Been getting some late 90s, early 00s nostalgia here in the last few days. Namely because, like the ocean, my nostalgia courses through me as waves. Sometimes, the tide is high, and I find myself spiraling all the way back to the early to mid-90s; other times, it's low, and I tend to drift towards the latter end of that decade into the first five or so years of the new millennium. Either way, no matter the tide, nostalgia is a feeling that dominates my interests on any given day and is probably the only thing keeping me going nowadays. Well, that and the ever-present idea that a new Animal Crossing game is always slated for the next new Nintendo hardware.
So, that said, we're going back to 1997. The year before the Pokemon craze hit the world. The year before Zelda 64 was released as 'Zelda: Ocarina of Time'. The year before we were given an interesting and unfairly hated rendition of Godzilla.
In 1997, I was still predominately using my Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, but the itch for new hardware had finally festered into a full-blown seeping sore as the concept of new console generations slowly began to become a thing in that little brain of mine. Going to rental stores and seeing what new 16-bit games were being offered alongside the likes of the budding assortment of CD-based games lining the same shelves always filled me with a sense of wonder and longing. Here were these strange, elongated video game cases that were unlike the cardboard and clamshell boxes of the 16-bit era. The sense of mystery about the console the games belonged to and the question of how I might even go about getting one.
I initially had looked longingly at the Sega Saturn. Particularly because it was its version of Mega Man 8 that adorned the shelves of Movie Max that always had me stop and pause as I made my way to the Sega Genesis or SNES games. That flashy cover art, the bright and colorful screenshots on the back. I wanted to play it so badly, but I was an understanding child, if nothing else, so I never made a fuss about wanting to upgrade with my parents.
That was, until the ads for the Nintendo 64 and its flagship title, 'Super Mario 64' started airing on TV.
Now granted the N64 had been out for some time by early 1997, but for whatever reason it hadn't been something that I immediately took notice to as Movie Max didn't immediately offer Nintendo 64 games right away, and when they did finally show up for rent at Blowout Video, the rental store within Super K-Mart, they didn't even have Mario 64 as a title, but oddly enough, they did have Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 6, an import that wouldn't even play on American consoles. It was as weird as Movie Max later offering the Japanese version of Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout as a rental, which somehow DID work sometimes on my Playstation, but that's not important to the story.
So, the Nintendo 64 was out in the open and running wide by early 1997 in my town. I remember going to both K-Mart and Walmart and seeing the consoles sitting behind glass lock-up cases, longing to touch one or, better yet, take one home with me. While that would happen later through a series of events that I am still unclear of to this day, I did get to rent a console from a friend of my father's rental store(The same guy gave us a copy of Mortal Kombat II for the SNES eventually), which is what I want to talk about now.
My first experiences with the next generation.
I don't remember the date exactly, but the timeframe had it around early 1997, possibly March or April, somewhere in there. My father had surprised me a rental version of the Nintendo 64 along with Mario 64 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy. It was brought home in one of those huge plastic cases that we just used to refer to as "camcorder cases," as that's what we always used them for. It had been lined with a thick foam to nest the control deck, the various hookups, and one of the strangest controllers to ever be produced.
Nintendo's lived a pretty comfy life up until this moment. The Super Nintendo and Gameboy had been an unstoppable duo in the gaming sphere, but the Nintendo 64, while remembered fondly by many, would mark the beginning of a bumpy future for the company as developers began to jump ship in favor of the Sony Playstation and its CD-based format. While I favored Nintendo greatly as a kid, the Nintendo 64 never really succeeded in getting its hooks in me quite like the Playstation did, which I got that very same year. And thinking about it now, I can only really think that it was the lack of RPGs for the N64 that had helped it sidle into its place in my gaming history as second fiddle, the only Nintendo console in my entire existence to ever be as such.
For the few days(and long nights) that I got to spend with the Nintendo 64, I was in a state of mind that felt otherworldly. I took to the jump from 2D to 3D with ease as I'm sure most kids had. I wonder if adults of the time ever had issues making the leap?
That first night, I had stayed up probably close to 4am just hammering away at Super Mario 64. Not really making any real progress but rather exploring the new sense of freedom that the third dimension offered. Tossing baby penguins off of mountains, discovering secret moves and just trying to see what I could really do with this seemingly infinite amount of possibilities presented by this strange, foreign realm.
And the whole while, I'd had a big old bowl of Corn Pops sitting beside me. Back when they still offered it in the foil bags, making the junk hit differently than other similar cereals. Nowadays, if I am sitting down to eat that rare bowl of cereal and it just so happens to be Corn Pops, my mind will immediately whisk me away to those late nights in 1997, Nintendo 64 controller in hand and Mario drowning at the bottom of Dire Dire Docks as I was too scared to swim back up to the surface after freeing the giant eel.
Later that summer, nearing my birthday, I would actually come into posession of my very own Nintendo 64 along with a brand new copy of Mario Kart 64... and then a Playstation that Christmas, but that is an entirely different ReCollection.
The Nintendo 64 era will be concluded in the next entry!
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