Video Games=Best Friend of Childhood
I first got into the fantasy land of video games when I saw my friend in the 3rd talk about the awesome fun they had playing it.…I pestered my Dad to get one and lo behold I got a Whiz Kid 8 bit game console. Here I highlight the games that made me the man I am today.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles[TMNT]
Essentially a PvP (Player Vs Player) game. Had the regular 4 turtles with Casey, the dragon guy and of course Shredder. I still remember we four guys(DInesh, Bony, Sumedh and Me) would form teams in TMNT and play for like 4 hours non stop. Poor guys did not have a chance when I took Don-a-tello..(hold down for 2 secs, Up+Turbo kick)=Fly through the air and send you to hell. You would never see a turtle move so damn fast! And with the baddie Shredder, Fwd+down+low Punch= sonic booms. I could have them every second 20 times straight. Good times. Yes Dinesh, I beat your butt every time ;) CONTRA
Then came Contra. This was the ultimate symbol of adolescent machoness. You had two shirtless, gun toting, 6 Pac guys who had to fight through jungles, snowfall, waterfall, caves etc to save the world from alien invasion. No dumb chicks no damn lame-ass storyline. Just kick ass. The best part were the powerups. You had laser, Spread, Rapid for each occasion. And one of the best musical scores ever.
Street Fighter
One of the all time best arcade games. Over 20 players from different countries fighting. Ryu-Japan, Guile-USA, M.Bison-Russia, Dhalsim-India and 1 dude from brazil(I remember he could electrocute himself or something..nice hairdo too lol). Ever popular as it laid the path of fighting games for ages to come. Each character had his/her own set of cool moves and nuances. My pick of the lot would be : Vega-Spanish guy from style factor and Bison- For pure ass kicking and Ryu- Godly Uppercuts, Chun Li- To Gawk at.
Super Mario Bros
Yes, yes I know. It has to be there like any self respecting game Tv show would expect. I admit I had a hell of a lot of fun playing this. The best part would be the variants of the game, there was a co-operative 2 player one where me and my neighbour friend archana would play the game for like 8 hours straight (it really was that long a game!). Also the nifty tricks of discovering where the secret 1 up and warp zones made this an evergreen game.
Baseball
The only connection to me and sports would be- as you can guess by now in video games. Baseball was #16 on my 64-in-1 game cartridge and was hella addictive. I actually learned a lot about the sport and why Americans are so lame, all thanks to this game. I never could figure out thought how I hit them home runs..Every damn team looked the same to me-just differently coded (A,B,C,D..). I always had a sneaky feeling that the D team had the biggest bats and hence=more home runs.
More than the game itself it was the level of enthusiasm and excitement amongst my fellow peers that really made the memories worth it *sniff sniff*. Gimme a console now and wild horses cant drag me away..now I will get back to my sad life of MBA.
My vision is to put a Whiz Kid Video Game console on every childs home. I call it Vision 3424 Z.D.
