Just a quick low-down before I launch into more Matt lore. We've started ripping up carpet in the house and using the hardwood floors underneath. I've also decided that I'll be writing a platform game as my next project.

But without further ado, here's what you've been waiting for!

My First Love: Nintendo

Ah, the Nintendo. Such a wondrous machine that could send one on fantastic adventures. My first encounter with the magical gray box was in the early '90s. I believe that one day Dad just showed up with an NES (rental). He got it all hooked up and slapped in Mario 3. My world was forever changed. I don't remember exactly how old I was at the time, but I'm thinking probably four or five. After the first encounter we would every so often jaunter down to Popingo (long since out of business) and rent a machine and good ol' Mario 3. Now in my mind this was a good as it got. I don't think I ever really thought of owning one (maybe in my dreams), so it was a complete surprise when that day came:

It was a usual day; I was waiting for mom to pick me up from school (yeah, I went to school at one time). She pulled up and I plopped myself in the backseat and next to me was a box and inside that box was an NES. My first thought was "Whoohoo! Another weekend of fun!" until Mom said "It's ours". My Uncle Dan had mailed us his old machine and game collection. I believe the games we had were: Top Gun, Spy Hunter, Mario & Duck Hunt. About a year later he also sent us Paperboy (which had apparently been sitting in his car). Needless to say I was probably bouncing off the walls with joy. The next big thing was the day that Dad rented the original Zelda (though to this day he denies that he's the one who picked it out). So that was that: I was a Nintendo Fanboy for life.

Over the years we expanded our game collection. We eventually bought Mario 3 which has an interesting story behind it. Apparently some guy bought it thinking it was an SNES games. Of course it wasn't so he took it to some video rental store (name escapes me) and they sold it dirt cheap. We also picked up some other games like Star Trek and Gauntlet II.

But after a while the same old games are, well, the same old games (though I still enjoy Mario 3 to this day). So I started pining away for the new kid on the block (which was about four years old at that point :-P): the SNES. Whenever we'd go to a store, if they had an SNES set up I'd be there playing it. At one point I actually had enough money to buy one... and then it went off sale. I was pretty ticked. My Uncle Dan was down and I know I tried to get him to give me enough money to buy the thing. DEEP DARK REVEALED HEREI even went so far as to write a priest friend of mine saying more or less:

"I broke a lamp and my mom wants me to replace it but won't let me do any kind of fund raising and I don't have any money. Could you lend me $50?"

Yeah, lying to a preist. Reeaaall smart :-P. Needless to say I didn't get a reply. I saw him a few years after I wrote that letter and I was afraid he'd mention it. Maybe he didn't see it, maybe he forgot about it, maybe he realized that I was a stupid little kid then because he never mentioned it.

But anyways, I believe it was that Christmas of that year, 1996, that my dream finally came true. I remember it like it was yesterday:

• rip rip rip * Me: (hold SimCity in hand) Why did we get an SNES game if we don't have an SNES? My thought process at that moment was: Well, maybe some games work in both NES and SNES. I was trying not to be too hopeful. Chris, a couple feet from me, was taking the paper off the machine. Well, screw that thought.

That was a pretty magical time. Probably the high point of my gaming experience. Not too long after Christmas we, Jeff, Chris, and I, were going to buy Yoshi's Island. I could have afforded it myself but, as happened earlier, it went off sale. But at the last minute Chris backed out to pursue his own whims and we couldn't afford it anymore. So I opted for Zelda: A Link to the Past instead. All I had to do was borrow a dollar from Jeff to make ends meet on that one. It was probably one of the best games I ever bought. It took me over a year to make it through that game (recently I beat it in about a week :-P).

There's a tale that I have to tell and not sure where it fits in chronologically, so I'll tell it here. I was pals with an older dude (I call him a dude because he was one) called Dick. I knew him mainly through the Knights of Columbus breakfasts. A side story: I remember one time when he came to school to drill my class on math facts. Everybody was appalled that I called him Dick "gasp You're supposed to call him Mr. Kamp!". He never had a problem that I called him, in fact, I think he got a kick out of it. But anyways, he would often bet me that I couldn't do something (and I usually couldn't). So one day he said "If you can make it through Link's Awakening I'll take you out to eat if you don't you'll buy me breakfast." Well, I nought him breakfast. But along with Zelda he also lent us Final Fantasy III and Donkey Kong Country (yeah, he was a dude ;-)). The next time I saw him I bet that he couldn't make it through my Zelda game (same deal, go out to eat or buy breakfast). Well he didn't make it through so one afternoon we went to Murphy's. That was probably one of the best afternoons of my life. I was glad that we did that before he passed away.

Somewhere in our SNES the N64 was released. I remember well playing Mario 64 at Wal-Mart and being absolutley blown away by it. 3D games were something I had never really thought about so this was something totally new to me. As with the SNES I would play any N64 I came accross. But it was never to be that we'd own one and thus I entered the Dark Times.

We had the Dell by that time and I was starting to get a sense of the vastness of the Internet and somewhere in there I discovered ROMs and emulators. I believe it was on a Zelda site that I first discovered them. So I got to thinking: If they have these ROMs of Zelda perhaps they have them for other games. Yeah... they did. I believe the next thing I got was Final Fantasy III. It went around like this for a little bit until one day I went looking for N64 ROMs. I found them and being on dial-up at the time was appalled at the size. Mario 64 I was able to get in one run when Mom and Dad were out and Zelda 64 I downloaded over the course of several 20 miute spurts when Mom would take Dad back to work (see the trend here?). But I didn't stop there, I also got Star Fox 64 and Mario Kart 64. I was a crazy little copyright infringer. Then came the big hard drive wipe (my fault :-P). I never really delved into emulation quite as much again.

Christmas 2001 was the next major step and probably the most shocking of all the Christmases: Jeff, Chris, and I all got our own Gameboy Colors (mine was purple ;-)). I couldn't believe that that was actually happening. It started with Chris opening his and I thought "Lucky butt". Then Jeff opened his and I was more like "Oh.. my.. GOSH!!". We quickly forgot about the fact that the SNES had been put up forever becuase now we had portables! Chris went on to own every GBC Zelda game there was (and they are good, good games too). We have such a large number of GBC games it almost rediculous. This came, hilariously, around my decline in the video game immersion. Out of the 15-20 GB games we owned, I had two.

We were happy for a year or more until all the good old SNES games started coming out for GBA (Mario 3, Yoshi's Island, etc.). That's when we started yearning for more (greedy little brats we are, eh? ;-)). One day last year I just upped and said "I'm buying a GBA whether you like it or not!" and mom said "OK". Well, that opened the door and everybody got GBAs (curse them, why can't I be on top? ;-)). Well, actually, that's a stupid question there because I do own the brunt of the GBA games now: Zelda: Link to the Past, Mario 3, Minish Cap, an eReader. Sometime this year, and I really couldn't tell you why, I decided I'd rather have an SP. So I used some of the money I got from felling trees to upgrade and I am really happy now that I did. Heck, even mom likes the thing :-P. It's the perfect portable: small, foldable, very sleek. I have a media player for it and so it's also my "iPod". My ultimate goal is to have all the games that I played as a kid on the SNES for my GBA and then I think I can stop there (Jeff and Chris went on to get DSes, I'm pretty happy where I am).

Now that the GBA stuff is out of the way there's only one last thing to cover: Gamecube. 2003 came and we had been console-less for a few years. The Gamecube was the new trinket so I made it my goal that Christmas to make sure I could squeak in a little Gamecube plug to the parents. I never actually expected it to work, but apparently it did. I was shocked to say the least. It's been fun to be riding the edge for a change and the games for GC are awesome. Mario Sunshine is every bit as fun as Mario 64, Wind Waker just rocks the house as does Super Smash Bros Melee and I'll be looking forward to playing Twilight Princess this fall.

So there you have it. Our journey towards Nintendodom got off to a rocky start but we're certainly in the thick of things now. And one thing I forgot to mention: It was probably Nintendo that sparked my intrest in becoming a game programmer (as you can well see it certainly played an integral part of my childhood). Looking towars the future I plan on owning a Revolution if not just to have all those wonderful NES, SNES and N64 games at my fingertips. That's all for this entry, tune in next time for: Memiors of a Kid.