MUSICAL MONDAY PRESENTS
Today's Musical Monday is a
brentalfloss and featuring
Dave Bulmer is about a video game that I have a rather personal and nostalgic relationship. In many ways, Super Mario Land is one of the lost Mario games; it was 1989 and Nintendo's handheld Game Boy console was a new piece of hardware. I hadn't even been born when this game came out, but the Game Boy and several cartridges (including the equally important
Tetris & Tetris II) were the first video games my Dad bought in the names of, someday, being able to share it with his son. And it was the first console I think I ever played and I played it a lot.
Road trips, which we took a lot of between visiting my grandparents in TN and moving every two years or so, were quite common in my childhood. I used to carry around a backpack full of books, but the entertainment I remember most fondly was my Game Boy. Super Mario Land was rather special as it was probably my default game (after Tetris II) and I can remember having to ask adults to help me figure out harder parts of the game.
The colors were shades of green and black, it was hard to see the screen in the sunlight, and it weighed about 3/4s of a pound when I had the rechargable battery pack plugged into the back of the sucker. It was the first console I ever really had, the first console I ever had to play Pokemon on, and it will always have a special place in my heart. When you consider the fact that I didn't get a Color Game Boy until about 1999-2000 (I remember it was when they rolled out Pokemon Gold/Silver), you can understand how the only portable console I had for ten years would leave a very serious impression on me when compared to modern portables which get new iterations every twelve months...(I'm looking at you 3DS XL)
