My History With Nintendo

Firstly, this opening paragraph isn't actually part of my Nintendo article - this is an insight into how this piece of writing came about. In early 2014, Official Nintendo Magazine UK put out a job post on their website for a staff writer, with anybody being able to apply; assuming you could write and had a deep knowledge of Nintendo, and I certainly knew I had the latter (as you'll see!)! You had to write a Nintendo piece of writing to go with your job application, and below is what I wrote (now edited with improved punctuation, grammar, paragraphing, and the inclusion of pictures). I didn't get the job - it turned out that over 600 people applied for this phenomenal job opportunity(!) - but what with the unfortunate closure of the magazine I loved (ONM UK), with the last ever issue being on the 14th of October 2014, it seems right to share this piece of writing with you all... at last! Feel free to leave a comment about what you think of the article, and/or Nintendo, but most importantly: enjoy it, I'm incredibly proud of it! :)

Above: The love I have for Nintendo is astronomical, and, yes, I could easily name every character in this picture! Below, left: The Nintendo Entertainment System, (or NES, for short), a truly legendary console, and widely believed to have saved gaming following the video game crash of 1983!

Let’s go back to the start: you see, Nintendo - a company who were founded back in 1889, starting out making playing cards - is a company that has been in my life since my very early days, when I’d witness my older brother play Super Mario Bros. (amongst other games) on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and if I ever did get a go with him, I’d always have to be Luigi; which is maybe why, even to this day, I choose to play as Mario whenever a game gives you a choice of character! I remember the day when Super Mario Bros. 3 arrived in the post on the day we were going on holiday, so my brother took his NES with him so he could play the game (priorities!); little did I know, as I started to discover Nintendo’s many beloved games series for myself, that that sort of love for gaming would be passed on to me.

I eventually got given my very first games console, a Game Boy, which created that special feeling inside of owning my very first games machine, and it would be a console I would cherish for many years. Even back then I remember getting slightly addicted to games, especially Tetris, whilst Super Mario Land seemed pretty hard to a young version of me. The first Nintendo home console I was bought was a Nintendo 64, but, even at this point, I still hadn’t truly fallen in love with Nintendo. No internet, I didn’t read any magazines (at the time!), either, and so the games I played on the N64 were very much what I fancied picking up from the shops - games like Micro Machines 64 Turbo, FIFA: Road to World Cup 98, Mario Tennis, which are certainly not bad games in their own right, and I did experience the unrivalled joys of 3D Mario (Super Mario 64) for the first time - but I now look back and realise how many classics I missed out on during the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and N64 eras; well, at least that was the case until Nintendo gave me the opportunity to play them all on the Virtual Console or via a remake (Super Mario World, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, etc.).

Next up, I was bought a GameCube - a console that some believed to be a "kiddie console", and it was certainly never seen as "cool" for me to own a GameCube when other people had PlayStations and Xboxes - for Christmas 2002, along with the exceptional Super Mario Sunshine (still one of my favourite Mario games). I also had a gorgeous "glacier" (see-through blue) Game Boy Advance, which allowed me to play the superb Super Mario World for the first time, as well as another Mario Kart, Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars, the other "Mario Advance" titles, and many others. It’s the GameCube that I really wish to talk about, though, as that powerful little box of tricks changed my gaming life forever! At first, I just played games like Super Mario Sunshine, FIFA 2003, and Crazy Taxi, until one day when I was looking at magazines on a supermarket shelf and saw CUBE magazine with Mario Kart: Double Dash!! on the cover, so I picked it up knowing that Mario Kart is a game series that I had always loved playing. I fell in love with CUBE magazine (and this is where I first "met" Chandra. EDIT: that sentence may not make sense to people, so allow me to elaborate: Chandra went on to work for the Official Nintendo Magazine UK, and now actually works for Nintendo UK!), so continued to buy it from issue 26 through to its death at issue 52, and this lead me to buying games I would never have otherwise bought, and that’s why I’ve always loved magazines since. I bought the new Official Nintendo Magazine UK from issue 1 - in the very same supermarket that I found CUBE magazine - having heard that Chandra from CUBE was going to be working for the magazine, and never looked back; I still sit in bed, or on the sofa (or anywhere, really!) reading ONM to this day (EDIT: R.I.P. ONM UK!).

So, thanks to CUBE magazine, at first, I started playing games that I would have otherwise deemed outside of my comfort zone. I took a look at their top 10 GameCube games list that appeared towards the back of the magazine, and took a punt on Metroid Prime and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - I swear, at this point in my life, I had never before played a game in either of these series - and, to my surprise (because I’d never been big on sci-fi), it was Metroid Prime that blew my mind the most. I was instantly hooked as I evacuated the space pirate frigate, Orpheon, in the given time limit, before flying off to land on what has to be one of the most beautifully realised worlds in gaming: Tallon IV. It was one of the first games, for me, that truly had that compelling nature of wanting to explore every nook and cranny of this stunning landscape, whilst the gameplay (especially some of the tricky bosses, as well as the exploration), music (the sound in general, really), and graphics (some of the effects are still fantastic to this day, like water dripping down Samus Aran’s visor, or the condensation of the steam against the visor) were all phenomenal, and it’s just one of those games that did almost everything right; which was especially surprising after a turbulent development period where a lot of people thought the game was going to be a failure. But it turned out to be astounding, praised by critics and gamers alike - who could forget the first moment they stepped out from the fiery Magmoor Caverns and into the snowy Phendrana Drifts (picture above this paragraph)?! So, Metroid Prime was a "risk buy" for me, but that’s just the start, as thanks to CUBE magazine, I went on to buy the full Resident Evil series (Resident Evil 0 through to 4, at that point, plus Code: Veronica X) - which lead to me buying my favourite non-Nintendo game of all time, the breathtaking Resident Evil 4 - as well as Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, F-Zero GX, Beyond Good & Evil, Battalion Wars, Pikmin 1 and 2, Second Sight, TimeSplitters 2, Splinter Cell, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, etc., all of which are games I may have not played without my new outlook on gaming. Paper Mario: TTYD deserves a special mention, as it has to be one of my most favourite games ever. It’s a series that I absolutely love, and I believe that TTYD is the pinnacle of the series, having an incredible world to explore (including a great hub, Rogueport, which has some amazing music that I still occasionally get in my head!), a fantastic cast of characters, stunning visuals, brilliant sound design, addictive gameplay, and a decent lifespan; but what makes it even more amazing is the quality of the script that includes a load of in-jokes and references about Nintendo. It’s also by one of my favourite developers, Intelligent Systems, who have been responsible for creating Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, and Paper Mario. In short: the GameCube - coincided with reading CUBE, and later ONM - changed my gaming life, getting me into series I had never played before but would go on to love for the foreseeable years ahead.

Above: Resident Evil 4. Just looking at this screenshot makes me want to play this game again, it really is that amazing! And how scary was that chainsaw guy?!

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door on GameCube. What a beautiful, unique, and extraordinary game!

My love for Nintendo got instantly greater with the Wii. I picked one up on the 8th of December 2006 - UK launch day, as I was a huge Nintendo fan by this point - along with a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a game I fell in love with and played for 100+ hours. Wii Sports meant that I was seeing my mum and dad playing a computer game for the first time since Tetris and Mario back in the day; in general, games had got far too complicated for them and many others. This is another reason I still love Nintendo: local multiplayer. Forget online, because nothing beats being in the same room as friends and/or family whilst playing a heated race on Mario Kart, a round of Wii Sports golf where somebody is about to take an important shot, or a particularly chaotic battle on Super Smash Bros.! It was on the Wii that I got to play my favourite ever Nintendo game: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. I also finished off the phenomenal Metroid Prime trilogy, got to play some more Battalion Wars, enjoyed the out-of-this-world experiences of Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, and got to be spooked by another major name in survival horror: Silent Hill (Shattered Memories: a stunningly atmospheric game with an amazing story).

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is an exciting, tense, psychological journey, and one of my favourite Wii games - if only it was longer and more appreciated, though!

The beautiful Skyloft, the hub world for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

All this and yet I’ve barely even spoke about Nintendo’s best-selling games console ever: the Nintendo DS. I’ve got many stories about this wonderful console, and one of those is about the incredibly addictive series that I got into on this system: Advance Wars. I remember missing my bus stop because of playing Advance Wars: Dual Strike, and the time I would lose to that game, and the series as a whole, is unreal! I got my 3DS very close to launch, my Wii U on the actual launch day, and both are consoles that have blown me away. As I’ve said before, I’m a huge survival horror fan, so to have a brand new Resident Evil game, Revelations, on the 3DS, as well as a new survival horror game on the Wii U, ZombiU, was an absolute delight, and both games (especially ZombiU with its rule of "one bite kills") were spine-chilling in the best possible way. Nintendo Land is a tour de force of local multiplayer, offering up laughs and cheers from all over the room (unless you lose!). Right up to the present day, I find that Nintendo still stun me. The games I’m currently playing are: Super Mario 3D World, Pikmin 3 (2 games that, along with The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD, show that Nintendo have absolutely nailed HD. EDIT: Add Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. For Wii U to that list), Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, and Pokémon X (EDIT: and now Xenoblade Chronicles 3D, as I own a New Nintendo 3DS XL); within these very games you’ll experience numerous moments that make you realise that the "Nintendo magic" lives on, and I just know that I’m going to love this life-changing company for the rest of my life, as they constantly innovate, inspire, excite, and amaze on a scale that is unrivalled by any other developer.

Top picture: A picture of my metallic blue New Nintendo 3DS XL. Middle picture: The amazing Wii U. Below: There's not much more satisfying in multiplayer gaming than fighting with Nintendo's iconic characters in Super Smash Bros. For Wii U!