My Childhood Bedroom — Just as I Left It in 1989

Oh, hey there, random artifact from my childhood that inexplicably materialized on the nightstand in the bedroom I grew up in.

I can’t decide if this is more or less strange by virtue of the fact that I came home in possession of a brand new Mario game in which he once again has a magical raccoon tail. And by “strange” I actually mean that bittersweetly nostalgic sense of wondersad.

Mega Surprise

I like video games, and I like being surprised. That's why today brought good news on both fronts with the revelation that a beloved childhood past time, the Mega Man series, will return to the consoles of Nintendo loyalists in the form of Mega Man 9 — a new sequel to the original series that began in 1987, in the earliest days of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Surprise number one: a new installment of a series that hasn't been officially updated since 1996.


Even more notable that merely continuing the series, however, publisher Capcom has chosen to do so in an unusual way: with the graphic style of those antiquated, first-generation NES games and not in the flashy way that newer systems are capable of. Thus, surprise number two: decidedly retro graphics. It's an odd move, but for a lifer like me, it's a welcome one in that it further supports my belief that game designers have wisely chosen to capitalize on the gaming nostalgia and mine the past twenty years of blips and bleeps.

For comparison's sake:

Mega Man 3: an oldie but goodie

Mega Man 8: sporting a bit more detail

Mega Man 9: looks old, is new, makes drew happy

The retrotastic look, however, doesn't mean the game doesn't take the series forward, if only by a small step. For those who never played through a Mega Man game, the formula is simple: As the titular hero, you shoot and hop through eight levels, each of which end with a duel with a Robot Master end boss. Throughout each of the games, the Robot Master has a unique name and schtick to match. Despite the uniqueness of each, the Robot Masters share one common trait, which can be easily guessed by reading a list of them. Here is that list: Cut Man, Guts Man, Elec Man, Bomb Man, Ice Man, Fire Man, Metal Man, Air Man, Bubble Man, Quick Man, Flash Man, Crash Man, Heat Man, Wood Man, Needle Man, Gemini Man, Hard Man, Magnet Man, Top Man, Snake Man, Spark Man, Shadow Man, Bright Man, Toad Man, Drill Man, Pharaoh Man, Ring Man, Dust Man, Dive Man, Skull Man, Gravity Man, Wave Man, Stone Man, Gyro Man, Star Man, Charge Man, Napalm Man, Crystal Man, Blizzard Man, Centaur Man, Flame Man, Knight Man, Plant Man, Tomahawk Man, Wind Man, Yamato Man, Freeze Man, Junk Man, Burst Man, Cloud Man, Spring Man, Slash Man, Shade Man, Turbo Man, Tengu Man, Astro Man, Sword Man, Cloud Man, Search Man, Grenade Man, Frost Man, Aqua Man, Dynamo Man, Cold Man, Ground Man, Pirate Man, Burner Man, Magic Man, Oil Man, and Time Man. Quite a list, even if I’d be hard pressed to explain the difference between Fire Man, Heat Man and Flame Man. Did you spot the overriding similarity? If you did, know that it would appear to no longer be the case. According to what blogs are saying about Mega Man 9, the list of Robot Master includes one important difference. It reads as follows: Magma Man, Galaxy Man, Jewel Man, Concrete Man, Hornet Man, Plug Man, Tornado Man, and Splash Woman. Yes, a gynoid. A Fembot. A female Robot Master. Splash Woman might seem like a relatively unremarkable addition in the context of the seventy-some preceding her, but her presence is nonetheless a sign that the people who make video games have at least begun to acknowledge that they’ve been excluding an element for the past twenty years. Surprise number three: a move towards gender equality, even if it remains to be seen how intimidating some robot named Splash Woman could be.

I'll simply state surprise number four: Capcom will release Mega Man 9 for specifically for the Wii Virtual Console, meaning that I can obtain this pseudo-lost wonder the moment it becomes available.

Finally, I should note that news of the new "old" Mega Man comes not from the gaming blogs that usually tell me of such things nowadays, but from good ol' Nintendo Power, a magazine I read as a child but I figured had become irrelevant by now. (Well, to get technical about it, I heard it from the websites, which in turn heard it from Nintendo Power. But still.) Surprise number five: Nintendo Power not only exists but actually scoops the world of web media occasionally.

[ Source: Rockman Perfect Memories, the BBPS ]

Messages From Sahasrahla

When I'm home, I look through the boxes and folders under my bed, not so much for the joy of rediscovering forgotten keepsakes as for the amusement at seeing what my past self decided merited keeping. What's below — which I found, brought back to Santa Barbara, and scanned — I'd guess went into the box some time in 1992, after my tenth birthday. I'd received Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past that year, and I can remember opening the gift on the ride home from school that day. It rained, but I busied myself devouring the game's instruction manual. A given: Any time I had a game purchased for me when I was a kid, I'd spend the ride home carefully studying every word of the enclosed booklet, presumably in an effort to increase my appreciation of the game once I got home and inserted the cartridge into whatever Nintendo system I was playing at that point in time.

This particular Zelda game — the third in the series and a return to the wonderful gameplay that made the original so good, instead of the odd mishmash of overhead perspective and two-dimensional side-scroller that was the first sequel — included an additional booklet however, and one the likes of which I don't remember getting with any other game. This smaller booklet disclosed the secrets to solving many of the game's many secrets.

In the game, the hero, Link, receives advice and direction from an elderly sage with the unwieldy name of Sahasrahla. (Try making the average ten-year-old guess how to pronounce that. It seems simple enough now, but my mind just sorted glided over the name back then, without any regard to how the individual syllables worked together.) Sahasrahla actually doesn't do all that much in person, as I remember, aside from giving Link the speech that characters in each Zelda game give at one point or another: "You're the fated hero, you have to save the world, you don't really have much say in the matter." Sahasrahla also lends Link a pair of magic boots — as should any benevolent sage — and telepathically dispenses hints about the game's many dungeons. What my ten-year-old self apparently found noteworthy about the extra booklet was that it was written as though Mr. S himself were speaking to you.

Of course, I didn't know this at the time. Being the honest little adventurer I was, I heeded the warning on the front cover: "This booklet contains the answers to some of the toughest puzzles you will encounter during your quest as the legendary Hero of Hyrule. You should consult this booklet only as a last resort. At first, you should always trust in your potential to be the legendary hero and try to solve the game on your own." I did just that, up until the end anyway, and managed to figure out by myself, for example, that reading the Book of Mudora opens up the Desert Palace and that the apparent maiden in the seventh dungeon is actually Blind the Thief, a big bad in disguise. The Turtle Rock dungeon proved more difficult, however, and I eventually tore open the booklet's seal — a round gold sticker bearing the symbol of the Triforce, a triangular design that's been the logo of the Zelda series ever since the first game. I suppose the fact that I left the booklet unopened somewhere safe for so long helped it survive this long. I probably found the answer to whatever puzzle had me stuck and put the booklet back wherever I'd been keeping it. (Or, alternately, I looked up the solution to problem that wasn't in the book, by virtue of being deemed not hard enough. Just my luck, even then.) Whatever the case, this flimsy little booklet has endured.

I think this was a clever ploy on Nintendo's part, creating the excitement of having a book of secrets the players aren't meant to open unless under extreme duress and then framing the whole thing in the context of a special message direct from one of the video game's characters. I thought so when I was ten-year-old, anyway.

In the same box, I also found this:

It's an advertisement for yet another means of figuring the game out: Nintendo Power, the official Nintendo magazine. Its preservation still baffles me. At ten years old, I would have been subscriber to the magazine for four years and would have had no reason to keep this.

Blame packratism.

Previous Zelda nostalgia:

• A Fistful of Rubies
• The Legend of Zelda…Fitzgerald?

Giygas Attacks

An advertisement for my beloved Earthbound, which I believe ran in Nintendo Power back when the game was released.

I couldn't find a bigger version, so I unfortunately can't make the text readable, but I still really like this ad.