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Newest - Highway to Hell - DREEEEEEW!
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The Glorious Resurgance of the NES
Mike
Did you spend five hours on Sunday slogging through an old NES
game in an attempt to regain the lost youth of Saturday morning (the most
wailing morning of this or any week)? Even more to the point, did you do
this on a real-life original front-loading Nintendo Entertainment System?
Well, to those of you who might feel ashamed to answer "yes," I say "Rejoice!"
To put it mildly, today's video games are suck-tacular. Most of them are
uninspired and generally lack the incredible imagination of Solstice or the
Legend of Zelda. In fact, if it wasn't for the "anime" look, modern video
games would have literally nothing to draw on except the latest "revolutionary"
first/third-person shooter game with ever-more-realistic boxes that explode and
cooler splash damage. This is why Nintendo is
reaching back to the old days and bringing back the system that started it all.
Ganondorf was the King of Thieves long before
Kevin Kostner met Achoo.
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For starters, veteran gamers and young button-smashers alike can now play
classic NES titles on their Game Boys. And if there was any doubt that Game
Boy is the hottest system on the market today, consider that it is way cheaper
and all the games look like Super Nintendo games (which is the second-most
awesome system of all time). Nintendo has also released an entire line of
old-school NES apparel. I usually rock in to the office sporting some hot
Zelda gear (it drives the Hylian chicks mad crazy).
With the scientific advent of "emulation," anyone can discover the glory of old
school NES titles such as Metroid, Mario Brothers 3, and of course Xenophobe.
The younger generation is all about free stuff and stealing copyrighted
material, so they are drawn to emulation like groupies to Gene Simmons.
Typical XBox game. "Billy's Kool Qwest" simply doesn't stack
up against Final Fantasy.
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And let's not forget that as the first generation of kids who grew up writing
hilarious fan mail to Nintendo Power (my absolute favorite is the Nintendo Rap
sumbitted by Cory Cardwell and the Bearup brothers in Volume 22: "Double Dragon
is neat, but part two is better; You need to be smart or Vanna won't turn your
letter!" There's more, but I digress) become older and get jobs, they
naturally congregate together over the old NES system. Come on, admit that you
just played Tecmo Bowl with your pals from work instead of going to the popular
vice president's birthday bash at the Vu... it's okay, I played Super Dodge
Ball with my office mate just last week instead of taking my wife out on our
anniversary.
When you put it all together, you'll see that the NES is making a strong showing
in today's pop culture, but it always rocked the hardest anyway. And if you're
of the opinion that video game weapons-technology never advanced past the Metal
Blade, then join me in celebrating the return of the game system that Ted Nugent
would have made if he had finished his electrical engineering courses: the NES.
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