Ode to the Most Memorable Old School 8 Bit Nintendo Games

Apparently, according to the Everything Preschool.com Calendar the month of August presents an unusual but fun week-long holiday during week one to celebrate video games. Research efforts turned up very brief allusions to Video Game Week in August but none of the sources offered much explanation regarding the holiday's origin or details of how people celebrate this unusual holiday. So I've decided to pay tribute to the occasion my own way: Through old school video game nostalgia.

Although you won't catch me at a shopping mall arcade challenging the 10 and 13 year old regulars to match after match of (Fill in blank with whatever is the most updated current arcade favorite version of) Street Fighter, a game at which I must admit I used to really kick butt, I associate video games with some really great times.

Video games, for several years during my childhood, played a very big role in my entertainment life. I still think of them fondly and many memories of playtime with friends or bonding time with my at the time single father drift up into my mind nostalgically from time to time.

My generation experienced video games when they were almost as basic as they ever have been in history. The Atari was just becoming old news, or for some, a collector's item when my sister and I for Christmas received our first NES Nintendo Entertainment System with the included starter games known as Duck Hunt and Super Mario Brothers (the original). Over the years we collected as many games as we could manage to keep up with and I still have them today. And even though I realize we are in the age where even the Nintendo Wii might become outdated within the next couple years at best, I admit I'm still stuck with the basic NES console and 8 bit cartridge games which I still have and hold dearly to my heart.

So in honor of the Video Game Week Holiday, which I realize I am celebrating fashionably late at this point, and for the sake of generating some cozy feelings of nostalgia I would like to highlight my top three most memorable old school video games for the NES 8 Bit Nintendo Systems: Barbie, Back to the Future Parts II and III and Bart Simpson and the Space Mutants. For easier reading, I have devoted separate articles for each old school video game tribute elaboration.

The list of links below will lead you to overviews of 8 bit Nintendo Games for the NES original Nintendo Entertainment System that do not only exist as the most memorable (in both good as well as bad ways) of all the numerous games I've played but they are also the ones I most cherish. I have adored these games since the first day I took them home from the store up until the present day. I personally find them challenging and addicting.

It should be mentioned, however, for the sake of objectivity, something a former friend used to repeatedly remind me. This friend had grown up with Atari and knew everything about video games as they continued to advance in their development. I admit he was a pretty credible source. It still never failed to disappoint me however that these three games at the top of my most memorable and cherished video game list were apparently, according to this friend, thought of as a joke to the video game industry and everyone knew this but me.

And yes, I will agree these games I've chosen would never win awards for well developed unique characters, or interesting plot, good graphics; they wouldn't even score above very low for quality game play or catchy music. At times they even frustrated me like crazy and I was probably their most avid consumer promoter.

There was something about these crappy games, though, that as a kid I grew to associate with comfort. They were familiar to me, cozy and even though I never beat any of them on this list, the hope that came along with continuing to try was an unmatchable feeling.

I let this video game connoisseur friend of mine continue to tease me about my appreciation for the video game underdogs and I don't doubt his declarations about their status in the gaming world rang true. And I was okay with that because for one, I appreciated these crappy video games in all their simplicity and imperfections.

More importantly though, I can occasionally be a know it all. And to be honest, I was quite confident in these games' ability to hook you whether you enjoyed playing them or not. So my friend could say all he wanted. Because when it came right down to it, I forced him to watch me play each one of these video game failures over and over again and lo and behold, much to my great satisfaction of course, he became just as hooked as I was in no time.

In the end the joke was on him. And I was standing there in the background with a barely disguised smirk of glee saying "I told you so" as I once again handed him the controller.

That's the story of how I came to adore these universally hated NES 8 bit Nintendo games. Go back in time with more detailed 8bit game descriptions or otherwise become shocked to learn what video games were like without three dimensions.

Click on the links below:
Barbie
Back to the Future Parts II and III
Bart Simpson and the Space Mutants