A moment of nostalgia

So I grew up in the 1980s and the early 1990s, which was a bitchin' good time to be a kid. The cartoons, music, video games, toys, and everything were so superior to the pop culture of today. What do kids have today to contend with the awesomeness of Transformers and GI Joe? Dora the Explorer? Yu-gi-oh? Yeah, it's no contest. I'm at that age where I"m beginning to yearn for the carefree days of the past. There's no more time to screw around and be a kid. All I can do is reflect and look back on those times, which is exactly what I want to do with this post. Specifically, I want to comment on two of my big obsessions back in the day: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Nintendo.

If you grew up in the 80s, you couldn't get away from the lean, mean, green fighting machines known as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Literally, they were in all forms of media. Comics, tv, video games, and movies. In addition, the toys flooded toy stores everywhere. Looking back, it made no sense at all why TMNT was such a craze. The premise is that these four turtles and their rat master come into contact with ooze, which transforms Raph, Leo, Mikey, and Don into these anthropomorphic turtles who can walk, talk, and most importantly kick butt. They're named after Renaissance artists and love New York style pizza. If that's not kooky enough, look at the bad guys. Shredder looks like a can opener with a purple cape. Krang is a brain controlling a big robot thing. Baxter Stockman is an anthropomorphic fly and Rat King was a big weirdo lording over sewer rats. We must have all been on crack!

Regardless, I ate it up. In England, I had this TMNT backpack and a coin pouch to buy milk with the logo emblazoned it. I had, and still own, many of the toys. Sumo Donatello, Pop-up Raph, Leonardo with the swords, and some of the bad guys too. I had way more Transformers toys, but only the TMNT toys made the trip from England to America. I watched all the cartoons and my first crush was April O'Neill. I didn't own an NES in England, but I frequently went over a friend's house to play the video game (even if it was a piece of shit). When we moved to America, I got Turtles in Time and that tournament fighter game for the SNES and spent countless hours on those games. When the movies came out, I nearly shat my pants. I recently watched those movies again and I"m surprised how good the first one is. It's no Oscar winner, but it's gritty and tells a good story (well, for a Turtles movie at least).

Love for the Turtles is what united me with my friends in England and America. Of course, we pretended to be the Turtles on the playground. EVERYONE wanted to be either Leonardo or Donatello, I remember. Leo was the leader and Donatello was the smart one. I always favored Raph though. He was the sarcastic rebel, and was kind of mysterious, especially in the movies. He also had a temper, which means he reminded me of myself. Plus, red is my favorite color. Mikey was the tool and no-one really wanted to be him. It's funny; it kind of reminds me of how all the girls had a crush on Paul McCartney or John Lennon from the Beatles, but Ringo and George were all but forgotten. Strange analogy there.

Unfortunately, the god-awful 3rd movie and the Power Rangers were the death knell for my beloved green heroes. I never took to Power Rangers as much as Turtles. I still say the Turtles could kick their red, yellow, black candied asses...

I recently noticed that there's a new Saturday morning cartoon and new video games have been released based on TMNT. But the cartoon strikes me as weird. Granted, I've only seen it a few times on a Saturday morning while nursing a hangover, but it strikes me as too X-treme. Part of the charm of the 80s show was the slapstick nature. You take that out and nothing really differentiates Turtles from the rest of the crap kids today have to watch. Oh well, atleast I can always play Turtles in Time on the SNES which brings me to my second love during childhood: Nintendo.

When we first moved to America, I got my first glimpse of the SNES. Video-gaming was not very big when I was in England for some reason, so SNES was really my first extended exposure to video games. NES was almost too primitive for me; those early games were fun, but I could never really get into them. The sophistication of games on SNES, thanks to better graphics and more plot-driven games, really got me into gaming.

Now in the early 90s, you were either a Nintendo or a Sega guy. For me, it was Nintendo all the way. They just had better franchises: Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Starfox, Donkey Kong....these were my best friends in elementary school. Genesis had Sonic, who was cool but I found the games to be a bit nausea-inducing. Plus, they released so many stupid add-ons like 32X; I just couldn't get into Sega.

My favorite games on SNES were the platformers like Mario and Donkey Kong Country. You could play those levels a billion times and still find them fun to play and challenging. I thought platformers going 3D was a step down actually from those games. Oh, and Zelda. Wow, that game was the first hard game I ever played. In retrospect, it wasn't that hard, but for a 7 year old it was a bitch. It was a fun little adventure game, which i still like to play from the beginning.

Back then, games weren't as mainstream. You didn't need millions of dollars to make a fun game. Games had heart and quirkiness. They weren't all about 3D rendering and CGI movies. Don't get me wrong, the new Final Fantasys and Devil May Crys are simply amazing, but they still lack the charm of old school RPGs and games. Because of hardware limitations, gameplay was always the bottom line. Now I think it's all about graphics, with few exceptions.

For a long time, I subscribed to Nintendo Power magazine. There was no Internet back then. If you wanted gaming news, you had to get it from magazines. The first of the month was always the most exciting time of the year because that's when NP came in the mail. Nothing got you more excited for an upcoming game than seeing cool artwork and screenshots. I saw Angry Video Game Nerd's video about Nintendo Power and that was me back in the day. All those small posters were on my wall in Solon, Ohio. I pretty much got an N64 because of NP.

Eventually, I did get a playstation, but it was kind of the beginning of the end for me and gaming. There was some really good games on playstation, but you could start to see the end of an era for gaming. Out went quirky, fun games and in came high budget movie-style production. As long as Nintendo stays weird, I'll continue to support them.

So maybe I haven't moved on at all. I'm just the same little kid with his knickers and tucked in shirt playing with my Turtles toys and Nintendo....