For people who are my age, Nintendo was probably a pretty big part of their childhood. I’m sure we had all spent our fair share of time in arcades pumping quarters into machines, and probably even took a few turns playing Atari, ColecoVision, or other earlier home video game systems. But when Nintendo came along, it turned the video gaming world on its head and changed the business forever. We probably have it to thank for the continued video game obsession that persists even to this day. But for every one of us who loved Nintendo, there was a singular point in time when we first got to experience playing a game on one. This is the story of my first time.
I was nine years old in the early fall of 1987. During that time of year, I would spend a lot of time at my grandparent’s house helping with things like picking up chestnuts from their four chestnut trees that reached to the sky back in the days before the chestnut blight took them away, canning the last of the bounty from that year’s garden, and picking apples in preparation for the yearly tradition of making apple butter. The real old-fashioned apple butter that cooks down all day in a huge copper pot over an open fire. That was always one of my favorite days of the year. The whole family would gather at Granny’s house and take their turn stirring the huge vat of apple butter, as it had to be constantly stirred over the eight or so hours it took to make it.
On one of these particular days, my uncle Ernest stopped by while I was there. After a while of talking to my grandparents, Ernest turned his attention to me and said, “Tims got something new you need to come see.” Ernest was a little excited as he started describing to me this new thing that Tim had. Ernest was not an easily excitable man. He was a gruff man. He was drafted to Vietnam when he was eighteen and did two tours of duty there. Even to this day in 2024, he has never talked about his time there. He was a farmer who worked all morning with his cows and pigs and then worked second shift at a factory job on top of it. Ernest didn’t have time for the trivial things in life, nor did he have patience for anything that he didn’t see as productive. So when he was semi-excitedly giving me the details about Tim’s latest acquisition, I was on the edge of my seat, listening as intently as I could.
He went on to explain that it was a video game that plugged into your television. And it had games that you put in it and played them on the TV. It had hand controllers that you used to play the game. And the best part he said, “It don’t even take quarters to play it.” As I described earlier, Ernest was not a man to waste time on trivial things, and I guess he must have missed the Atari era altogether because he described these features as if they had never been seen before. He ended his hype speech with a line that I can still hear in his voice in my head, “it’s called Nintendo.”
I spent the rest of my day with Nintendo on my mind. Partly because it sounded like the coolest invention of all time, and partly because I was confused as to how I hadn’t heard of this “wonder box” before now. I couldn’t remember hearing about it at school while talking with friends in home room, at lunch, or at recess. I watched cartoons every weekday after school and all day on Saturday’s yet could not picture any commercials describing it. I even read a few comic books back then and wracked my brain to remember if I had seen any ads for it there. Even Stevie the Tyrant hadn’t mentioned it that I knew of, and he was one of those kids who usually got the hot new things before anyone else we knew. I was coming up blank. Somehow I had been completely oblivious to its existence. But one thing I absolutely would not forget was the invite from Ernest to come over and check it out.
Several years before I was born, my old man had purchased a forty-five-acre plot of land and built the house I originally grew up in. Not long after returning home from Vietnam, Ernest, who is my mom’s brother, was getting married and looking to get his adult life started so my dad gifted him two acres of that land to build a house on. Tim was born six weeks to the day before I was, so we were essentially the same age, and since we were family and neighbors, we grew up joined at the hip. We were always together when we were younger, running and playing all over the farm, having sleepovers at each other’s houses multiple times a week, and always getting to enjoy each other’s toys. But a few months before this, we had sold that house and moved into another one a couple of miles away. I still saw Tim at school every day, and we still had sleepovers on the weekends. But this distance we found between ourselves meant that we weren’t always in the know when it came to who had what new toy like we had always been used to.
When I got home that afternoon, I called Tim and we arranged a sleepover for that very night so I could come over and check out his new Nintendo. What I found there left an indelible mark on me for the rest of my life. And Tim couldn’t wait to show it off. He sounded like a recording as he rattled off the same lines that his dad Ernest had to me earlier that day. He related how there were cartridges that contained the games that you inserted into the system, and that it had hand-held controllers that you used to play the games. He was as overjoyed as Ernest at the notion that you didn’t even need quarters to play! He even repeated the infamous words that had been stuck in my brain since earlier in the day…”it’s called Nintendo.”
That slightly odd-shaped gray and black box had me hooked from the first moment I saw it. I sat wide-eyed but patient as Tim explained to me the basics of how it worked. He started with a basic rundown of what Super Mario Bros. was and how to play it. He then put the cartridge into the game system and fired it up. I cannot adequately explain to you the wonder that washed over me as I got my first look at what at the time were amazing graphics and heard those first sounds generated by the game. He was going to let me watch him play it a little so I could get a better grasp on it before I tried it. It turned out to be a long while though as Tim had already mastered the basic mechanics of the game through his continuous play and he got a couple of levels into it before he led Mario into a horrible death at the hands of a turtle with wings.
Then the moment came…he asked me if I would like to play Super Mario Bros. with him. I’m sure my answer was something along the lines of “HECK YEAH!”. Sadly, he set us up in two-player mode, meaning that I would be Luigi and go second. Going second on Super Mario Bros. has always been a tough beat. While I personally prefer the character of Luigi with his great green and white color scheme over Mario’s red and blue, going second meant you were usually going to be in for a long wait before you could play. And in my very first Nintendo experience, this is exactly what happened.
Tim ran through the same levels again and milked the clock as he was intent on collecting every coin along the way. When he eventually died, it was finally my turn to actually play this thing called Nintendo. I was so excited I was barely able to contain myself. The only thing I can even remotely compare that moment to is the first time I got a girl in the back seat of my car. And much like that experience, the nervousness and awkwardness of the moment were overwhelming. So much so that I hit the wrong button and it was over just as quickly as it had begun.
I had watched his moves intently as he played and thought I was ready to run through the same levels that I had just watched him complete. I mistimed my very first jump and died an embarrassing death as I was chomped by a mutated mushroom. Roughly five seconds after I began, I was relegated back to the sidelines to sit and watch Tim and Mario dominate the playtime for another twenty minutes or so.
The evening continued like this up until bedtime. With Tim controlling the action for what seemed like hours at a time, and me dying off quickly every time I got a chance to play. Over the course of about four hours, I had amassed about twenty minutes of screen time. I went to bed that night thinking that Nintendo seemed fun, but I wasn’t sure since I didn’t get much hands-on time with the game.
The following morning I was eager to try it again though. Right after breakfast, I asked him if he wanted to play Super Mario Bros. again. But Tim darkened my whole world when he responded, “Nah, I don’t want to play Mario today.” My mind quickly wondered if and how I could lure him into his closet and lock him in there. I was not ready to give up Nintendo so soon after first playing it. He was not going to shatter my hopes and dreams like that. But just as easily as he had darkened my day, he lit it back up when he said, “Let’s play Pro Wrestling instead” as he held up a game cartridge featuring one eight-bit wrestler giving a back suplex to another eight-bit grapper. My brain nearly melted.
I had to take a breath, and while I can’t be sure, I think I may have wet my pants right there on the spot with excitement.
Of all the things I was into at that point in life, professional wrestling was at the top of the list and it wasn’t even close. I was a huge fan of the NWA, watching every show I could when it was on. I bought wrestling magazines every time there was a new on on the stand at our local Piggly Wiggly grocery store. Hell, Tim and I would have wrestling matches with fake opponents pretending we were the Rock & Roll Express. We had matching R&R Express air-brushed shirts that we would wear. We lived for pro wrestling back then.
When he put that cartridge in and started it up, I swear I heard angels singing Hallelujah.
We went through the cast of characters and were excited about the possibilities of matches we could have. Since Tim hadn’t played the game much yet, we were pretty much on even footing when it came to experience. And throw in the fact that this was a game that both players played at the same time instead of taking turns meant that I got a whole lot more hands-on time with this than I ever would have gotten being Luigi on Super Mario Brothers.
We spent that entire day playing Pro Wrestling and I didn’t care at all about not getting to play Mario anymore. We had incredible bouts that pitted Star Man against Kin Corn Karn, and Fighter Hayabusa versus The Amazon, and our main events with me using King Slender to battle Tim as Giant Panther. The battles raged all day long and continued through the night.
The next several days were like that, with us playing Pro Wrestling by day, and then me going home and begging my parents for my own Nintendo by night.
About a week later, my mom and dad finally relented to the constant pressure and we went to the Hills Department Store in Bristol where my Dad picked up my first Nintendo Entertainment System for me, along with the Pro Wrestling cartridge. I didn’t get the grand action set with the light zapper and the duo cartridge featuring Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. I got the one with the control deck, two controllers, and the book, The Official Nintendo Players Guide.
In a weird twist, my dad selected a game that he thought he would enjoy playing. It was a Space Invaders-type knockoff called Alpha Mission. Much like I explained about Ernest earlier, my dad was not someone you would expect to be browsing video games and picking one up to play. I like to think that instead of making my mom think he was spoiling me by buying two games, he said one was for him, knowing that he was never really going to play it. As I sit here, I can’t remember a single time he ever tried to play Alpha Mission, so I feel like my assumption is correct.
I got it home that night and was anxious as hell for my dad to get it hooked up to the television. By the time he had gotten everything hooked up and in place, it was getting late into the night. My mom let me play one quick match on Pro Wrestling, but then it was time for bed, and mom was not one you argued with over things like that. I was like a kid going to bed on Christmas Eve with so much excitement coursing through my veins that it was hard to sleep. I spent the night with visions of brain busters and somersault kicks dancing in my head instead of sugar plums.
I got up the next morning before the sun was up, and was immediately in the living room to play more Pro Wrestling. It was a Saturday, so that meant I was choosing Nintendo over my Saturday morning tradition of watching cartoons. But that was ok. I had watched cartoons my whole life. This was a new thing, and it wasn’t going to take a backseat to anything that day, even the glory that we now refer to reverently as ’80s cartoons.
I probably spent the entire day playing it. Most likely I played Pro Wrestling for most of that time, but I also popped in that Alpha Mission cartridge and gave it a go as well. Dad quickly went from being the man who sneakily bought me another game for it to being the man who wanted to limit play time on it because he heard Nintendo could mess up your television.
Within seven days, I had gone from not knowing what the hell Nintendo even was, to playing one, owning one, and becoming obsessed with it. If I sat down and thought about it, I think that week would rank in the top ten weeks in my life. I’ve been a Nintendo enthusiast since that point in time, and it all started with that first trip to Tim’s house. Pro Wrestling will forever hold the distinction of the game that originally stole my heart, and I still keep a pristine copy of it on display in my home. Right behind it, if you look closely, you can see pictures of my kids.
And speaking of my kids…when my oldest was still young…maybe about four or five years old, I was cleaning out a closet and came across my old system and games. Later that day I hooked it up to the television and began playing through several old games and was enjoying feeling the nostalgia wash over me in waves. She came into the room with her teddy bear hugged in her arms and her eyes instantly fixed on the screen…watching the bright red car of Rad Racer hug the tight turns as I raced at high speeds. After a few minutes, she turned to me and with her innocent and cute voice said, “Daddy what’s that?” I looked at her and said, “It’s called Nintendo.”
