I don’t remember asking for a Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas in 1988. I loved video games, but we already had an Atari and an Odyssey 2, and the commercials made the NES seem like something that would be financially out of my parents’ reach. But that morning, there it was. My brother and I tore through the wrapping paper of our shared gift, something very rare for us, and discovered Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! and Section-Z alongside it. The gray Zapper looked like something from the future. I remember holding it and thinking it was the coolest thing I had ever seen.
That afternoon I filled out the card to subscribe to Nintendo Power, checking the mailbox constantly in the weeks that followed. When Issue #1 finally arrived, I didn’t just flip through it. I studied every page, even tracing the artwork so I could learn to draw Mario.
In early 1989, Nintendo Power arrived with its now-iconic Super Mario Bros. 2 claymation cover. I remember sitting on the floor of our bedroom with it open in front of me, studying the every page like they were a window into the future. Super Mario Bros. 2 was featured inside, and it didn’t strike me as strange at the time. The NES itself still felt brand new, so everything looked new. The characters seemed bigger, the colors brighter, the enemies unfamiliar. It didn’t feel wrong. It just felt like the next Mario game.
On a Friday evening in early March, my dad came home from work carrying a gray plastic rental case. He told us the guy who ran the video store had mentioned Super Mario Bros. 2 and offered to reserve it when it came in. That was news to me. I didn’t know you could rent Nintendo games, and I definitely didn’t know you could reserve one ahead of time. The same game I had studied in Nintendo Power for weeks was suddenly sitting in our bedroom, just waiting to be played.
I remember being surprised before the gameplay even started. You could choose your character. Mario was there, but so were Luigi, Peach, and Toad. Up until then, most of the games I had played on our NES only let you be one character — or Luigi if you were Player 2 in Super Mario Bros. The music kicked in, bright and upbeat, and instead of running across a flat stretch of ground, the game opened with a door and a drop. You stepped through and fell to the bottom of the screen. It felt bigger. Taller. Stranger. Then I realized you could pull turnips out of the ground. You could pick things up. Throw them. The sound effects were sharp and satisfying. It didn’t feel like the Mario I already knew, but it didn’t feel weird either. It just felt new.
It felt special almost immediately. My brother and I played it nearly nonstop that weekend, taking turns and figuring things out as we went. Every new enemy or mechanic felt like something to call the other one over for. The levels seemed bigger than anything we’d seen before, and there was always one more thing to try before turning it off. When Monday came, my dad packed it back into the gray rental case to return to the video store. I remember watching it leave the house and already wishing we had more time.
A little over a month later, I got my own copy for my birthday. This time there was no gray rental case and no Monday deadline. We slid the cartridge into the NES knowing we could finally take our time. I was excited not just to play it again, but to get back into that world — the doors, the music, the strange enemies, the turnips waiting in the ground. Now we could actually beat it. It wasn’t just a weekend anymore. It was ours.
I didn’t realize it then, but that birthday gift was the start of something I’d return to again and again.
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