Everything's gonna be alright
A faulty circuit breaker and power fluctuation later, my hard drive seized and I couldn't get into the OS anymore. I just hope my files are still in there. I am sad.
It's fortunate my laptop is here or I'll never get anything done. Worst case scenario: I lose everything. I backed up my most recent photos (which is the absolute important thing right now) to an external drive so no problems there. My documents are a different story since my last backup was a couple of months ago--I wouldn't know which recent files I may have lost.
What makes me even sadder are the games. I have most of them on disc, anyway. It'll just be a pain having to re-establish the online licenses for some of them. I hope the different publishers' tech support can help me with this one.
I need my happy place.
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The year was 1991.
It was a great time for gaming. I had a bunch of friends who were into it, sharing strategies, exchanging secret button combos and hidden stages. We were the cool kids with our gamer lingo and inside jokes.
I had a Family Computer, or Famicom, that my father got me from the local Uniwide, back when they were a successful warehouse store. I already got a few games for that prior. Contra was a standard favorite because every kid played it. But I really liked The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. They were my first RPGs, and I liked them a lot. I've been hooked to the genre ever since. I don't know how, but I was able to get English versions of those games. That was kind of difficult at the time since most Famicom games are in Japanese.
That year, one of my uncles from the United States sent me and my younger brother an NES along with a bunch of games. There was Pac-Man, Rygar, Rad Racer, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, Wizards and Warriors and many others.
It is the North American version of the Famicom. Only difference being, the console itself was of different colors and bigger, the game cartridges were also bigger, and all games are in English.
The greatest game to come out at the time was Super Mario Bros. 3. I had never finished the first one. The second was, technically, not even part of the series. But it was #3 that had me and my friends sink the most time with and actually finish. I was very lucky that it was one of the NES games my uncle had packed in.
The graphics were Oh-Some, the gameplay was smooth, and there were so many secrets and easter eggs to find. Of course, there was those Raccoon and Tanooki suits. The final fight with Bowser on world-8 was LEGEN... wait for it...
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... DARY.
Agonizing over the hard drive made me feel... really empty inside. From the closet I took out the old NES and the game carts I still had. The console has definitely seen better days. My copy of Mario 3 has a big mystery splotch on its face. I probed around it with a tissue and it looks like it can come off with a little cleaning. The contacts seem to be fine, no indication of degraded or rusted parts. Lots of cobwebs and dust, though.
I wonder if it can still run.