Teens reach to NES (or Black Barney feels old)

Erik Twice wrote:

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.

isn't she 17 or something? I had a pretty foul mouth at that age.

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

They're gold fingers, my man, on both the box and the cartridges. Brass would wear out much faster over time, and is far more reactive. This myth of the "moisture on the cartridges" that you are helping perpetrate is bullshit. Gold isn't reactive like that. If anything, you're blowing moisture through the crack in the connector and causing dendritic growth on the circuits within.

/Because Science, Bitches

I don't know if you guys saw this at this year AGDQ, blindfolded speedruns of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! and Super Punch-Out!!, they're awesome!

I'm pretty sure they're copper. Gold is too soft for a friction connection, much softer than brass and brass isn't very reactive. That's why it's used in maritime applications. But brass is inflexible as hell.

All the stuff my Dad worked with in the connector industry (he was in AMP's test labs for years) was copper and copper alloys. Might be a little gold in there. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the slots in the NES weren't designed in his facility.

Copper tarnishes a bit but it's tough and flexible, and the friction in the connection actually cleans the leads. Gold is way too easy to scratch away for a 1000 cycle snap-in usage like an NES.

S.

Disgustipater wrote: 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).

Some games were hard but fair (Contra, Bionic Commando) because the controls were tight and the amount of randomness and increases in difficulty were gradual or few and far between. Other games were hard and unfair because the amount of random enemy respawning was crazy (Ninja Gaiden, parts of Castlevania), the difficulty was severely ramped up after a couple levels to compensate for how short the game was (Abadox, Castlevania), or it had shitty, awkward controls (TMNT, any LJN movie game). I always thought Sunsoft games got inordinately difficult after you progressed so far; Batman, Blaster Master, Fester's Quest, and Gremlins 2 were all guilty of this. They'd get so hard and the game would kick you so far back after you died that I didn't bother continuing trying to beat them.

I could never beat Tyson. I knew exactly what I had to do but I would panic and spaz out and dodge at the wrong time. I might have gotten to the 2nd round a couple of times, max. Contra is, other than the constantly spawning enemies at some parts, nearly all muscle memory and isn't too bad. The giant bats in the last level of Castlevania are ridiculous, but the game makes up for it by letting you continue right at Dracula if you can make it through the clock tower. Mega Man 3 is probably the sweet spot for challenge. MM2 is trivially easy and MM is nearly unbeatable without the cheats. I haven't played 4-6 very much at all, though, so I don't know about them.

In my town there were half a dozen uber video game nerds, and it seemed like they all had different games they could beat: this kid could beat Ninja Gaiden, this one could beat Tyson, etc. It was a big deal to be able to see a kid beat a ridiculously hard game because otherwise you'd never see the ending screen apart from a poorly-taken polaroid in Nintendo Power. I was friends with one of them (he was the one who I talked about freaking out and stealing his parents' car), and one of my proudest NES moments was when he asked to watch me beat a game for him. The game? The Mafat Conspiracy. Not exactly top-shelf, but I'll take it.