they say you never get over your first love
well, i've never gotten over the nintendo 64 games console.

i was only about eight years old when my parents bought our first nintendo. before we'd had a crusty old sega megadrive (me and my sister had often spent many hours mesmerised by sonic and his friends) which was, by now, so ancient that the games crashed after five minutes and you had to pull the cartridge out and puff frantically into it, hoping to unsettle some of the sediments of dust, grime and play dough.

sonic and his friends were quickly replaced by mario, toadstool and bowser (not princess peach, she always seemed a bit suspect). i cant lie... an eight year old and a six year old are not going to get very far. we managed to defeat bowser after a couple of months but i had to wait until i was eleven before i had the dexterity with the controls to collect all 120 stars and meet yoshi on the roof (a complete and utter let down).

then ocarina of time came out. OH ... MY. that was it. i was completely infatuated. i completed the game in record time, waited a couple of months then re-did the whole thing again making sure id painstakingly completed every task, collected every skulltula, saved every villager and upgraded every weapon. there were numerous punch ups over whose turn it was to play on the game but as eldest, i had a good half an hour after my sister had gone to bed where i could sit and adventure to my heart's content. best of all, when you completed your quest, there was the best ending sequence. it simultaneously filled my little heart with joy and broke my heart ... why couldn't link stay in the future with princess zelda and get married? why? WHY??

it turns out i am not as big a nut as someone else. since then, we got a gamecube and (to my disdain) a nintendo wii. but i discovered that my mum, of all people, has kept the nintendo console and all of our games. this is the same woman who cannot send an email but can still absolutely thrash me at mario kart. what an inspirational lady!
(ladyintheradiator, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 2:56, 1 reply)

I broke mine out of storage the other month.
Ah, to be able to play Perfect Dark without the shitty mouse action of the N64 emulator again...
( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Fri 5 Nov 2010, 7:54, closed)