Nintendo Nostalgia

It's amazing to me how much people become nostalgic about Nintendo. I got thinking about this today when I read about a NES Cartridge Modded into NES System. It made me think about this time last year, when CMU's chapter of SigEp built the SNES Booth for the Spring Carnival booth competition. Walking through the structure, I could tell the frat boys were reminiscing to their childhood days of playing SNES when designing every aspect of the booth.

You've very likely seen this popular YouTube video of a modified impossible Mario game being played and commented on aloud:

It is clearly yet another example of a nostalgic memorial to a now-antiquated system.

At the age of 14, my friend, the video game journalist formerly known as the "Video Games Ombudsman" Kyle Orland started the Super Mario Brothers Headquarters. Over a decade later, it is still a highly active and popular site.

I guess part of my problem is that I don't share this same sentiment of nostalgia for the SNES as others. I never had one when growing up; I only had an old Atari. Going over to friends' houses in elementary school meant we would take turns playing Mario, but my turn would last about 50 seconds, since I didn't know how to time my jumps and I'd land poorly on a Goomba (I had to look up what they are called). Meanwhile, since all my friends owned systems, their turns would last forever. In my neighborhood at least, I was certainly in the minority of children without and SNES. Though at the same time I suppose I understand it. Older generations seem to have the same nostalgia for classic arcade games such as Pacman/Ms. Pacman and Galaga. There are so many different console systems now though, I wonder what our kids will look back to.