1-800-How's my Gaming?

I can sit and watch my 11 year old play Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for hours and it never ceases to amaze me how proficient he has become.  Clearly it didn't always come this easy to him, and that makes me think back to my younger years.  Whereas now companies like Brady Games put out catalogues giving players the in-depth scoop on EVERY aspect of the games and YouTube-rs post video walkthroughs (virtual spoilers if you will) that tell you step-by-step how to beat a game, gamers from MY generation were forced to spend hours trying to figure out the puzzles by ourselves.  In effect, Nintendo and other such companies raised an army of Beta testers.  It was the gamers of the 70s and 80s who exposed every glitch, bug and weakness of the game designs.

When we didn't have time to beat our heads against the wall trying over and over to figure out the obscure puzzles that each game presented (think Castlevania) we had 2 choices:

1)  we had to subscribe to Nintendo Power magazine and hope that they articled our exact dilemma between their pages (or be one of those lucky enough to have this magazine in their supermarket or bookstore so you could peruse its contents on the newsstand).  This would suffice temporarily until the owner caught you "sneaking a peek" and then you might as well have had a men's magazine in your hands for the ire it brought.

OR....

2) as a last ditch effort we called the Nintendo Game Counselor Hotline.  The adverts would always require you to get a parent's permission before calling, but once I placed the call I don't ever remember them asking to speak to my mom before I was connected to one of their "Gurus". It wasn't as though I would call for every little problem I encountered in a game, but I remember all too well the expression on my mom's face when the phone bill arrived...  I could have made a long distance call to Guam during peak hours for less than it cost to defeat the last few palaces of Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link.  Don't get my wrong, despite the invoice amount at the bottom of our phone bill you really couldn't put a price on being able to forge ahead in your game (not to mention the bragging rights you had for being the first person on your block to get that far -- even if you needed help).

Looking back on it now I realize the value these challenges had in terms of making us better problem solvers.  For those that didn't have the option of calling a Hotline they became stronger through trial and error (employing EVERY item in their inventory for EVERY possible purpose regardless of how ludicrous it seemed) and for those who did end up making a call (or several) we became experts at shorthand (furiously jotting game codes, cheats, and secrets into our spiral notebooks like crib notes for an exam) and experienced negotiators when it came time to repaying the debts incurred trying to advance further in our games.

... The New Batch (NES Update: April - July, 2013)

Wow... my last entry was way back in March.  Guess this is why I'll never make a living as a blogger.  Let's see... when we last checked in my collection had grown to 326 carts.

Unfortunately I got caught up in my Arcade cabinet software installations and didn't keep better records of where and when I got my last couple bunches of games, but  as of today my collection now stands at:  366!

My favorites from this last batch of games are the 2 American video carts:  Puzzle and Pyramid, my 2 new black box games:  Gumshoe and Ice Climber and my arcade ports:  Joe and Mac, Xenophobe, Mappy and 1943.  In addition I added Yoshie's Cookie, Gremlins 2, another Camerica Gold cart in Quattro Arcade, and of course a few of the Tengen games: Klax and especially Pacmania!

According to my collection analysis I still have a LONG way to go in obtaining a copy of each game released, but I have collected 44.74% of the complete series thus far.  I thank my luck stars that not only does my wife allow me to house this collection in our dining room but that she picks up games for me when she sees them too and is responsible for a lot of the titles I have managed to procure over the years. Along with the games I picked up a couple of new manuals: Tetris, Breakthru, Tag Team Wrestling, Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout, and Deadly Towers.  I have now gathered 38 unique and complete instruction manuals.  Not all that impressive, but it's nice to get them every now and then without having to fork over money that I'd rather put towards rounding out the cart collection.  Looking forward to the next big milestone which will be reaching the 400 mark.  Any predictions as to when that might happen?  Leave your guesses in the comments below.