Barbie (NES)

What a surreal experience this game is. I've been playing it since I was a little kid; it was one of my first NES games.

See, Barbie is going to sleep. She has unusual dreams about the mall. Because she's Barbie and this was made in the late '80s / early '90s so she didn't exactly have a doctorate or anything yet.

So she goes to the sporting goods store in this dream, where she pulls charms off of her bracelet (bottom left of the screen) and pelts a dog with them until it removes the bouncing tennis ball from her path. No really, that's what's happening here:

Later, she goes clothes shopping. Duh, she's Barbie; she's not going to go to the mall (even in her dreams) without clothes shopping.

There seems to be an issue with haunted clothes, though, starting with these floating blouses (though when I was six, I would have sworn up and down to you that these things were plastic bags wafting in the wind, because it made an equal amount of sense):

The "boss" for the clothing store is a bouncing outfit. The shoes come at you (with a vengeance... perhaps Barbie is having a nightmare about buyer's remorse?) but the rest of the clothes just bounce up and down in place as one until you toss some bracelet charms at them and one by one, the articles of clothing disappear.

This is the piece de resistance in this game: the Galleria. Anyone who has ever gone to a shopping mall in America has seen a mall fountain. But the fountains in this mall (yes, I know, it's a dream, but come on now) have FISH in them. Not like, "oh look at the pretty koi in the fake pond." Silver, jumping, FISH. Like, trout or something. I don't know; I don't fish. But these guys don't belong here. Also, Barbie got all dressed up in some '80s prom monstrosity to get doused with fountain water and fish-slapped (instead of her timeless pink crop top and black leggings, above).

Whatever, you walk your way through a mess of fountains, fishless and... fishful... and Barbie wakes up and comments on what a wonderful dream she had (weirdo).

Championship Bowling (NES)

You know how games from your childhood remind you of... well, your childhood? I've owned this game since I was very little and got my NES in the first place, but the only time I really spent any time playing it was with my (now ex-) stepsister, Christina, when I was in 7th/8th/9th grade, so this game reminds me of her.

The way the characters are dressed, the look of the alley, the music... it's all incredibly late '80s / early '90s and it's so great. I played as the only female character (there are only four to choose from) does this crazy, knees-together, feet out to the sides celebratory jump when she gets a strike, which is really funny.

I did okay, for not having played in a long time. I bowled a 108, which is probably about what I'd bowl in real life right now (my average hovered around that for the last couple years that I was in a bowling league; I'd like to think I'd still do about that well now... and real bowling is on my games list, so perhaps we'll find out at some point!).

Tetris 2 (NES)

My favorite game ever, of any kind, is Dr. Mario. I think the vast amount of time I have dedicated to that game has made me mildly worse at this one.

Instead of how normal Tetris works, where you want to build solid horizontal lines of blocks at the bottom to make them disappear, in this one, you get blocks (yellow, blue, and red) with black circles in the middle to begin with (randomly arranged) and you get Tetris blocks made of different colored blocks (also yellow, blue, and red) to drop on them. You want to match three blocks in the same color in a row to make them disappear. The goal is to make all the original blocks with the black circles in them disappear to move on to the next level.

Dr. Mario has made me worse at this one because of the very slight differences. Both games use the same mechanic, goal, and three colors (and both have good music!), but Dr. Mario has pills of two "blocks" each while Tetris 2 has shapes of four blocks each, and Dr. Mario calls for four in a row to make them disappear and Tetris 2 calls for three in a row.

Super Spike V'Ball (NES)

This cartridge has two games on it: Super Spike Volleyball (tonight's game) and Nintendo World Cup soccer. I am terrible at both.

You get to pick your player, but they all look the same. Except their Speedo colors, of course.

Perhaps the most annoying thing about this game (other than the weirdly loud sand sound you make when you dive for the ball and miss) is that sometimes it switches you to controlling the other player on your team. By this, I mean, in the photo above, I'm serving, but once the other team returned the ball, my little [1] was over top of the other player, because he was closer to the ball. I can only assume it's a lack of good AI from 1988, because he was only good for setting the ball up for me, he never actually returned it over the net.

It also took me way longer than I'm comfortable admitting to figure out how to spike the stupid ball. The A button is a regular set, and the B button gets you up in the air, but the timing of hitting B to jump up and A to actually HIT the ball to spike it, was... well, there was a learning curve.

Womp womp. Look at my team hanging their heads in shame at the score of 2-15. Ouch.

Wheel of Fortune (NES)

WHEEL! OF! FORTUNE! [8-bit version of theme music]

I've loved Wheel and Jeopardy since I was a little kid and didn't understand half the puzzles/questions. So naturally, I had (and still have) the NES versions of both games. I also have them both for Nintendo DS, but those are for another day. I also had the board game of Wheel a long time ago. It was actually really cleverly designed... I think I'll try to track one down so I can own it again. (In retrospect, actually, I should have saved all the versions of Wheel of Fortune to do a themed week, but I guess it's too late for that!)

I played against the computer... spoiler alert, "Leslie" won. (I played on Medium because I always played Easy as a kid and figured I could probably do better now?)

I have such a thing about 8-bit sound effects, as I'm remembering while I play all these old NES games. The best sounds from this game are the wheel's fast spin (sometimes it goes fast, sometimes it goes slow, I dunno) and the little alert sound for when there are only vowels left on the board, and the little "byoo" sound it makes when you choose a letter. Also, they actually recorded Vanna congratulating you at the end, because that's definitely her voice. (Check out the awful frilly pink ridiculousness she's wearing in the final round photo up there.)

Magic Darts (NES)

This game and I have had quite a back-and-forth. When I was little, I didn't like it because it was kind of boring. I would play it with my parents every once in a while, though, and I soon discovered that if I played as the alien (as I always did after this point), (1) it throws the dart by wiggling its finger instead of an actual throwing motion, and (2) sometimes the dart randomly flies around all over the place instead of going where you threw it, and that can be annoying or fun, depending on how important that throw was. Then I grew bored with it again, and now, as an adult, it's actually pretty fun.

It really helps to actually know darts terminology (of which I never realized there was so much, until I revisited this game). There are a handful of types of games, but the only ones I ever play are the 301, 501, and 701 (where you try to get exactly that number of points without going over).

You line up your shot with three different aspects. In the photo above: (1) the dart at the bottom of the dartboard has a ticker underneath it that goes left/right; (2) then an aiming cone thing is in front of your face and goes up/down; (3) then the red bar at the far right is up/down too.

It didn't happen in this game, but sometimes a fly appears on the board and if you hit it... I don't remember what happens. Something.

Super Mario Bros. (NES)

I decided to start the One Year of Games with the first video game I ever remember playing: Super Mario Bros. I've also never won the game, so I went into this with the goal of finishing it.

Of course, several hours and 30 attempts later, I feel like getting myself to 8-4 is enough of an accomplishment.

Props to Garrison, who offered up "Through the Fire and Flames" by Dragonforce as an alternative to listening to that mind-numbing Mario music somewhere around attempt #15. You have not truly lived until you have speed-run world 4-1 (you know, the Lakitu one) to "Through the Fire and Flames."