Nintendo Entertainment System

This morning Hog, Bromka and I ran an easy 5.5 miler on the Charles. It was a good recovery run from the workout yesterday, and we saw Tufts Alumni Jason Burke, which was pretty cool.

But, the real purpose of this post isn't running. It's Nintendo. Specifically the greatest Nintendo game ever created by man. Yes, I realize Mario 1, 3, Mike Tyson's Punch Out, Tecmo Bowl and Tetris rank pretty high. My personal favorite, however, is Super Contra.

I mean, just look at the game. You have two dudes, with gigantic automatic weapons, bulging muscles, and camo gear on. They're standing in front of bad-ass looking robots, and some alien head in the background. (It can only be assumed that at somepoint you will be on a mission to kill the alien head as violently as possible.). Immediately you want to play this game. Even if you haven't played it's predecessor, Contra (the original), you still want to play this game. And what a game it is....



The basic premise of this game is that you are on a mission to kill anything that moves, and advance through each level before you run out of lives or continues. Levels increase with difficulty, and robots are slowly replaced by more intellegent, dangerous, and difficult to kill aliens.

Click here for a short video of the first level that I took tonight... (be patient, it may take a moment to load.) If you pay attention, you'll notice that I kill 11 robots in 16 seconds. That's a pretty solid time:death ratio.

The height of my Contra skills peaked when I was in 3rd grade. However, I never beat the game. This has haunted me for much my adult life. Having beaten Mario 1, Mario 2, and countless other Nintendo, and Nintendo 64 games, I know the pure ecstacy that's associated with beating a game that you've put your heart and soul into. No game has taken up as much of my time, energy, or frustration than Super Contra. I had always vowed to beat it, but during the last 6-8 years, this vow has faced a serious obstacle....

Anyone who owns a Nintendo knows what I'm talking about. The blue screen. The grey flashing screen. The game that won't start. The game that starts and freezes. The game that starts but slowly succumbs to the little blips on the screen and eventually becomes unplayable. You blow on the game. You blow into the Nintendo. You repeat. Again and again in a futile attempt to revive the machine that brought you so much joy as a child. Eventually you become fed up and leave the grey box in the corner of your basement, untouched for months.

Well, with a little help from the internet, I was able to solve my Nintendo woes. Inside the machine there is a 72 pin connector piece, which, apparantely after nearly 15 years of use, doesn't like to work so well. So, I replaced it. Now, the Nintendo works like new, and my quality of life has increased significantly. Basically, the replacement required me to do some open heart surgery on the Nintendo, which was actually a lot easier than I thought. Old part out, new part in. Voila. Man, it was like magic when the game started on the first try. (If you have a Nintendo that's been on the fritz lately, I highly recommend investing $15 in a replacement connector... it really works.)

So... I'd say Contra is going well so far. I've advanced to the 6th level, which is farther than I've ever gotten before. This is encouraging. I think with some real dedication over the next few weeks and months I will be able to beat the game. That will be cause for some serious celebration. Once Contra is done, I'll move on to Mario 3, another game that's tormented me since the 2nd grade. If and when I beat these two games, a serious chunk of my life goal list will be fulfilled.

That's it for now. I'm running the 1500 or mile on Saturday at Tufts (don't know which they'll run) and looking forward to the long weekend.