Video Game Memories

Recently my buddy Travis purchased a used Super Nintendo, and I played Street Fighter for the first time in who knows how many years.
I've grown past the video game stage of my life. I sold my PlayStation 2 and all my games at our garage sale because I never play it anymore. With work and a family, it's just not a high enough priority.
Every once in awhile I'll go over to my buddy Jason's and play college football on his PlayStation 3, and I still enjoy it.
But after playing that old school Super Nintendo, I did some comparing and contrasting on the old systems versus the new systems.
The most noticeable difference is that the new systems are insanely realistic. The graphics are amazing. I remember thinking Street Fighter was awesome in that regard when I was 11, but compared to the new games it looks about as modern as Pong on the Atari.
But what I miss about the old games was their imperfections. The unrealistic stuff made the games more fun. For example, on the old Madden NFL games, you could hit a guy 5 or 6 times after a play was over. Both players would immediately bounce right back up, and you could nail the guy again. Usually this would not result in a penalty, but you could occasionally injure an opposing player on a 4th or 5th hit. Regardless of whether there was an injury, each hit would result in the "hoooah....HOOOAH" rumbling sound of the players colliding.
Nowadays, when Jason gets a lucky play on me for a touchdown, I can't even fly in and take out his kicker on the extra point. As soon as a play is over, it either cuts to a replay or just moves on to the next play. They've made the games more realistic, but they've taken some of the fun out in the process.
Here are a few of my favorite old Nintendo/Super Nintendo games, and what I liked most about them.

Tecmo Super Bowl

This game was AWESOME back in the day. I had some epic battles with my next door neighbor growing up. However, if you can do this, it's obviously not the most realistic game of all time.

RBI Baseball

The original was always the best. The players were fat, the balls flew a mile out of the stadium, and if you hit one right down the line, it would get stuck in the corner to where the fat outfielder couldn't get it and you'd get an inside-the-park home run. I found this YouTube re-creation of the 1986 World Series on RBI, and it's flippin' awesome. (If you just want to see the famous Buckner play, start watching about 7:30 into the video).

I also liked RBI 2 and RBI 3. They made the players skinnier and the gameplay more realistic, plus they had every team in the majors. 

Madden Football

The best part about the old Madden games wasn't the late hits, it was what happened after a player was injured. Here's a reminder. How come they can't put that on these new football games?

In high school, I got one of the new Madden games right before our family went on vacation. I didn't even get a chance to play it. I let my friend Kevin borrow the game, and when I got back he had set every record possible. He ran the ball back to the 1-yard line so that his 99-yard pass and 99-yard rush would forever be the record for the game. He also kicked long punts and field goals and racked up 999 yards of offense or whatever the maximum was that the game would count. Then, when you went to the records page, it said "KEVIN WINS" as the user for every category. Well played, Ashman!  

Super Mario Kart

My brother Andrew and I both got really good at this game, and we had more than a few tightly-contested races. It also caused more than a few fights, but the good memories definitely outweigh the bad.

Street Fighter

I was never any kind of expert at the fighting games. I always preferred the sports games. But it was fun giving them another crack after probably 18 years. 

And it gave me the idea for this blog. Please leave a comment either here or on my Facebook page with your favorite old video game memories. There's probably enough stuff for two or three blogs on this topic, but just like mom used to say to me back in the day