Third time lucky - A personal note

The other week my nephew wanted an action replay , so I said I’ll get him an Action Replay in exchange for the Nintendo 64 he had lying around gathering dust, done deal, now today I have my third Nintendo 64 to add to my collection of Nintendo consoles. So why is this my third N64? No they weren’t destroyed from angry video game rage, well here’s the story.

The N64 is a mixed bag of emotions for me; some of you may have noticed that my first retrospective article was about the N64 which I found quite easy to write about because I followed the systems progress from beginning to end. I think I bought any magazine that had the words ‘Project Reality’ or ‘Ultra 64’ somewhere on the cover, actually when I come to think about it I could have bought a full sized Killer Instinct arcade unit with the cash I blew on gaming mags. So with all my cash spent on gaming mags, funding the purchase of this dream machine required me to get of my magazine reading ass and go get a casual job. So there I was, a man on a mission working away on some loading dock for a transport company, and to rub it in guess what boxes were zipping past me on the conveyor belt?…N64s!!!

The day came when I had my hard earned N64 nestled beside my TV, and I couldn’t of been happier playing games like Wave Race, Mario 64, Golden Eye, Turok, and so on, you guys know all the classics. All of this enjoyment ended abruptly when one day I came home late from a night of partying only to discover my room was robbed! My stereo, VCR, and my beloved N64 was gone; I guess the TV was too bulky to get through the window. Anyone who has been robbed before will know the horrible feelings that linger around after such an incident. I was absolutely gutted, but I wasn’t defeated I went back to work the next day to start all over again, the days just seemed so two dimensional with out having my N64.

Wash, rinse, repeat, I’m back where I was, N64 plugged into the TV, a good collection of games, me and my mate swearing at each other about sneaky positioning of proximity mines in Golden Eye, all was fine and dandy until the dirty thieves came back when I was out again. This time round it was only the N64 and my games. That was the breaking point for me then, I pretty much gave up on home consoles then, and realizing living in a crappy neighbourhood means not having good stuff. I knew who it was and karma got the better of them so there was no point in perusing the matter any further.

Video game arcades gave me my gaming fix for months to come, but as time passed the situation improved, the neighbourhood was cleaned up and I moved on. So over a decade later I’ve got one of my favourite Nintendo systems back in my collection, which I may spot weld to 500kg iron block just for peace of mind. I didn’t just want another N64 to fill an empty void though, I got it for practical reasons as well. Nintendo have offered a decent selection of classic games on the Virtual Console, but many are missing and with some titles we may never see, like the Rare titles for example. So the goals now are to call Nintendo head office and see if they still have any controllers left, sift through ebay looking for Golden Eye, Banjo and Kazooie, Perfect Dark, Killer Instinct, etc, and enjoy ripping my mates controller cord out when he’s being a smart ass. See, you can’t do the last one with the new wireless controllers!