X-Entertainment's Christmas Season & Advent Calendar, 2008.

11/08/2004: Nintendo For Christmas, 1987.

Still putting together the next Macy’s Parade review, which’ll be up next Sunday. As those who’ve read the previous features know, one of the big points of glory surrounding these parades were the insane amount of holiday-themed commercials shown during the breaks. Thanksgiving’s true meaning notwithstanding, the occasion is important to most of us for three things: a day off, a lot of food, and the true ushering in of the Christmas season. After you sleep off the tryptophan, it’s time to start shopping.

So, to tide y’all over before the big feature this weekend, here’s one of the ads from the 1987 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade — a Toys ‘R’ Us commercial peddling the then still fairly new Nintendo Entertainment System, successfully converting the few remaining Atari boys to slaves of Mario. The NES had already taken off by the time the spot aired, but with the addition of several classic titles (some of which kicking off franchises that still exist today), Nintendo was about to take an even bigger chunk of the big money pie. Big money pies aren’t edible but can be traded for pies that are.

We kick off with a shot of a kid sleeping in the lower bunk, drifting off to slumbertown with a big goofy grin on his face. With no clear sight of the boy’s hands, we mustn’t assume prelim masturbation. Actually, he’s only giggling because when Mr. Sandman punches him in the face, he starts dreaming about Mr. Sandman punching him in the face. Only the second Mr. Sandman looks like a chocolate Bald Bull. Somewhere in this paragraph is something that makes sense.

Led by Geoffrey into Toys ‘R’ Us much in the same way God will lead you to the smoking section of Angelic Cloud #47 Level C after you DIE, the dreaming child envisions himself in the midst of every wee lad’s biggest fantasy. He’s gone to TRU before, sure, but never with a giraffe, and never after dark when there’s no other kids around to steal the good stuff a second before he can dive at it. This is the kind of dream that makes you protest ever having to be awake.

Notice how he doesn’t pay attention to the board games? If you’ve got a wish-granting giraffe by the balls and it’s your dream to direct, why waste time on Topple and Mouse Trap? There’s more expensive stuff to wrap your sleepy arms around, and to the boys of 1987, only one thing in the world mattered. Nintendo wasn’t a way of life, it was life. It’s for this reason that I can remember what the idiot fish who ate Mario were called but still cannot add, spell or tie my own shoes.

And thar she blows! Priced at an affordable 79.97 (actually much lower than its original retail), the Nintendo Entertainment System was the #1 gift choice amongst the four kids who didn’t get the thing a year prior. “Batteries not included?” Don’t recall ever throwing a battery into my Nintendo, unless they’re talking about those small gold pills we fed to busted Zelda cartridges.

The ad also promoted the Zapper (and by association, Duck Hunt), proving in plain view that nobody who owned the light gun could resist standing just two inches from the television for extra special aim. Other games were on sale for thirty bucks and up, while the assortment featured in the second pic displays some of my all time faves, including the irresistible Pro-Wrestling, starring King Slender and a mutant lizard whose finishing hold alternated between eating his opponent’s face and giving them a noogie.

Sleepin’ Boy Guy wakes up and compares dreams with his older brother, confident that he’s had the best dream in the history of dreaming. I can’t really argue with it, but hold out some skepticism as one would think his dream could’ve been even better had it incorporated a clown on fire.

Click here to download the commercial! (.WMV)

Wow, great ad. I was too young at the time to be cognizant (big word of the day) of how much Nintendo systems and games cost, so that’s cheaper than I thought. I forked over 70 bucks at Toys R Us for Perfect Dark when it came out. The blow was slightly softened by the fact I had a crush on the cashier there.

Chocolate Bald Bull… Hmmm. We’ve had gummy snacks shaped like Nintendo characters, now we deserve chocolates shaped like Nintendo characters! They probably have them in Japan. Lucky bastards.

Ahh, the original NES was like liquid crack, or at least what I imagine crack to be like…. Like every other 9-year-old in the US, I had to have one. But my parents weren’t about to spoil me- NOOOOOOOO. I had to "earn" it. They made a deal with me that if I earned half by doing chores (read: indentured servitude), they would front the other half. They said it would help me build good character or some crap like that. It took me friggin’ 8 months to get $45 bucks while my neighbor, Sherri, got one FOR FREE under the Christmas tree INCLUDING Zelda and Rad Racer…. that bitch. To this day, my parents claim I appreciated my NES much more than Sherri because I had to work for it- yeah right

And to think, one of my earliest game purchases was POPEYE. I chose it over ZELDA!! WTF????

I was never lucky enough to own an NES. I was told I was lucky enough to get Atari, and that after spending so much money on games for that system, there was no way my parents were going to fork over more money just to start all over. Sigh… I wasn’t even offered the Dutch system of earning half. Of course, getting my own VCR was a big day. Must have been about 1987 or so. Best birthday present ever.

i’m the lucky possessor of a completely illegal burned disc for the sega dreamcast that has all (read every single, ameri, euro, asia) nintendo game on it.

It’s been sweet, really nice, and cool, respectively (not to mention completely awesome and bitchin’) but this mini article blog deal can’t help to remind me that it doesn’t make me long for the old days of renting mario 2 and playing till my thumbs bled any less powerful.

…especially the Power Pad…which I cheated with by using my fists insted of my feet.

…hey, small request…anyone have any good pictures of the Re-Designed NES that they released on the dying days of the NES? You know, the one that looked like a bastardized version of the SNES?

…WHOO! I think that’s the first time a post of mine was replied to by Matt! I’m-a so happy!

Interesting fact: While King Slender is based on Ric Flair, the Amazon is actually based on Abdulla the Butcher. If you look close at his noogie move, you can even see him stabbing his opponent with a fork.

I’ve always been bitter about Nintendo’s neglect of the Punch-Out series from the last decade. Seriously, a Punch-Out game for Gamecube could possibly cure cancer. If John Kerry made a campaign promise that if he won, he’d force Nintendo to make a new Punch-Out, he would have won. Bush probably would have promised something lame, like a sequel to Pit Fighter. And I’m still disappointed that none of the Smash Brothers games have Bald Bull or Super Macho Man.

As for those two kids comparing dreams? Feh. I’ve heard better. A friend of mine once dreamt that he was the Green Lantern and he had to stop late actor Peter Lorre from strangling children in a daycare center. Now THAT is a dream.

I own an NES and its cool. I got it recently so I don’t have that many games but I do own zelda gold and FF1 which I am proud of. Oh yeah also Metroid

By the time I got an 8-bit nintendo snes was already out and super mario 3 was already like 3 years old. It was cool for awhile but then I gave it to my friend for his birthday because I got tired of trying to blow on it to make it work and then so did he so we took turns throwing it as high as we could in the air. In fornt of his house. Maybe you do appreciate things less when they just handed to you.

I’m still playing my NES. And buying the NES carts for my GBA. Well, not the ones that I have on e-Reader cards. Except ExciteBike, now I can create and save my custom tracks. Meanthewhiles, I am waiting with anticipation for the Atari Flashback, 25 really old school games in one console. Party time, fun time, yeah yeah yeah!

I totally remember this commercial, but I don’t remember the NES portion of it, which is odd because that thing was my passion (and still is in some ways).

I didn’t initially get an NES until Christmas of ‘88. I’m prtetty sure this was due to the fact that the NES just didn’t hit my small town in the mountains of California (my family lives in Sacramento now, but we were in the foothills at the time). My town was chock full of farm folks and the like, and I doubt the latest in technology would hit there right off the bat. The reason why I think this is true is because nobody in my first-grade class had recewived and NES until that Christmas. Dude, virtually every guy in my class got NES that year. It was awesome, because from that day forward, that was all us boys talked about (until my family, myself included, moved to Sacramento in the middle of that year, where I just talked about NES with every boy there as well.

Y’know, it could’ve just been that my parents were too cheap to buy it for me right off the bat. I’m not sure as to what the real cause for my late entry in the world of NES was. But I can tell you that once I received it, I forgot about all action figures and even watched less cartoons thatn I used to, because all I wanted was to buy and play NES games.

I got mine for the hell of it back in 1988… my nextdoor neighbor got his first, which made me bitch for one until we went to KB Toys, paid $200 and spent probably seven hours hooking it up until we realized hitting the shit out of the system made it work. Happy times.

I got mine in 1988 too…because I had to get my tonsils out and my parents finally figured they better cough up the dough for it. As I got out of the outpatient hospital, coughing up blood and shit, my mom diligently went to Toys R Us and picked up the system along with MLB. I would just alternate between hacking and hitting home runs, good times…good times…

Made me mad though because while I had to endure surgery for my NES, my cousin Matt got it like three years BEFORE and already had amassed like 60 games.

I would spend the night at his house and he was anal about the damn thing, so I had to wake up three hours before he did (not a problem, because he never stirred until around 11 a.m. or so) just to play the freaking thing.

That commercial brought back bittersweet memories. Does Toys’R'Us even have huge fancy commercials anymore? It seems like the toy store has almost died out in the past few years. They were always a good source of Christmas cheer.

Supposedly the koopas are named after iconic punk legends, Wendy O’ Koopa (with a sledge hammer no less) after Wendy o’ Williams and Iggy Koopa after Iggy Pop. I can’t remember anymore just cause I haven’t played it in a while. Not to say that’s it locked away in my parent’s basement.

Evan,
TRU is slowly phasing out toys and going with the more lucrative BABY’S R US stores. Both KB toys and TRU are losing money to Wal-Mart’s evil empire and the overall shift in the toy market (and by shift I mean when kids jump from 3 to 13). Sad but true….

Evan-Y’know sumthin’, I’m kind of wondering about that myself. I eman, I don’t think the toy store is dead. Hell, one of the Toys ‘R’ Us locations in Sacramento is actually being removed form its ghetto and a new one is going in at the suburb where my family lives (needless to say, I’m stoked, because that’ll be a Christmas-shopping haven). But still, do not remember seeing any commercials lately…no…wait a minute…there are those TRU commercials with Geoffrey prank calling other toy stores or something like that.

It’s basically an attempt to say "We’re better than all the other toy stores, and we want them to know it." I’d definitely say they have a better selection of the latest toys than any toy store I know of, but places like Kay-Bee typically have better prices. So there is a trade-off.

Oh my God!
Where can I buy one of these things?!? I’d leave my Pong in a second if I could get my hands on this "dream" machine!
Thanks Matt!

Croww-eBay is your best bet, but I’d try stores that sell used games first. Used record stores and even some video game stores are known for selling NES games and sometimes they’ll actually have an NES for sale.

Back on the issue of my reception of the NES, there is something kind of funny about how I came to receive it.

It was about a month before that Christmas hit, and my younger brother was always quite the snoopy one. And whenever my brother actually found something, he’d always have to come and tell me about it, and I’d always have to go and see for myself, because he had been known to tell the tallest tales sometimes (he once told me he had all the NES games hidden somewhere, but he wouldn’t let me play them, and I believed him, thus resulting in my fantasy of finding such a treasure). But to my surprise, in our closet, there was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen: It was an NES with a Power Pad and everything (and yes, I actually RAN on my Power Pad).

Once my Mom learned of our discovery (she could tell by the way we were dancing in front of the closet, and got us to confess our sin), she had us convinced that it was nothing more than an empty box (later on, I learned that that was the typical parental explanation for any gift of mine that I found beforehand). Disappointed, I still hoped for that NES that Christmas.

Sure enough, I got it. And after setting it up, I noticed how my Dad was particularly good at Super Mario Bros. Years later, I learned that weeks before that Christmas, my Dad would wait for my brother and I to go to bed, just so that he could bust out the NES and play it himself.

Obviously, the only one in our household who didn’t really want the NES was my Mom. Her excuse for making the purchase was that it would exercise my hands, thus improving my handwriting skills, which were horrid. Interestingly enough, it did just that.

Sorry, Matt. But I don’t remember this one either. I remember the early ones though with Rob the Robot. I remember reading about that useless peripheral. And you thought the Power Glove sucked. Here’s a brief history lesson. In 1984, the Great Video Game Crash hit. That was a sad year that saw the collapse of the video game market, caused by the availability of home computers (which also played games) and a flood of horrible titles. Stores lost money on video games and wouldn’t carry them. Enter Rob with the NES. It was nothing more than a Trojan Horse to get the system sold here in the US. It advertised the system as "robot games" not video games. Actually only two games were ever made for it.

My family recieved our first Nintendo (and our first real videogame system, period) during the summer of 1987 after spending months begging our parents for one and playing for hours on a friend’s console. I do remember that commercial, and quite well. I envied that kid. I’d always wanted to see a store after dark, especially something like Toys R Us.

Our original Nintendo (and the one that replaced the delicate machine) is long gone, but Grandma found another Nintendo a few months ago and some good games, including the gold "Legend of Zelda" and "Legend of Zelda II." She originally gave it to my folks, but they have at least three or four other systems and had recently gotten a Game Cube, so then turned it over to me. No complaints there. I’ve missed the original Nintendo. Now I can remember how bad I was at "Mickey Mousecapade" and "Metroid" and where the Warp Zone to 8-1 is on the first "Super Mario Bros."

The NES was a present worth crying for if you didn’t get it. I remember waiting with great trepidition for mine. My mom hid mine in a different kind of box then wrapped it up. I was so disappointed until I opened that box (in fact, a box for extra-large sweaters) and saw the NES in its 8-bit glory. I assume my parents got some weird kick off of tempting me like that… probably in revenge for the joke presents I used to give when I was 9.
But, it was worth it after… hours spent playing SMB, Metroid, Legend of Zelda and even Ice Hockey…

I remember this commercial vividly. I had my Nintendo by then, as did all of my friends, and I thought it was totally lame that they were even still advertising it.

Here in Colombia we had a cheaper version of NES with some games that were sold for about 10 bucks and had 5000+ games. The point is: The first ten games were different: the 4990+ other games were just something like "2250.- Mario Level 4 Mushroom
2251.- Mario Level 5 Mushroom"

You know, just after I got my NES (which I returned for one that didn’t have the registration already filled out:P), they introduced the SNES? Figures.
I have an NES, Atari 800 (one of their attempts at computers), CD-I, Game Boy Advance (and pocket), plus my PC and all sorts of games for each, and all but the computers I picked up just before the upgraded system was announced. (The Atari 800 was just on it’s way out.) I still have most of the games I started with for each, and I never have time to play any of them. ;_;

OH man what a memory. I actually got my NES the year after it came out as a bribe since My parents were trying to soften th eblow of moving from my neighborhood to some cheesey little boony town in California.
Nate ~ on a odd side note. That TRU store thats closing my store director at TRU is helping to shut it down. The way they are explaining the closings to us is that if you make your money your store wont close.
Great article Matt, you always make so much out of so little. its awesome. Can’t wait for this years Macy’s reviews.

Having been born in 1986, I grew up playing the thing. My neighbor and my cousins had one, and I could easily waste a couple of hours playing SMB, TMNT, and Batman. I got an SNES in 1992, but didn’t get my own NES until about 1994, when I bought a console and a load of games for only $20. Good times. Still got the sucker. Even went and bought six games I didn’t have last week.

I’ve got some old Nintendo commercials on tape, as well as a lot of other great ads. As soon as I decide I’m not too lazy, I’ll got buy me a 2nd VCR, and make a tape full of ‘em for you Matt. Watching an old tape a few weeks back, I can’t tell you how stoked I was to see one of the original Game Boy ads from 1989, a Super Mario Land commercial, an NES Action Set TRU commercial, hell, even an old Super Mario Bros. Super Show promo. I remembered all of them, too.

I am proud to say that my family didn’t have an NES until my my 7th birthday. We survived on the coat tails of the ATARI 7800 before that until we realized that the 7800 sucked ass compared to the NES which my neighbors owned. After seeing the original Mega Man played on the NES I was TOTALLY sold on the NES. That year we got the NES Control Set which came with NO pak in game but I recieved Baseball (which i know Matt reviewed before) and Ikari Warriors. The rest is history……I loved every moment.

Well…Toys R Us needs to can all the kiddie crap and just sell G.I. Joe, MOTU, and Transformers.

Ahh, wouldn’t that be the life? Getting to choose what toys to be sold… I’d definitely demand that they sell more figurines.

I agree — Bratz dolls, the 40 different kinds of Elmo, and those ugly BooBah’s HAVE to go!

Oh yeah by the way Fighter Hyabusa is worthless as is the "Mongolian Chop" of Kin Korn Karn.

Wow, imagine my surprise when I saw this! A week ago I emailed Matt and asked him to do an old school Nintendo review, or several! I hope you read that Matt, this makes me so happy, and apparently everyone else!

I don’t remember this commercial, but man I remember how EVERYONE had Nintendo (or as my one friend called it, INtenno) before me. Well, there were two guys in my Cub Scouts den that got it the same time I did - Christmas of ‘89. Man, that was a great fourth grade. In my opinion, the "Golden Age" of Nintendo, which lasted for about three more years until SNES got big.
Its okay though…SNES I didn’t get until spring of 2001 (just so I could borrow my friend’s Super Metroid!) but I was thinking the other day how that was the last "innocent" game system. Before the ratings came out, and it was all good natured fun.

My earliest NES memory is being six or so when my dad bought it for my older brothers. The two games we started with were Super Mario Bros. and Ice Climber. That’s why I’m the ONLY guy on earth who was excited to find out that the Ice Climbers were in Smash Bros. Melee.

God bless Starman, and his cheap ass flying forearm. They should make an update to that commercial. Have the kid as an adult, searching TRU for Marvel Legends. But what’s this? A nightmare demon disguised as a fat scalper has cleaned the pegs! Ah, but surely Geoffrey here can remedy things! "Sorry Timmy, if you want your Deadpool, you have to be willing to get fucked in the ass via Ebay."

I recieved my NES as a Christmas present in either 85 or 86. It came with ROB, Gyromite, and Duck Hunt. ROB the robot "died" (no longer functioned whatsoever) after about two days so we became very adept as using two controllers so we could play this game. Everyone had a NES (almost) a few years later but game swapping was never my thing. Once bitten, twice shy. But I rented plenty and bought alot too like Worldrunner 3D, Kiwi Kraze, Solomon’s Key, Rygar, Black Bass, Contra, Gemfire, North and South, Ikari Warriors, Excitebike, Dragon Spirit etc, etc. We racked up hundreds of dollars in late fees playing Solomon’s Key through the years until finally my father broke down and bought it as a present for my mother who was addicted to it.

Those were the days… no one obsessed over "game genres" and games were often selected for their box art than nowadays when you read like 1,000 game reviews before making a selection. Ah well…

I know this is kinda off-topic, but is just me having memory loss or has Cobra’s Chia Plots - Part V really never been done?

@spooky: I doubt it has _every_ game… like the multicarts, or the wisdom tree bible games… or the new kids on the block prototype… cheetahmen II, or tons of others… a nearly complete collection of nes roms is like 2.5Gb or more.

I feel sorry for any child not blessed with a NES. Even today… in my agedness… I still fire up my NES to play mario, or The Immortal… or Metal Gear/Metroid/Any other NES game I own…

@marioshoku: I do believe the "chocolate bald bull" was actually in reference to the reuse of sprites in Punch out. Due to the limitations of only having 8Kb of CHR ROM.

I never had an Nintendo.
I’ve bought an Sega Master System ( the first model ).
Are you NES-fans going to kill me now?

Dang it, Matt, when are you going to do a tribute to the DiC kid-in-bed logo? It’s one of the weird things of childhood that you haven’t reviewed or made fun of!

Sorry…
Posting again.
For the record, I never had an NES or SNES and I didn’t get a SEGA Genesis until 1993.
The only Nintendo system I have is the poorly conceived Game Boy Color, which went out of style as soon as Nintendo stole the design for the SEGA Game Gear and created Game Boy Advanced.

I don’t remember exactly, but I think I got my NES Christmas of ‘88. I was born in ‘83, So I pretty much grew up with the Nintendo culture.

I remember beating the "practice" mode of Double Dragon II every morning before heading off to school. I also remember borrowing games from friends, and having a bunch of people over to play games.

I never had that many games (at least not then…now I’ve got over 50 and counting), but I sure did have fun playing them.

Then the SNES came out, and everything changed. The Nintendo culture which was once so dominant began to fade. With the advent of the 16-bit war, the oneness that made the Nintendo culture was no more. Before, you either had a NES, or you didn’t. But after SNES and Sega came along, some people had a NES, others had a SNES, some had both, and some had a Sega Genesis. Oh well…It was fun while it lasted.

Phunqsauce, don’t slam the Atari 7800. It’s a good system and hell, if it had been released in 1984 as planned instead of 1986, it might have given the NES a run for its money. For what it’s worth, the Atari 7800 Double Dragon is more like the arcade game than the NES version.

Speaking of Atari, did you know that they were originally offered the opportunity to market the NES outside of Japan? It was not to be due to a scandal at the 1984 Consumer Electronics Show. The Coleco ADAM computer was shown off playing Donkey Kong. Nintendo owned the console rights to the game, but Atari owned the computer rights. Nintendo threatened to sue Coleco and Atari threatened to sue Nintendo. This fiasco caused the cancellation of the deal to market the NES and the rest is history. And so was Atari after that…

Reading this article made me reminisce of all the good times I had with that thing. My bro & I would get a lot of the two-player games so we could play at the same time and not kill each other wanting to play first. I loved the power pad, & loved the gun. I still have the NES but the damn thing barely works. Thanks for bringing back the memories Matt!

We had an Atari, but it was more something my older brother was into. I grew up on the beloved NES. I remember getting my NES Christmas 1985. My two brothers and I hounded our parents for one, which we got to "share" as one of those "after all the other presents are opened there is one mondo secret one hiding somewhere not under the tree". We were totally stoked, then fought incessantly for one of the only two controllers. 2 controllers, three brothers. It just didn’t work out. We had to be put on a schedule to use it or we ended up throwing controllers at each other and never doing our homework. In my Christmas nostalgia I bought a NES from ebay only one month ago. Been playing lots of Dragon Warrior, SMB, and Guerilla War. Good times! My wife never had a NES, though she played her cousins when she could, and now is hooked on Dr. Mario. And if any of you didn’t know, you can fix the blinking on that old NES unit in your closet. Search "NES 72 pin" on ebay. Works great! These are getting more expensive, not less, due to becoming a collectible.

Has anybody had the cajones to try the new "spiced" pepsi-cola, looks like shit, but i belive matt could fall on this grenade for us

About TRU… So far, there’s nothing set in stone, although I do think that a handful of stores have phased out Kids R Us (clothing) and Imaginarium (the "educational" toys.) But right now, they are pretty much waiting to see how they do this Christmas, and hoping WalMart don’t kick their ass too bad.

The store I work at is no where NEAR phasing out toys. We’ve had more freight to deal with than last year, and most of it is Elmo, Bratz and RC Cars — just to name a few. We are actually getting more toys in than we know what to do with. The stockroom is packed.

Oh, and we’ve been doing very well with our sales of late, also, so that’s another good sign.

I can’t believe something so precious as the fate of TRU might rest in the hands of something as evil as Walmart. Back in the day Geoffrey would’ve wrapped his long neck around Walmart untill it choked to death. And now.. this monster wants to destroy us, the Toys R Us Kids? Us who were so powerful that we brought He-Man, Care Bears.. and STRAWBERRY FREAKIN’ SHORTCAKE back from the dead? Well, MonsterMart, you might fool this upcoming generation of kids that have no taste in entertainment or toys.. but not us.

Dude McGuy is truly a god among men for somehow talking about Starman and Deadpool in the same paragraph.

That could possibly be the greatest crossover ever. Other than Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, I mean.

I don’t remember that commerical, but I sure did waste a lot of time on that Nintendo!

Gesis: Yeah, I know. I was making a "joke." I really do want chocolates shaped like Nintendo characters, though.

This commerical honestly makes me want to go out and buy an NES. It also makes me want to own a giraffe though.

I got my NES for my birthday in 87 (I think) from K Mart. Got Zelda at the same time. I went home and connected it to a small nine inch portable black and white screen and played Zelda for days and days. To this day I can still finish Zelda in about two hours complete with all the "its a secret to everyone" trees. To this day every game I play on PS2 gets compared to an equivalent NES game.

I got my Nintendo back in 1988 as well. I was in 2nd grade and it was a first communion present. I remember my mom saying she tried to get me Super Mario Brothers 2, but it was sold out. Didn’t Nintendo first debut in 1985?

Man, It was 88 or 89, I already had had my NES for over a year, and I picked up an issue of NINTENDO POWER, or I might have gotten the issue in the mail comped from Nintendo themselves, ’cause I don’t actually remember paying for the issue or how I got it, it just seemed to be there in my house one day.

Anyway, I’m reading the issue and realizing "holy bat shit, I actually WANT this magazine! it’s got useful tips I can use to kick my brothers ass in Punch-Out" or something, and I’m actually thinking "I’m gonna get a subscription to this Nintendo Power! It’s Smurfin!"

I mean I was already sold on subscribing to it (don’t ask me how Nintendo did that, but that mysteriously appearing issue of Nintendo Power was like crack - if crack was a brightly colored, tip filled way to beat your friends asses on the NES)

So I pull the holy rectangle out and I remember there were like 2 of them, different colors, and these extra boxes to checkmark.

and after reading them, I find out that with my subscription I’m gonna get a TOTALLY FREE **DRAGON WARRIOR** CART in the mail!

and Holy Koopa shit if it (DRAGON WARRIOR - in a nice big box with some extra shit, a guide and my first issue) didn’t arrive in the mail just in time for Christmas!

My Nintendo was recieved in Christmas of 1989, pretty late in the game. We got TMNT and Double Dragon right away, and then Rad Racer. Then my parents refused to buy anymore games, so I had to save up a long time, or wait until birthdays. Oh well, wish I still had it, but the ROMs help.

beautiful commercial…brings back so many memories, i’m so glad that i still have my nintendo

Being born in 1987, I didn’t get my NES until my 6th birthday, when my first game was the combination Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt game. After that, Nintendo was my #1 system to worship…and now in 2004, with PS2 & XBox, I now regret my decision over 11 years ago…

Dude McGuy…as a current worker in the toy industy, I know how you feel. A LOT of those Marvel Legends never made it to the pegs in the first place…

MikeMealstrom, the same thing happened to me with Electronic Gamers Monthly. Freaky.

And shugga, your theory seems ok, but how do you explain Ludwig von Koopa?…^_~

Heh Heh Heh. Didn’t get my NES till around ‘02 I think. bought it from my friend for 30 bucks. Funny story, I spent 2 weeks of my life cleaning every single game I had and cleaned out the system entirely out of Q-tips and rubbing alchohol, but it works like brand f-ing new now…yeah…real knee slapper………….I can beat SMB in 15 minutes….

So depending on how you look at it, the NES will be either 20 or 22 Years old next year.

Hell yeah, I read EGM too. Good zine, and it’s gotta be the longest running in the biz, I have issues (along with Heavy Metal and Starlog) with ATARI, INTELLIVISION and COLECOVISION game news (not to mention ODYSSEY and VECTREX)

Anyway I did some googling and I found a site that filled in the missing piece, it stated that when the free NINTENDO FUN CLUB newsletter (the one they sent you when you sent in your registration card) was discontinued, they mailed a FREE issue of NINTENDO POWER.

So assuming that Free issue was the Dragon Warrior give-away issue, all the pieces fit the way I remember them.

Sadly, I don’t see any of the companies doing that today, delivering a top of line New cart for Free.

Can you imagine the loyalty and fanatacism it would create if for example we got a FREE issue of The X-Box Magazine, and if we subscribed to the zine, then we got a FREE copy of HALO 2?

I was lucky enough to be the first person I knew to get the NES. It was the year it came out (85?) and while most people had to wait until Christmas, I got it for my birthday in mid November (the system had been released the week before). It helps when your father is as addicted to video games as yourself (our colecovision was getting outdated at that point). I got ROB, the light zapper, gyromite, and duck hunt. My friends and I never used the robot; we instead had one person try to complete the level while the other used the "robot’s control" and tried to kill the hero. Good times. I Did have to wait until Xmas for Super Mario Bros., but a small price to pay for being the coolest kid in the class for a couple of months. Sometimes I wish I could go back to those wonderful, carefree days.

Wow… I don’t even remember when I got my first NES. It was after an Odyssey2 and an Atari 2600… I eventually traded it, and a big box o’ games/accessories [including the awesome nesmax controllers] for a sega saturn years later. Now, I have to randomly kick myself in the nuts for abandoning the greatest gaming system ever. Lucky me… the local rhino games keeps stocked with used carts for like a buck. So, my collection is once again inching closer and closer to 120+ games.

I got my NES in for Christmas of ‘87 when I was four years old. I never remember asking for one, and my video game experience was limited to arcades and my friend’s Atari 2600, so maybe this ad helped influence my parents to get me one. I don’t remember this commerical, either; the earliest one I do remember is the Zelda one with the Eraserhead lookalike.

I’d say my favorite NES memory is from when me and my cousin used to stay with our grandparents, and he’d bring along his NES and all his games. Every morning, I’d get up at 4:00 or so and play Castlevania II or Bionic Commando for hours before he woke up. Eventually, he got pissed and made me stop, but I had the last laugh since I beat Bionic Commando when he was out of the room and he missed the exploding Hitler head.

I bought mine in ‘89 and have never had any major problems with the carts. first of all, you NEVER, EVER blow on the metal contacts! You wouldn’t want somebody slobbering all over your cell phone or DVD player, would you? Also, I once opened up my NES and very gently tugged on the interior contacts in the cartridge interface. Slowly bending them forward. No more blinking screen! But, I still give my carts a good cleaning with alcohol or Windex, (or a 50/50 mix) and a occasional pass with the end of a popsicle stick. Odd technique, but it gets the gunk off.

I also got my NES for Christmas in 1989. By then pretty much everyone I knew had one so my parent’s got it for me out of obligation more than anything else (the month’s of begging and pleading probably helped the cause as well).

My parents got me the "Power Set" which included a 3 in 1 Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt/World Class Track Meet game pak the Zapper and the "revolutionary" Power Pad. The "Power Pad" was actually a pretty good accessory and it kicked the "Power Gloves" sorry ass.
I got one other game pak (Donkey Kong Classics 2 in 1) and those 5 games were all I had until my birthday (other than the occasionally rental).

The first game I bought myself was "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game" for the un-godly price of $49.99. I remember spending months saving up for that…

Nintendo was giving away Dragon Warrior copies because no one was buying that game.

I never had any video game systems, not until I could buy my own and that was when I was a teenager. Sniff.

Damn….I could almost cry. I remember when my older brother got an NES back in 1987 for xmas. We got it with Super Mario Bros, Contra, T & C Surf and Turf and RBI Baseball. I would rarely get to play it cuz him and his friends would always kick me out of the room like some assholes. Years later I was deemed as cool enough to play the games for myself…seeing as how Grandpa had bought me SMB 3 for my 7th birthday that year. I miss those days, when I could talk with all the rest of the kids at my school about the NES. Nintendo had all us kids turned out like crackheads at the time.

I remember wanting an NES because it seemed really cool. What probably didn’t help matters much was that a tape we made of a Pooh special had one of NOA’s mega-commercials on it ("Now you’re playing with power!") and I usually had to sit through Pooh to get to Robin Hood on the tape; so there was a pretty regular exposure to "this Nintendo thing". When the kid next door and a family friend each got one, that didn’t help things for my parents.

They tried the ‘you’ve got an Atari’ argument, but it was one of the casualties of moving and our unfinished, very humid basement. Apparently both my parents put a lot of effort into reviving it, but it was lost. It figures that at 21 and an engineering major (and after having seen the insides of some "advanced" Nintendo peripherals) I wish we still had the thing so that I could open it up and try some more advanced things, but alas, it exists in pieces in a landfill somewhere.

Eventually I got (and still own and use) my NES, I think it was early fall 1989. Still enough time before the SNES for it to be worthwhile. Which I attempted to get, but that NES is still the only video game system to my name. Not even a hand-held or Tiger game (if my parents were going to spend money on a video game system, I wanted them spending it on either one of the newer consoles, or more NES games, not these Tiger games that my friends were able to beat in an afternoon).

But my question is: Does anyone remember why the orange Zapper was cool? Mine came with the console, two Control Pads, a Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt cartridge, and an orange Zapper. I vaugely remember there being something special about that set, but I can’t remember what. Maybe because it was explained away to us because the parents of the kid next door didn’t want him to be jealous.

Notice how the zapper from only a foot away MISSES the second duck. Someone’s terrible at duck hunt.

Yes, that DiC kid would be a perfect article. Anyway, its a good indication how pathetic my life is considering that Toys R Us commerical is still fresh in my mind. I actually recieved a NES in 1987 on my 6th birthday! Whats really amazing is that when you relect upon your childhood memories you start acknowledging the subtle things. AH man, i agree with that one comment on how everyone owed a nintendo. However i grew up in the high class gated community of the suburbs, so it was expected that every kid on that block owned the 8bit wonder. Being 23, i try to indulge my lust for the classics on a given basis. Thank god for emulators =)

I never had any console game (friends and cousins did though), we had the Commodore 64 from 1986 until 1993 and all of those games.

Oh shining, glorious dreams of my youth. These days there are little console handheld…. thingies that you plug into the tv with thirty old games in them, but they will never compare to the magic of the NES… Oh god, are we old already?

I remember this commercial but only because my parents were spitting foul words because I had talked (read whined till I got my way) them into buying me the NES at its US launch when I was only like 3 years old and didn’t have the coordination to actually play any game with much effectiveness.

I had robot and everything and one of the few clear memories I have of that period of my life is of my dad trying to figure out how the fuck to play "Gyromite" actually using the the robot. This memory is followed by one of my dad actually making the same complaint every kid made about Duck Hunt "WHY CAN’T YOU SHOOT THE DAMN DOG!!" after he missed a duck or 2 and the cocky mutt laughed at him. Now that I think about it its no wonder I grew up to be the mentally imbalanced individual I am today

Ah, the NES. I remember I first played it over March Break back when I was in Kindergarden, and it took 2 hours to set up and the TV cut off the bottom of the screen so I couldn’t see what was there. I kept falling into the same pit in Super Mario Bros(I got to world 1-2), and couldn’t figure out a thing in A Boy and his Blob. However I DID get to level 17 in Duck Hunt, and there was much talk about exactly what the ending to the game was (the theory is that when you hit level 30 there was a little scene and a choice to continue or quit, and a similar one at levels 60 and 99)

Great commercial,brings back memories. Being born on 85,I didn’t have an NES. My neighbor did let me play SMB,Duck Hunt, Mickey Mousecapades,etc. But I didn’t get to own a console until 91. That’s when my parents gave me a Gameboy. In 92 a SNES with Pilotwings included. Ahhh,good times. I’m suprised right now that the SNES is still alive and kicking and my PS2 is dead,and there’s no way to repair it. So I have the "Christmas shopping spirit" again to get a new PS2(not the slim one,blech).

Frig the board games. BRING ON THE NINTENDO!!!! OMG, it was only $79.99?! My Game Boy Advance cost $70. Yes, that’s right. I own a Game Boy Advance. Laugh if you want. I also own one of those remote controls that you plug into your TV, and it has like 700 games on it. Of course, they’re all Nintendo classics and several obscure Japanese games. How do I know they’re Japanese? The title is in JAPANESE CHARACTERS!!! Damn I’m smart. S-M-R-T. I mean S-M-A-R-T!!!!!!!!!

Someone above mentioned T&C Surf Design…annyone else remember being super pissed when they played the game over and over and NEVER got to the half pipe stage pictured on the back of the box? What a rip off. I still resent that game to this day.

Also, just to let you all know how awesome I am…I bought the Gameboy the day it was released. I remember seeing an article about it in Nintendo Power saying it was coming soon. I called Toys R Us every day for about 2 months until they finally had it. The awesome part is that it still works. I played Tetris just the other night.

Allison…what is this remote with classic NES games on it and where can I get one?

I found a site that shows a picture of the nes 2 (without having to search through multiple pages on ebay) It is here:

Oh and as for the cartridges they’re right…don’t blow on them! I gently use hydrogen peroxide and a q-tip…it works well for me. (Especially the carts I buy from the stores with used games like EB Games)

You know Allison, those things are illegal. They aren’t an officialy licenced Nintendo product. Nintendo even sued a bunch of malls that had kiosks that were selling them (every mall I have ever been to has a kiosk like that). So be glad that you bought something most might not ever see again!

I got my first Nintendo the month it came out years ago. At the time, I believe it came with ROB the robot, which was just about the worse thing ever created. I think I played with the system all of five minuets before I left it and ran to play my Go-Bots. I do remember my mother returning it to the store less then a week later because I wouldn’t use it. About three months after that my friends started getting Nintendos for their birthdays, and well I wanted one too.

“You already had your chance,” was something both of my parents were found of saying.

To make a long story short, I did not get my second Nintendo until I was in fifth grade. My dad and I were playing basketball out front of my house when he said ‘Think fast’. The ball broke my nose, and my father bought me a Nintendo, Zelda and that big square deck controller. All of that was mine if I swore that I would tell my mother my best friend broke my nose.

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