Response to ‘Nintendo and Marketing’

When I think of my childhood, certain things stand out in my mind: the Easy Bake oven, Legends of the Hidden Temple, and Playdough. However, my predominant memory is that of the Nintendo. Beginning with the original console, my family owns every model that was released up until the Wii. Despite our consumer electronics conformity, though, I would not define myself as a “Nintendo kid”. I was more of an adopted Nintendo kid, or a twice-removed, grafted-in Nintendo kid. Since the majority of my childhood occurred in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, I was slightly beyond the Nintendo boom that rocked my older siblings’ worlds. This is why I define myself as adopted: Nintendo was a hand-me-down of sorts from my older brother and sister.

To elaborate, I never asked my parents to buy me a specific NES game until we got the Nintendo 64. This was the first console that was given to me, instead of to my brother or sister. Before this, the various consoles were simply there—as in, they were in the basement or in my siblings’ rooms. Since I wanted to be cool and hang out with them, I had them teach me how to play. Thus, I began playing games like DuckHunt and Super Mario only after my sister or brother got them for their own amusement.

So, I am going to amend Rebecca’s original post by asking this: do you think of yourself as an original Nintendo kid, or an adopted Nintendo kid, like me? Other familial denominations are welcomed, if you care to explain your reasoning.

Also, to answer the rest of this post, I rarely buy videogames anymore. This is because I have about a sliver of the free time that I had as a child, and because I have a driver’s license (i.e. I do other things for fun now that I’m older). The last game I bought was Guitar Hero II, and the last Nintendo game I bought was Mario Kart for the Wii. I honestly can’t say what I look for in videogame advertisements, because I’ve never been tempted to buy a game based on a television commercial or a magazine article. Instead, I bought games after playing them at a friend’s house, since I wanted to continue the fun at home.

Sidenote—when I saw “‘lock and key’…cartridges”, I immediately remembered how I used to have to blow into the end of the game to remove the dust that was preventing it from loading properly. Can anyone explain why a little bit of dust would mess up a game? Thanks in advance.