The video game landscape was much simpler in 1989.

As it had once stood so ubiquitously for Atari, "video game" now meant Nintendo. Period. If someone played games, they played them on an NES, and those unfortunates saddled with Sega Master Systems or Turbo Grafx 16s by well-meaning but uninformed parents were treated as outsiders, stuck outside the velvet ropes at Club Cool (or Club Rad or Club Tubular or Club Bodacious or whatever stupid shit we said then), desperately trying to convince the bouncer that their friend TG-16 totally knows one of the guys in the band. It was an even playing field, a kind of universal adapter for the fanbase where any kid could bring a game over to another kid's house and be assured there would be an NES there to play it. As such, Nintendo became a focal point for the love and attention of children everywhere that otherwise would've been squandered on their parents or chosen dieties. There was a purity of devotion by the fans to Nintendo that could only be earned by the care they put into their product, the community they fostered through their magazine, TV shows and other spin offs, and the crushing, impregnable monopoly they had on the market. When there's only one candidate, there's only one choice.

Once the Genesis came out and proved itself to be a real competitor, this era began to fade away. There wasn't a massive turn from Nintendo, but people realized there were other fish in the sea. I let my Nintendo Power subscription run out and subscribed instead to Game Players, which had no bias, no company line to sell, and a lot more three-eyed gorilla overlords. While kids today still have a tendency towards fanboyism -- that is, a vehement attachment to one system or another, believing it to be the best ever made simply by virtue of it being the one they own (see also: patriotism) (ZOOM goes the BRILLIANT POLITICAL COMMENTARY), there isn't the rampant, ardent one-sidedness in the community there once was. The Gamecube devotee will still admit that Grand Theft Auto is fun, the PS2 fanatic will still play Metroid Prime at a friend's house. There are always a few people who try to claim that every game not available on their system of choice is ugly and unplayable and possibly molded entirely from feces, but these guys aren't really fans as much as they are lunatic obsessive-compulsives seeking any random inanimate object as an anchoring point to serve as the core of their being because their sense of balance and judgement of pros and cons never developed beyond an on/off toggle.

One of the showcases for the fervor of gaming public in those heady pre-Genesis days was Nintendo Power's letters column, called the Player's Pulse. The title suggests a kind of Gallup Poll of player opinions, but really it was just a collection of hyperactive yammerings about how great Nintendo games were, in all facets of life. You could replace the word Nintendo with God and Mario with Jesus and paste these letters into a Christian church bulletin's letter column called How Has The Lord Touched Your Life Lately? and no one would notice the difference. "I was at a low point in my life and didn't know where to turn, until a friend introduced me to a man named Jesus. Now I spend all my time with him and I've got something to look forward to in the morning. Thank you God, for this wonderful gift to your people. Thanks to your guidance Jesus only died once, when a lakitu dropped a spiny on his head, but soon he was alive again." Kids (and some maladjusted adults) would write in to report scores, show off the Mario mural their parents painted in their rooms, or talk about how much easier life is with a Game Boy around. These letters were written by kids who truly wanted, as the old Toys R Us commercial said, to "eat Nintendo, sleep Nintendo, BE Nintendo." These letters were borne from a pure, unjaded adoration that can only come from youth. They represent a different attitude, a different environment, and a different time.

They're also pretty dumb.

As I said.

In my lengthy introduction, I didn't mention that, of course, there were other big things going on in the late 80s and early 90s. One such fad of enduring popularity was sucking the soul and essence out of every facet of black culture. Rap and hip hop were the new big things, and soon watered down, mainstream-accessible hackjobs were showing up in copycat bands, on TV, and in educational videos detailing the dangers of copyright infringement.

This rap isn't entirely without creativity, but it bothers me that four kids couldn't manage to fill some of the spaces. They covered the color and proclivity of Ninja Turtles and spat out one of the show's catchphrases, then felt they had run out of material on the subject. I know the show wasn't exactly deep, but they made a rap without even mentioning how the Turtles love pizza. I think that's against the law. They also couldn't finish the Mega Man rhyme, so they decided to rent out some ad space. Hey, that stamp wasn't going to pay for itself.

Boy, writing this article makes me hungry. I sure would like it if someone would Give Me A Break™. Hey look, a Nestle© Kit Kat Bar®! It's Mmm-Mmm Gooshit wrong slogan am I fired?

I like to believe that these were incredibly hip kids for their age and that "turn your letter" is actually a sexual euphimism, turning an odd non sequitur reference into the suggestion that if you aren't good at Double Dragon, women won't find you attractive. It reads much better that way. Plus, a world where the number of times you get laid is directly proportional to the number of times you've kicked Abobo's ass is a world I want to live in.

Let me quote my good friend Barbara: "When you get burned by fucking Nintendo Power, you know something is wrong." Doubly true in this case, where the magazine equivalent of the A/V Club has to remind a bunch of frat boys that vacations are for getting off your ass and doing something.

If it was just a couple guys, I could understand. A few oddballs in the pack. But for an entire group of otherwise sane individuals to have their baser instincts overcome by an insatiable desire to stack boxes is just weird. I was such a gaming nerd that I got pantsed by the Dungeons & Dragons kids in school, but if I drove 20 damned hours to get somewhere, you can bet I'd be out there watching the grass grow or counting sand on the beach if there was nothing else to do. I have a feeling these guys will be saving money by pulling out and playing with their Game Boys a lot in their lives. YOU SEE BECAUSE BY GAME BOY I MEAN PENIS. Although I prefer to refer to mine as the Wonderswan.

By the way, just in case it ever comes up on Jeopardy!, this means Luigi and Steven Spielberg are fraternity brothers.

NASCAR sucks. Let's make that clear. I mean, I try to be supportive of a large range of varying tastes and adopt an attitude of "to each his own" about these things. But NASCAR fucking sucks. It's long, it's mind-numbing, it's pointless, and it has a perverse effect on the high arts.

I like the fact that, even in fantasy, NASCAR drivers can't avoid running into each other. It just confirms the long-standing suspicion that people only watch for the crashes. It's like those shitty direct-to-video movies that flood the "Thriller" section at your local video store; the ones that always have some naked woman lying on a bed with a silk sheet just barely covering her, or maybe standing by a doorway in a lacy nightie with a big ass knife superimposed at half transparency in the background. You don't feel as guilty about the fact that you just paid money to watch people pretend to have sex because hey! It's not porn! It's in the thriller section! It's a taut, suspenseful tale of murder and a man falsely accused, wherein the man just happens to fuck every woman he meets who might have some evidence. And maybe a couple he just meets at a bar.

It's the same thing. People who can't bring themselves to admit that they want to watch a demolition derby, or one of those Superdome stunt shows where they set a car on fire and drive it through a stack of cars that are on fire to have it land in a pool filled with sharks that are on fire have NASCAR, where they can pretend to be interested in the results of a race where -- oh dear! -- someone just happened to completely cream someone else and the 46 cars behind them.

The Progressive Boink First Annual Caption Contest!

1. Get.. the.. ice pick.. out.. of.. my thigh..
2. Congratulations, Timmy! It's an NES! Oh, ho ho, of course it isn't. It's that weight set I've been telling you about, you don't have time for faggy video games. I just put it in that box for a jo--Woah, slow down Timmy, lift with your legs. You gotta learn to listen first.
3. An NES, just what I always dreamed of! This is the happiest day of my li--oh shit that gordita's kickin in

And the winner is...

Jesus, man. I suppose when I start up my own computer company and end up with more money than God after He uses His time freeze superpowers to cheat at one of those radio call-in contests where you have to grab all the cash blowing around inside a booth in 60 seconds, I'll find some odd ways to kill time too. His score is certainly nothing to sneeze at, but his choice of venue is a little odd. Steve-o has essentially just jumped the fence at an elementary school, ran out onto the PE courts and dunked on the 3rd graders.

The Woz: I just scored 500,000 points in Tetris!
Kid: I can write my name in cursive.

This letter even has a substitute brag he can kick in if the score thing ever fizzles out. You got more points than me? Yeah? Well have you ever been ON THE CONCORDE? Well I guess your score don't mean shit then does it?

Steve has even written about this, many years since, on his website:

I was listed with high Tetris scores many times in Nintendo Power magazine. I also sent letters showing how I'd given GameBoys to Gorbachev and Bush. The latter was seen playing one shortly thereafter on TV in a hospital after a heart problem. It got to the point that Nintendo Power wouldn't list my name again so I sent in a score photo and used the name "Evets Kainzow" which is both my names backwards. When I got the next issue and flipped to see if anyone had beaten my high score, I saw this name but forgot having sent it in. I was worried that someone was close to me. I noticed that he had a foreign sounding name and that he lived in Saratoga, the next city over. Then I realized that it was my own trick.

That man is sharp as a tack. Between this and Theta Chi, we've learned today that Game Boys act like neural neutralizing agents, turning happy, successful men into score-obsessed dullards. Video games really do rot your brain.

Where are we going, Uncle? Oh, wow, I never knew we had a cellar. What is this? Oh.. Oh my God.. It all makes sense now.. Aunt Mabel never left for California! Aunt Mabel never left at all! You monster! What are you doing with that axe? Don't come near me! Oh, I hope there's a strategy in here for this.. ..Dammit, man! I don't have an ocarina!

I certainly had an unhealthy obsession with games at that age -- Oh hell, I still have an unhealthy obsession with games. But I don't think that really extended to the magazine, at least not enough to haul it to the other side of the planet just to take a picture of it. I think Aaron is a little young to have appreciated the absurdity of the idea, like those people who steal neighbors' lawn gnomes and then take pictures of them at various landmarks. So the sequence of thought that had to occur was "I'm going to visit a major monument of history in another country, on another continent, all three of which I may never get to experience again. Oh, I could use this to impress those guys at Nintendo Power!" The mental process of a child is very odd.

Now this is a nice story. Who doesn't like a kid being able to overcome his problems. And it's a good piece to have tucked away just in case you ever get in a debate with one of those people who claim video games never did nothing for nobody no how, and your hand-eye coordination argument has run out of steam. I don't want to ruin the mood, or rain on the parade, or double dip the chip or what have you, but one part of this bothers me.