Like many of you, I was a pretty poor kid. Moved around a lot, had a weird upbringing in all sorts of ways, and definitely didn’t have the sort of household that’d get me access to most available game consoles. I had a Sega Genesis (or Mega Drive, depending on where you live) that my uncle left when he fell off the face of the earth, and then I mowed lawns for a Sony PlayStation, and a friend gave me his old Game Boy. Got a PS2 via a summer job, and progressed into later adolescence from there.
But as a kid? Yeah, wow, I envied some of my neighbors. Thankfully, I got to jam on these beautiful bits of hardware on occasion at their houses instead. Now, for a trip down memory lane…
6Nintendo Entertainment System
I was a bit young to ever own an NES, but I did play with one at my mom’s boyfriend’s house when I was like… five? Maybe four? I don’t remember. In any case, the only game I checked out was The Legend of Zelda, but it (rightly) blew my mind.
Certainly, by the time I touched it, the Super Nintendo had been out for a couple of years. I hadn’t laid my eyes on one of those yet, though, and besides, I was entranced by Hyrule. I was awful at The Legend of Zelda - I mean, I was young as heck! - but it lingered in my mind for ages.
5Sega Game Gear
Since I had a Sega Genesis, it only made sense that I should also own a Sega Game Gear. At least, that’s how kid me viewed the world. But no one was going to foot the bill for such a pricey endeavour.
If I had realized just how bad the battery life is, maybe I wouldn’t have cared so much at the time. Eventually, Ididrealize it - thanks, Jack, for showing me how little time you could actually spend playing Sonic on any given day - but even then, it looked fun. Still, I recognized that the Sonic games on the Game Gear were tough. The screen real estate really let them down, too, since there just wasn’t enough visibility up ahead to live up to the “gotta go fast” school of thought.
But it was, like, a portable Sega Genesis. In my mind, anyway. That’s enough to pine over, if slightly.
4Philips CD-i
I didn’t stutter. Somehow, I knew somebody who actually owned a Philips CD-i. I never actually saw them play anything on it. Possibly because there was so little worth playing, but in hindsight, I’m a bit bummed about that, because maybe I might have beheld the terribleness of the CD-i Zelda games long before the memes emerged in full force.
Here’s the thing. The dude whose family owned a CD-i? He put it on a pedestal. At the center of a shrine. I’m not kidding here. There were candles on either side of it. The place was always dimly lit, and there were metal goblets, and wreaths of garland, and… look, you had to be there.
These people held it like the holy grail. They must have spent a fortune on it, so maybe they were just trying to feel better about it. All I know is that I held the CD-i in distinct reverence because I, as a child, simply assumed it was sent from heaven on-high.
3Sega Saturn
Later in life, I’d get far sadder that I didn’t own a Sega Saturn than I ever felt during childhood. Yet, I still feltpretty sadat the time. A couple of school buddies had one, and it felt like the next level of my Sega Genesis' evolution. And it was. But the Saturn performed so poorly in the West, that it’s a minor miracle I even knew two people who had it.
The graphics were crisper, and back then, people never shut up about graphics. Least of all schoolchildren. One of them played Shining Force 3, and it was unlike anything I’d ever seen. There were a couple of other RPGs, I can’t recall what they were, but I do distinctly remember ogling the holy heck out of everything on their televisions.
I had a Sega. They had Segas. Their Segas were cooler than my Sega. I wanted my Sega to be just as cool as theirs. Them’s the breaks, kid me. Them’s the breaks.
2Super Nintendo
Ah, the Super Nintendo. My cousin had Super Mario World for it. I’d visit his house a few times a year, and every time I did, I’d make him play it with me. The poor guy was clearly beyond bored of it, but I kept insisting. When he eventually said no, I begged him to let me play it on my own, he’d say yes, and then his mother would yell at me for not going outside to swim in the pool. It was a whole thing.
Super Mario World looked so amazing. I mean, it still does, but in the mid-1990s, it was unreal. So colourful, in ways that nothing I had for the Sega Genesis could be. What’s more, my cousin had Final Fantasy 6, and Breath of Fire 2, and they both made my jaw drop. The sheer scope of them, especially FF6, blew me away It just seemed to keep going and going, both times I asked my cousin to show it to me. Turns out, all he was showing me was for the 20 minutes of a 40-hour game…
1Nintendo 64
In sixth grade, while I was mowing lawns to save up for a new game console, I asked two of my friends which I should get between the Sony PlayStation and the Nintendo 64. Somehow, I’ve never forgotten this exchange. One friend, Eddie, said it should be the PlayStation, because it has Final Fantasy 7. Ididmeet him by complimenting his t-shirt on the first day of school; the shirt had a picture of Cloud Strife and his Buster Sword on it. I could see what all the fuss was about!
My other friend, Anthony, tried to sell me on the Nintendo 64. “Better graphics,” he said, which Eddie guffawed at. “Better games,” the ultimate throat jab, but Eddie guffawed all over again. Since the only game I really knew existed for either of them was Final Fantasy 7, I ran with the PS1. And to be clear, I don’t regret that at all. FF7 sent me on a road that has changed my life in so many ways. I wouldn’t be writing this nonsense list today without it.
Just the same, whenever I’d visit Anthony, and he’d show me Super Mario 64 and especially The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I would wish that I could have gotten both systems. Forget Final Fantasy 6, it was freakin’Ocarina of Timethat felt immeasurably vast to behold. And the 3D. Wowza meowza. Unlike FF7, which was a totally different, less intimate, camera perspective. With Zelda, it was like Anthony was exploring a world. Truly exploring it.
I struggle to imagine what my life might have become if I had selected the N64, but I can tell you this much - I bought one as an adult to catch up on all I’d missed, and Game Boy notwithstanding,that’swhen I became a diehard Nintendo fan. I got my Switch 2 at launch, but I hadn’t even grown up on the Big N. I finally got it, and I’ve been gettin' it ever since.
