That's funny the NES is this month's console, because I was just getting a hankering to play it!
I have a somewhat weird history with the NES because I sorta grew up with it but I sorta didn't. I don't consider myself to be a "NES kid" because I didn't own a NES before the SNES was released, although I have owned a NES since a young age. I grew up as the youngest in my family, I had older siblings and even older cousins. So although I was born in the late 80's, I really didn't miss out on 80's stuff since I had a lot of hand-me-down stuff. A few of my cousins had a NES, so I had exposure to it at a young age. My first console of my very own though was a SNES. And although I fully enjoyed playing my SNES, I took every chance I could get to play a NES when I was over someone's house. Particularly the Mario games. I had Super Mario World on the SNES, and I always wanted to play the first three on the NES whenever I got the chance. I can remember having a friend that lived a few houses down. They had a NES and Genesis, and I would love to play Mario 3 whenever I could.
So some years after getting a SNES, I wanted to get my own NES. Funco Land, which was a video game buy and sell chain, advertised a NES bundle. They basically recreated the Action Set, which was the console with Mario/Duck Hunt, two controllers and a Zapper. Making hard choices of some games to trade and scraping together whatever money I could, I asked my mother to take me to Funco Land so I could purchase a NES with the three Mario games. And I was DENIED! Ouch, classic Mom-block! She told me getting a NES would be like going backwards. Why would I want to get old tech? I should get new tech instead. Obviously I'm the kind of person that likes tech of all ages, and I even did at that young age. But being a dumb kid, I guess I couldn't articulate an argument to convince my Mom. So the compromise would be that I get Super Mario All Stars for the SNES, which was about the same price as a NES with the three Mario games anyway. And that's what I did, I got Super Mario All Stars. And I really don't regret it, I still have that exact cart to this day. It has been one of my favorite SNES carts since I got it, and remains so. I have many fond memories of playing it. But I still wanted an actual NES.
So I did a classic kid move. When Mom says no, ask Dad! Some time had passed since I got Mario All Stars, and I still wanted an actual NES, so one day I asked my Dad to take me to Funco Land so I could get one. It's not like my Mom forbade me to get a NES, she just didn't see the point in it. So I finally got a ride down to Funco Land (it wasn't especially close), and was able to get enough money together from trades and whatever I could get from doing chores and whatnot, and I got that Action Set along with Mario 2 and 3. I'm pretty sure that's all of the games I purchased initially with the console. But something awesome happened. As I was checking out, there was another dude there trading in his (or his kid's) old NES games. For whatever reason, Funco Land would not accept his copy of Kirby's Adventure and T&C Surf Designs (I think they would do this if they had too many copies in stock). He saw that I was buying a NES, and offered them to me as he had nothing else to do with them at that point. Well, one of those turned out to be a great game (LOL which one?). Actually, Kirby's Adventure turned out to be one of my favorites for the NES.
And that's why I have sort of a weird history with the NES, because I didn't own one in its heyday. I didn't get to explore the NES library the same way. Rentals, playing games over someone's house, word of mouth recommendation from kids at school, current published magazines with game reviews, etc. So my NES library remained very small for many years. There were some titles that were obvious to me, and those were pretty much the only ones I would get. Like Zelda, obviously. And Casltevania IV was one of my favorite SNES games, so I naturally got the first three. And I liked Turtles in Time, so I got the three TMNT NES games (the first one was a whopping 99 cents at Funco Land). Oh, and Tetris, of course. But that was about it for a while. Maybe I tried some other games from Funco Land, but nothing that I can remember.
Then in the early 2000's, I discovered eBay. Which at that time was an amazing place for old games. This was before you had professional sellers on there, it was just people in their homes selling their own used junk. This was the golden age of eBay. And it's when I was finally able to start collecting more. Also at this time, it became much easier to find sites for game recommendations. So I finally was able to dive deeper into the NES library. And to be honest, I feel like I never really explored the depths of the NES. I'm sure there's a lot of great games that I've yet to try.
My main NES is a stock toaster, although I do also own a Famicom. I have the NESRGB kit for the toaster, but I haven't gotten around to installing it. Maybe I'll finally do it for this month. Most of my retro gaming has been on a Sony PVM in recent years, so it would be nice to finally get RGB output from the NES.
I had a somewhat decent-ish NES collection, but in 2020 I decided to sell a good chunk of them. I kept all the ones that I really care about, and everything else can be played on my PowerPak or N8. So in my mind, I still have a great NES collection. It's just quality over quantity at this point.
Here is my NES game list, before I started to downsize:
And here's the list of what I decided to keep (although I still have some from above, I just forget what I have yet to sell):
T&C Surf Designs really isn't that great of a game, but it was a keeper for me because of how I obtained it.
