Teens reach to NES (or Black Barney feels old)

So I was thinking this could probably make a cool article or blog entry but I'd rather just discuss it for fun. This is nothing new but it's the first time I saw it and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it and, more noticeably, how old it made me feel. It takes a few minutes to get good but it's worth it if you used to play on the NES. I especially think Barnes and Ken will dig this.




There's just so much going on here. One of the quotes that actually summarizes sort of the whole thing is the one kid that says, "It feels like I'm in Wreck-It-Ralph"

My favourite moment by far is the cynical Asian kid who is complaining that "this is like the least comfortable controller ever" and then gets pwned by the very first koopa, lol. His face is priceless.

"I can't go back in this game??" btw, that girl, whoever she is, is easily the smartest girl there. Everything she says is awesome.

I also loved Arya responding to the opening music of Super Mario Bros cuz she recognizes the tune, it's so adorable.

Man do I ever feel even more old because look, if Arya is there that means that these other teens must be really popular too, yes? I have NO IDEA who any of them are but the kid in braces looks familiar. Is that Bran?

I like the guy saying about the girl who finishes 1-1 "she's garbage"

How about when Arya realizes she's invincible after getting the star and runs through the koopas saying, "die bitch". That's an amazing moment giving clarity at how different these generations are. I never talked like that back then playign video games. I only started with Call of Duty 4. But here's a super young girl playing a video game dropping swears like crazy. I would have been spanked.

And I love that the girls are WAY better than the guys at this game. It's not even close.

just an awesome nostalgic video. I loved it.

That was a fun video. Thanks.

I'm OLD old, though, so I missed the NES by a hair. I was an Atari 2600 guy, and jumped into Dreamcast and PS2 when I had kids of my own.

Now I'm strictly a PC gamer. So consoles suck anyway.

Black Barney wrote: My favourite moment by far is the cynical Asian kid who is complaining that "this is like the least comfortable controller ever" and then gets pwned by the very first koopa, lol. His face is priceless.

Clearly that is a Goomba not a Koopa. Barney just lost what very little credibility about video games he had. /unsubscribe

It's weird that they didn't recognise it, the part about pushing the cart down is pretty unintuitive. The weird thing is some of these folks are just a little more than a decade younger than me, and I grew up playing 2600 and Colecovision BEFORE moving on to Nintendo.

To save your game you leave it paused all night and all day while you are at school and come home to find your mom has turned it off.

Ha ha, I think I left Goonies II turned on for like three days once.

Black Barney wrote: Man do I ever feel even more old because look, if Arya is there that means that these other teens must be really popular too, yes? I have NO IDEA who any of them are but the kid in braces looks familiar. Is that Bran?

Maisie Williams' name card says, "Special Guest," so no.

The girl who exclaims that she has a phone case that looks like the controller but obviously had no idea that that is what it was disgusts me. But I guess that's a teenager for you.

I hope there are no goombas in Westeros, because if there are Arya is fucked.

Hey did you know that blowing on the cartridge brass connectors is the worst thing you can do? The NES acts funny cuz the brass plate connecting thingies erode over time. The thing that erodes them the fastest is moisture so that's the worst thing to do is to blow little spit all over it.

Once your NES gets really sick, you open it up, remove all the brass-plate things and boil them in alcohol or something.....or replace them

Black Barney wrote: Hey did you know that blowing on the cartridge brass connectors is the worst thing you can do? The NES acts funny cuz the brass plate connecting thingies erode over time. The thing that erodes them the fastest is moisture so that's the worst thing to do is to blow little spit all over it.

Once your NES gets really sick, you open it up, remove all the brass-plate things and boil them in alcohol or something.....or replace them

Yeah, blowing never did anything. Usually it was a bent connector that took a few tries to work because the design of the NES was terrible. It was taking a game out and replacing it that worked, not blowing. Corrosion usually came from blowing to fix a bent connector.

Better to just get a top loading model now, or a Famicom. Both are easy to get on ebay, and much better than the crappy original NES we grew up with.

I still have my NES hooked up and ready to game. I took it apart and replaced the port that receives the cartridge with an aftermarket non-brass version. Works tons better, but I'm really careful inserting and pulling cartridges now because I don't want the new port to wear down the contacts on the cartridges.

Black Barney wrote: ]How about when Arya realizes she's invincible after getting the star and runs through the koopas saying, "die bitch". That's an amazing moment giving clarity at how different these generations are. I never talked like that back then playign video games. I only started with Call of Duty 4. But here's a super young girl playing a video game dropping swears like crazy. I would have been spanked.

I don't think it's really about swearing, but about the meta aspect of "Die bitch". It's like saying "motherfucker" in an imitation of Samuel L. Jackson's tone, it's just for fun. At worst it's a bit like cursing because it's a forbidden taboo and hence, funny. I wouldn't worry about it.

Just an awesome nostalgic video. I loved it.

If you liked this video, you might like the video in which they play Punch-Out. Seeing the reactions to a pattern-based games and seeing how a couple of the kids get into it is very fun.

Erik Twice wrote: If you liked this video, you might like the video in which they play Punch-Out.

It was pretty funny when the kid read Piston Honda's quote and said, "That's racist."

I seen a lot of comments recently about how terribly difficult Mike Tyson was, but I could reliably beat him when I was a kid. Maybe I just played the game way too much. But to be honest, I'm not sure if I ever made it through the entire game to reach him, instead of using the password. Maybe once? Anyway, I loved that game so much.

Disgustipater wrote:

Erik Twice wrote: If you liked this video, you might like the video in which they play Punch-Out.

It was pretty funny when the kid read Piston Honda's quote and said, "That's racist."

I seen a lot of comments recently about how terribly difficult Mike Tyson was, but I could reliably beat him when I was a kid. Maybe I just played the game way too much. But to be honest, I'm not sure if I ever made it through the entire game to reach him, instead of using the password. Maybe once? Anyway, I loved that game so much.

I'm really not good at Punch-Out, but as far as I know Tyson is more beatable than it seems simply because he follows a pattern so eventually you'll chain all through his attacks and learn how to tackle what. In a sense, his biggest strenght is that he has a lot of HP, his attacks are very long and sometimes he changes his timing slighty to throw you off. He's still difficult though, not going to lie here, but if you can beat the rest of the game it's not a huge difficulty spike.

But Punch-Out aside, I think the difficulty of most older games is highly overstated. For example, Contra is often quoted as one of the hardest games ever made but it's probably on the easier side for the era, being much easier than Castlevania or R-Type. I think they are seen as difficult because most players nowadays are used to not losing very much, to progress in a fairly linear fashion investing one hour to see a new hour of the game and most old games aren't like that, Gradius II takes 25 hours to complete not 30 minutes means to name an example.


By the way, have you played the Wii Punch-Out? It's a really good game, I think it makes previous versions practically obsolete.

Contra was another one we played to death and beat it over and over. I don't remember it being super hard either. I'm pretty sure we got tired of beating it with he 30 lives code and started doing it like you are supposed to. I remember a lot of other games being a lot harder, like Bionic Commando and TMNT, but I'm not sure if that was because they were just hard, or terrible games that were poorly made (Rearmed proved BC was the former).

I have not played the Wii version of Punch Out. I haven't really played any Wii games.