8-bit greatest hits
Over at Tedium, David’s latest piece looks at how music from the 8-bit video game era has inspired an entire generation of modern musicians – and created new musical genres. Check it out!
Gaming
‘Darkly Humorous Future’: Revisiting WEG’s original Paranoia
Super Mario Bros. 3: Chasing airships in arcades, pizza parlors and at the movies
Many gamers’ first hands-on experience with Super Mario Bros. 3 was playing it on a friend’s NES or, for the very fortunate, ripping the shrink wrap off your very own Game Pak’s cardboard box.
Mine was actually in an arcade at Knott’s Berry Farm. It was a fleeting flirtation with a game I had, thus far, only ogled in previews on the pages of Nintendo Power magazine. I don’t think I even finished that familiar, yet warped, World 1-1 before I was dragged away to be reminded that we were on an expensive theme park vacation.
Mastering flight with the Raccoon Suit’s tail? Forget about it!
Then there was The Wizard, a movie starring Fred Savage, Beau Bridges and Christian Slater, which seemed to exist only to market Nintendo’s later generation of NES games and accessories. Our favorite video game lyricist, Brentalfloss, explains:
But despite all the movie hype, magazine previews and amusement park arcade teasers, my most vivid memories of playing Super Mario Bros. 3 don’t have anything to do with any of that, nor even taking my own life in my hands after convincing Mom to drive us to the rough side of town’s Kmart to grab the last available copy on release day.
My most indelible early recollection of SMB3 was playing the game, over and over again, at Pizza Hut.
After that California vacation where I first encountered the game in the back corner of the busy old-timey arcade, we returned home to Phoenix to find our local Pizza Hut had a Nintendo “PlayChoice” arcade machine, or something like it, containing various NES titles – and this was one of them.
Needless to say, we spent a lot of time (and quarters) at that Pizza Hut.
By the time the game came out for the NES, I had mastered Mario’s new flying ability, whistled my way to the Warp Zone, and more.
At the cusp of the last decade of the century, a time when arcades were already falling to the power of the home console, Super Mario Bros. 3 had a pixellated place in both worlds.
Nintendo Power-ful tribute to Super NES Classic games
Getting your hands on a Super NES Classic Edition may be next to impossible, but that doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate the return of so many retro games in one convenient package.
Anyone attending PAX West this weekend in Seattle will be right on Nintendo’s American doorstep, and perhaps for that reason they may be able to score one of three special posters in the style of old Nintendo Power magazine covers celebrating the Sept. 29 launch of the much-hyped retro all-in-one system.
it’s a shame the Super NES Classic will be in such short supply and in such high demand, because it will be the only way to play the never-before-released Star Fox 2 — which is one of the games paid tribute to in the PAX posters.
OK, so the Star Fox 2 art isn’t much to look at by today’s standards, but it’s totally appropriate for the SNES era — and you can get more where that came from at the game’s electronic manual here, as well as the game’s original design documents here and here (hat tip to Nintendo Everything for the find).
Other NP cover-style posters pay homage to Super Mario World, the SNES’ launch title, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past — although the cartoony version of hero Link on the faux cover actually is more in line with the promo art for the later Game Boy title Link’s Awakening, if you ask me …
… But the gradient headlines and Official Nintendo Seal of Quality? Classic Nintendo Power! If only they’d resurrect the magazine. (Although Nintendo Force has proved a worthy successor.)