Dear Readers,
At precisely 8:46 PM on Friday, May the 27th, my Nintendo Entertainment System was declared dead by a team of video game experts. (aka, me.)
It is survived by a Colecovision, an Intellivision, an Atari 2600, a Sega Master System, a Sega Genesis, a Sega 32x, a Sega CD, a Sega Dreamcast, a Super Nintendo, a Nintendo 64, a GameCube, a Game Boy, a Game Boy Color, a Game Boy Advance, a Game Gear, an Xbox, a PlayStation 2, and an empty place in my heart.
It is not known exactly when my NES passed away, but it died while I was off at college. I left the Nintendo at my parents’ house, taking with me only the current-gen systems (plus my Super Nintendo—goodness knows I couldn’t go a few months without playing Taz-Mania!). Alone it sat in my old room, amidst a sea of empty Mountain Dew cans and nice shoes that don’t ever get worn. Alone it spent its days, weeks, and months, with only a few assorted insects to keep it company. And they sure weren’t about to play Balloon Fight.
This NES was the very first system I ever owned. Well, “owned” probably isn’t the correct word; technically, it belonged to my older brothers. But it was the first system I ever played. It’s the system that weaned me on video games, that taught me that eating flowers makes me spit fire, and that jumping on turtles is a right good pastime.
And now it’s gone, and I won’t be able to play another round of Karnov until I find a new one.
Learn from my mistakes, my younglings. Don’t let what happened to my Nintendo happen to one of your consoles. Don’t completely forgo the classic systems of our past for the newer, fancier, soulless models of today. This is what GameCola’s all about, after all—making sure everyone remembers the older consoles can still be fun. Don’t let our past die of neglect.
Love,
Paul Franzen
Editor-in-Chief
e-mail: pfranzen@gamecola.net
