The only toy that has ever held my interest for an extended period of time was the first video game system I ever received, it was an 8 bit Nintendo. I got it when I was four during Christmas, all I remember was my brother going crazy when he found out what it was. Me on the other hand didn't know what it was, I was more interested in the box that the video game came in. But over the years that I had so many great memories from that simple toy.
I observed my brother playing Nintendo for several hours straight and could not believe it was able to hold his attention for that long. At that age I was so hyper and energetic that I could not imagine even siting still for more than a few minutes. But the day came when I was sick and unable to do any playing inside and out, I was tired of the Brady bunch reruns on TV and I certainly was not going to read so I decided to try out the Nintendo. As soon as I played the first game I was hooked, Mario was the first game I ever played because it came free with the system. The beauty of Mario is that you can just pick up the game and play it, it wasn't as complex as today's games. So it was easy to play yet still challenging for a four year old. Soon after I got into more Nintendo games such as Zelda, Super Tecmo Bowl, defender of the crown, contra, and others. I became absolutely obsessed with video games and beating each game I got my hands on.
As I grew older there came more and more systems like PlayStation, Super Nintendo, and Sega. I bought all the systems but none where able to hold a candle to my 8 bit Nintendo. Sure the graphics improved, the audio was better, and the games had more memory, but it didn't have the game play of the original Nintendo. All the new games were so spent so much time upgrading all the superficial aspects of the games that it ignored what made games great, the strategies and story. But nobody around seemed to agree, it was all about the new systems that recently came out and the arcades with its futuristic games. I eventually followed the crowd and focused on the newer systems, it was bound to happen anyway because Nintendo wasn't even making any new games anyway.
When I was in junior high Nintendo had been out of style for several years by than, now we had third generation video game systems that made Nintendo look like a dinosaur. These systems used CD's instead of cartridges, and were in 3d instead of 2D. It was all the rage, but at the same time a video game store called funcoland was selling old Nintendo video games for as low as one cent. Over the course of 6 months I bought at least a hundred Nintendo video games and rediscovered the system I loved. Not only me but all my friends as well, it felt like I was a kid when ten of us would gather in our basement and play video games till we had to go home and eat dinner. Of course after awhile another generation of systems comes out and people lose interest again.
But a year ago my uncle visited my house with his 4 year old son who got into my closet and found my old video game system, I hooked it up and hook him on the system. Now every time he comes over we play and have a great time like I did when I was four. He loved it so much that I decided to give it to him, and hopefully he will get as much out of it as I did. It was more than video games to me, it made me and my friends bond and share memories.
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