In my last entry I wrote about the obsession that we kids of the 80s had with our nintendos and the seemingly ludicrous things that they made us do. But were they really all that crazy?
The games, or rather earning money in order to get them, were great motivators that made us get the grades in school our parents wanted, clean our rooms each week, shovel the neighbor's driveways and keep everyone's lawns cut in the summer.
Since everyone probably had chores, did odd jobs, etc. to get extra money to fuel their video game addiction I won't really get into that but rather the more strange ways that I got my fixes.
Besides nintendo I was into two things mainly: collecting hockey cards and WWF wrestling. One of my favorite past times was staying up late for Saturday Night's Main Event which every now and then would pre-empt Saturday Night Live. For this reason one of the first nintendo games I bought was WWF Wrestlemania. What a travesty! You would think that if the World Wrestling Federation was going to put their stamp on it and Nintendo was going to give it the approving nod that between these two powerhouses you should have a realistic looking, imaginative game that captured the full capability of the system. If you thought that you would be sorely mistaken. This game was really terrible and not a good use of my $45 or whatever it was at the time. From there I tried another wrestling title called M.U.S.C.L.E. which was based on a series of toys of the same name. This game had promise... but once again I would be disappointed in it.
Months passed and I had decided that maybe wrestling should only be watched on TV and not played. If it wasn't for the arcade game Exciting Hour (or Mat Mania) as it's sometimes called I would've lost all faith in 80s wrestling games. If I would have just checked out Nintendo's very own Pro Wrestling cart I could've saved almost $100 childhood bux and several frustrating hours of my life trying to justify the money spent. Before WWF Wrestlemania even came out there was Pro Wrestling by Nintendo. In passing when I went to visit a friend of mine I happened to notice that it was a game in his catalogue. Once I became privy to this I did all I could to ask him to show me the game. Finally he gave in and loaded it up one day and I was hooked. Since he had played the game to death it was the last thing that he wanted to do, but eventually I was able to convince him to set up a gameplay time for hockey card trade that was mutually beneficial. And so began my first foray into a pay for play pyramid scheme. This went on for several weeks until I ran out of cards he needed for his OPeeChee hockey card series for that year.
What started out with a small stack of hockey cards in trade for borrowing the game overnight, quickly became bartering for my wall decor. Let's paint a picture.. It's probably about 1988 and like most teenaged boys I was girl crazy. My bedroom (much to the dismay of my mother) was covered in "girlie" posters. Heather Thomas and the infamous Buns & Roses posters were plastered on the wall opposite my window and tacked to the back of my bedroom door. Every time my mom would come into my room to gather laundry she would comment on how she hated those things. My friend however (whom we'll call D) was quite taken by the pictures and proposed a trade... "I'll GIVE you the damn Pro Wrestling game for your posters, whatdya say?"
Well, I didn't expect that. What was his angle? We talked a little more about it and after some coaxing he told me that his mom forbid him to buy such posters for his room. I guess in his mind a TRADE instead of a PURCHASE was a contractual mother-son workaround? If D's mom wouldn't let him spend her hard earned money on them perhaps if they were to fall into his lap or if he was to get them by entirely non-nefarious means then it would be legit?!? At any rate how he planned to defend the circumstances around which he came into these posters was HIS issue now, not mine. So for 3 paper wall furnishing I inherited my Pro Wrestling cartridge. It was win-win as my mom was happy to see the state of my room become more minimalist (save for the dozen or so tackholes) and I had scooped up one of my favorite games of the day.
So for you I pose the question: Have you ever traded something (besides another NES cart) for a game? If so, what was it? Post your answers in the comments.
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