Memories of the Family Computer

If you lived your childhood around the same time as me, and if you didn't live under a goddamn rock or some oppressed dictator-run country, you probably would have come across one of these on either your living room, your friend's living room, or an "arkilahan" which is basically just a house with lots of famicoms you can rent:

The Family Computer. Winner of the Parent's Choice Award for
Tool of Satan of The Year from 1990-1994.

Here are a few things that I remember about the good ol' famicom:

1. Everybody insists you can actually jump over the goddamn flagpole in Super Mario 2, yet nobody ever does. There's always that "friend of a friend who used to date (granted he's old enough) this guy who works at Nintendo Philippines who said it can be done." No one ever did.

2. The FamiCom adapter is almost as fragile as the XBox360, burning out after extended usage. I was told it had to be let to cool every now and then. Being the nerd that I am, I didn't wait for the natural air convection to cool the adapter for me. I put it in the fucking freezer. Up until now the adapter still smells like longanisa.

3. Cartridges can only be cleaned by blowing air into it - from your mouth. I'm not sure why or who thought of the idea that saliva coming in contact with sensitive chips might fix things, but whatever works, works.

4. Other catridges need more special handling, like inserting coins or bits of paper into the cartridge slot so the cartridge can get a snug fit. My mom said those tex the young me used to gamble with were useless. Well, it helped me play my favorite NES games when I used them as padding, so yeah.

5. Nobody ever really knew why Popeye had to grab all those hearts or letters from Olive. We thought being a sailor entailed kicking serious ass (i.e. Bluto's) but it was quite disappointing to find ourselves running away from the enemy 90% of the time and actually enjoy it.

6. Any cartridge that claims it has more than 100 games in it, (1000 in 1, 500 in 1, 300 in sparta) is lying. It's just the same game given five different entries depending on what kind of hack was applied to it. If you're lucky you get to play with Mario in Street Fighter. If you're unlucky, you just get extra lives in Excite Bike (tip: nobody gives a shit about lives in Excite Bike).

7. The FamiCom was the 90's official reason that parents used when they see their kids failing at life. Every single problem was blamed on the existence of this "Satan's Entertainment System". If the government could get away with it, they would've blamed the Baguio Earthquake on the existence of too many NES units in that city. Or something.

8. Rockman passwords are the only reason why red pens are important to kids. I also had to learn the hard way up up down down left right A B select start didn't work in real life. A friend I used to cut classes to go to a computer rental house before got run over by a truck on his way back. The kid didn't respawn. Bad thing the 30 lives cheat didn't work. Good thing we didn't share lives like in Contra.

9. The Duck Hunt dog was an asshole.