Tag: Nintendo

Nintendo Nostalgia: Excitebike

ExciteBike was one of the Nintendo consoles most beloved games, and a favorite of mine too. I killed many hours with this bad boy, and for good reason….it was full of great features! Racing on a motorcycle! Design your own tracks! Put 100 jumps in a row! This was one awesome game for those three reasons, and why it’s so fondly remembered. That and the fact that you could wreck others by coming down the track with your rear wheel in their front wheel and watch them tumble over and over down the track. With the possibility of using any combination of 19 different obstacles to design your track with, it had great replay value just in designing new courses to race.

I was introduced to this game at my cousin’s house shortly after I got my Nintendo. I was instantly hooked and we spent several hours that night playing it. I never actually owned the game, but several of my friends did, and a copy of it was at my house more often than not through the magic of swapping games with a friend for a period of time. This game still holds its own in the “fun factor” today against such newer and more complicated games.

I could spend more time playing this title than I could modern titles today. Just designing courses loaded with obstacles and then racing against friends provided endless fun for us. Many a Saturday afternoon was spent on a virtual dirt bike in my house, and I’m feeling pretty nostalgic for it right now.

by The Retro Rambler

Nintendo Nostalgia: Castlevania II Simon’s Quest

When Konami unleashed the first Castlevania cartridge on the Nintendo world in 1987, I was still too wrapped up in Super Mario Bros., Excite Bike, and Rad Racer to pay much attention. Even though the original game was much loved and had a lot of hype around it, I was still impervious to the franchise’s existence when Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest rolled out in 1988.

How much advertising was put into it? I couldn’t tell you. All I know is, that one Saturday afternoon I took all the money I had saved up to the local K-Mart when my Mom went to do her usual shopping. I went straight to the electronics section and starting scanning the available Nintendo games, as I was intent on picking one up that day. To this day, I’m still not sure what led me to pick Simon’s Quest. Maybe it was the only game they had, or maybe the box art just got to me. But little did I know, that I was purchasing one of my all-time favorite games for the Nintendo system. Matter of fact, when I bought a Wii several years ago, I immediately downloaded Simon’s Quest for it and still play it now.

In Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest, you take the role of Simon Belmont on a journey to undo the curse placed on him and his family by Dracula at the end of the original Castlevania game.

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by The Retro Rambler

Stuff I Want From the 1986 Sears Christmas Wish Book

With Thanksgiving in the rearview mirror, and everything turning to Christmas already, it’s time to look through some more old Christmas catalogs! I know to some it may be early, but ever since I was a kid, you always had to get an early start on the Christmas season. That’s because back then, the annual Sears Christmas Wish Book would arrive in the mail in mid-October. I’d spend days on end pouring over all of that years offerings and circling all the cool stuff I wanted.

So in that grand tradition, let’s take a trip back in time to 1986 and re-visit the pages of that year’s Wish Book, and make a list of all the cool stuff I would have liked to receive that holiday season!

sears-1

What better way to stay warm in the coming winter than with a sweater showing your support for your favorite NFL football team? I imagine these looked nice back in their day, but I can also see the word “tacky” written all over them in the mid-’90s. But these days, they have a cool retro look and I would happily parade around town sporting one of these. Add this to my list this year honey. Let me get 49ers one in XL.

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by The Retro Rambler

Toys From the 1988 Sears Christmas Wish Book

Well, Christmas is coming up quick, so I thought it would be a good time to open up an old Sears Christmas Wish Book and relive some great old memories from the past. I’m going back in time to 1988 with that year’s edition of the Wish Book to pick out some of the cool toys I wanted and thought I’d share them with you.

I was 10 years old in 1988, so it was right at that perfect time of still being into toys, but at the same time, starting to have an eye towards some gifts that were a little more “grown-up”. The 1988 edition of the Wish Book was loaded with so much cool stuff, I don’t think I’m going to be able to cover them all this time out, so I’ll probably stop at ten things for now, and hopefully do more later. Let’s get to it!

G.I. Joe Locker Bag Kit

Oh my goodness! If you’ve got to start a personal grooming habit as a young man, what better way to do it than with G.I. Joe?!? This kit has everything a 10 year old young man would need too. G.I. Joe approved toothbrush and toothpaste (ADA be damned), mini soap with its own case to keep it from getting all slimy, a brush and comb for whatever stylish ‘do you are sporting, and a cup to go along with that tooth care set. To top it all off, there is a small pocket size pack of tissue to take with you wherever you go, and a cool ass locker bag to store it all in. You would be the envy of your fellow gym mates if you walked into a locker room with that bag slung over your shoulder. And on top of all of that, how cool would it be to see this puppy hanging up in your bathroom at home. It would almost make coming in from playing outside to get cleaned up enjoyable. Almost.

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by The Retro Rambler

Retro Comic Book Ads From 1989

Old comic books often act as a time capsule. They’re full of advertisements of products from long ago, and can tell us a lot about the culture of the time in which they were printed. Some of those products are still with us, while others are not. I often like to crack open the pages of a long forgotten comic book and just browse the advertisements found inside with which to take a trip back in time to another era. Let’s open one of those time capsules here today and see what we find….

This week’s time capsule is Superman #30 from DC Comics, that came out in 1989. The Superman titles have always one of my favorite books to read, but this is from the era just before I started to read his stories on a regular basis. I picked up in the summer of 1990, and read consistently up until about 1998. Let’s see what old advertising goodness is hidden behind this cover.

How appropriate this is to find an ad for Morning Funnies Cereal since I just did a post detailing my love for the cereal a short while ago. You can check out the full article here, but I’ll add to it and say that it was a great idea to spend advertising dollars on it to run in a comic book since the whole gimmick to the cereal is that the box is covered with comic strips. Makes perfect sense.

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G.I. Joe Locker Bag Kit

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