X-Men arcade game. This particular year, I had to have been at the game for hours, alternating characters as I ran to get quarters, but teaming with the same group of seven or eight kids to get all the way to the end. It took us hours, and we barely noticed that a massive thunderstorm had formed around the park, shutting most everything down (that we were in an open air structure and failed to note the massive quantities of rain and huge lightning crashes I like to think speaks to our dedication and nothing else). I was mindful of the time and that I was going to miss the bus back to camp if we didn't clear Asteroid M pretty soon, but as we were on the precipice, the storm surged and knocked out the power of every machine in the arcade. When it rebooted, there we were, crestfallen and back at the opening screen.

I believe it was the next year that my family took a vacation to Disney World and nestled in the tiny game room of our Polynesian-themed resort hotel I located a more modest version of the X-Men arcade game with only one screen and four players. It was rare that there was anybody else around the game outside of occasionally my little sister, so for the most part, I wound up playing the game myself, which I had never really done before. On the smaller screen and able to select your player as opposed to the characters being married to a particular location, I developed a new appreciation for Cyclops, who I had previously stayed away from by virtue of him being the upper left-hand corner guy. His optic blasts were way easier to control than just about any other mutant power and the guy had a mean jumping spin kick for a lanky white dude. All on my own I never made it to far into the deep levels, but I did rack up killer high scores as Cyclops that got erased each night when the place shut down.

It wasn't until college that I made the miraculous discovery that the X-Men arcade game was actually based on an aborted 1989 animated pilot called Pryde of the X-Men. Neelless to say I hopped right on eBay and made that sucker mine; it has been a prized possession for several years now. A whole other post would be required to expound on the virtues of Australian Wolverine calling Toad a "bloody dingo" and creepy child molester Nightcrawler hitting on Kitty Pryde, but some day soon I will find the strength.

Bottom line: my wedding is coming up in about a month and a half and if you can find one of those coin-op suckers, it would not be an inappropriate gift.