Old School Gaming, and the Hidden Messages Within

I don't really have a lot of time to play video games, but when I do, I like playing the classics.  Don't get me wrong, some of the newer games out there are flat-out amazing, but I think it's more fun to play a 25 year-old version of Mega Man than I do fragging some newbs in Halo.

I have a Wii, and recently went on a buying spree for some old NES, Sega, and Super Nintendo games.  I picked up the original Legend of Zelda, Super Mario 1-3, a few SNES games, and one of the most difficult games I've ever played, Fantasy Zone.

Fantasy Zone is an old game for the Sega Master System (before the Genesis) and was one of the first games I ever played.  To this day, I still can't beat the game.  If you have a Wii (or an emulator on your PC) I challenge you to try it... it'll make you rage...

One of the fun things I noticed was the wonder of 8-bit games on a 40" Hi-Def television.  I was playing Super Mario Brothers when I noticed this:

At the end of the first 7 levels, you defeat the boss, and a little mushroom tells you "Thank you Mario, but the princess is in another castle."

I paused the game.

"Wait a second, is that little fucker flipping me off?"

And what do you know, he was...

Instead of being sincere and telling me to go to the next level, he's saying "BAHAHAHA, you got PUNKED, bro!  Try again!"

That mushroom bastard...

What's funny is I'm playing these games with no delay or interruption.  I remember being 8/9/10 years old and having to blow into the NES cartridges to make sure all the connectors were free of dust.  Then insert the game.  Hit power.  Wait.  Didn't work?  Pull out, blow some more, try again.  With the Wii, it's almost.... anticlimactic...

Half the fun of playing the games was getting your machine to work.  It made you feel like an engineer, saying "There.  *I* fixed it" when nobody else could...

Oh well.  Saved the princess.  Now off to Hyrule next, to see if I remember all the hidden things in Zelda.  Huzzah!!!

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