Nintendo – Page 5 – Gomi's Nostalgia Site

The Legend of Zelda at 25

A couple of weeks after I got my Nintendo I went shopping with my Grandma Rentz to buy a system for my cousins. We searched all over Augusta but either the stores had never heard of a Nintendo or they were sold out. It seems that in 1987 most places weren’t giving video games a chance after the crash of 84. We finally found one at a department store called Sky City. While Grandma was checking out I was looking at the games in the glass counter. As I recall then there were just a few but one stood out. It was gold and it had an awesome name, “The Legend of Zelda”. Apparently my Grandma saw the look in my eye or maybe drool on my chin and she bought it for me. I bet she didn’t realize that 24 years later I would still be playing it. Thanks Grandma.
Zelda helped me and my Dad bond when I was in high school since he loved playing it as much as I did. The first week we had it I woke the old man up at 3 in the morning because I found the power bracelet. Much to my mothers surprise he got out of bed and had me show him where it was. Dad and I used to compete to see who could win the game the fastest. We averaged about 3 hours to complete both quests without dying. People would call our house to get help with the game and if I wasn’t home Dad could tell them what to do.

One night Dad was playing and he got a fire call. He was the chief of the local fire department and he just paused the game and we took off. About six hours later we come home to find Link in the same spot. Mom was scared to mess with it and ruin Dads game so she just muted the television and read a book. Good times.

Click the image to the right to see a fantastic banner showing the history of this remarkable series.

The Nintendo Virtual Boy

[singlepic id=359 w=320 h=240 float=right]Here is a photo of my Virtual Boy. This particular console was supposed to be a portable device and was the first to display 3D graphics. Unfortunately is was ahead of its time and not very portable. It used red LED’s since they were low power and LCD’s didn’t have the refresh rate needed to display the image clearly. If you ever played the original GameBoy you would remember how the LCD screen would get blurry during fast paced sequences. The system barely lasted six months on store shelves before Nintendo pulled the plug, releasing only 14 games in the United States. It’s considered Nintendos biggest failure. Due to the fact NOA only shipped an estimated 800,000 Virtual Boys finding one of these beauties in good working condition makes them a nice collectible. There was also an issue with the system giving people headaches due to the eye strain. To help with this issue the games are paused automatically to give you a break every 15 minutes or so.

I always wanted one of these but couldn’t afford the price of them back in 95. I was in college and would stop by the local Toys r’ Us and play the demo. I am now looking up the schematics to build a link cable so that I can play Mario Tennis head to head.

UPDATE: I played Mario Tennis for about 15 minutes and yes, you will get a headache. I totally understand why this thing was a flop.

Here is a video showing the opening of Mario Tennis.

I wish I had made this

This video pretty much sums up why this site exists.

I love the Power Glove. It’s So Bad.

I was able to get my hands on this one finally. It’s the infamous Power Glove made famous by the movie The Wizard. Back in 89 my buddy Kurt had this thing and we never got it to work. I hooked it up last night and guess what? I still couldn’t get it to work right. It is a total fail but it looks cool in my collection.

Continue reading “I love the Power Glove. It’s So Bad.”

Look at what I found

A buddy of mine gave this to me years ago. Once upon a time Nintendo was going to make a CD player for the SNES but the deal fell through or something and it became the a stand-alone product aka the CD-I. Part of the deal was that Phillips could use some of the Nintendo characters in their games. There was a horrible Mario game called Hotel Mario, and three Zelda games. Continue reading “Look at what I found”