Day 3! Of the year, of Bloganuary, and of the rest of our lives! If we all keep the pact we made that terrible night and never speak of it again, Susan.
January 3rd:
What Is Your Earliest Memory?
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Believe it or not, when I exclude the things that may not have actually happened to me or may have been dreams or could just be one of the many lies our brains concoct because SOMEBODY has to look out for us, I think my earliest memory of something I can objectively verify has to be playing NES games with my big brother; specifically Sesame Street 123 (the UFO minigame still creeps me the fuck out, due in large part to the music), Metroid (which has a sense of melancholy, echoing mystery I’ve never seen anywhere else), Duck Hunt, Mike Tyson’s Punch Out (no Mr. Dream in THIS household), Ice Climbers, copies of Gumshoe and Gyromite that we could never figure out, Super Mario Bros. 1-3, and Donkey Kong Jr. Math, which I could never figure out, and what I’m declaring now and forever is my favorite NES game, the entirely impenetrable Rygar (go watch that video, Rygar fucking rules, makes absolutely zero sense, and was eating From Software’s breadcrumbs-plot-sword-and-sorcery lunch 30 years before they even got to the cafeteria.) This would’ve been in probably ’93 or so, so obviously we hadn’t kept up on the exciting developments from Sega or Nintendo.
It’s interesting that of all of those games, which informed so much of my perspective on gaming and comprise so many of my memories, none are RPGs, which is far and away my favorite genre and has been ever since my cool cousin from Sweden sold me his PlayStation and copy of Final Fantasy VII. It was all downhill from there; it’s a straight line from Tony giving me a deal before he went back home to me refreshing the Square Enix store website in the vain hope that they’ll open preorders back up for the physical edition of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster Collection with the vinyl soundtrack and the figures.
(Technically the NES port of Rygar, which is an entirely different game from the arcade version, does have RPG elements, but they’re as completely inscrutable as everything else about it; I couldn’t even wrap my head around them on the Switch’s Virtual Console version last year. Also I guess Metroid could kinda count if we allow that Samus’ health-canisters are HP, etc., but that’s a different conversation that might need to be its own post.)
Well that was fun! And a little sad, but in a nice way. End of post!
–The Bageler