Old Friend...

After a movie and some cribbage with a friend tonight, I decided to meet up with a another friend--  A friend that got me through rainy summer days, made my brother and I, along with the other daycare kids, get into countless battles and allowed me to carry a gun before I could multiply five times five.  Tonight I blew the dust off the red and black buttons and decided to play a good ol' fashion game of Super Mario Brothers.  None of this PS2, DES, or whatever else people are playing these days; I got out my original Nintendo Entertainment System and went a few rounds with Super Mario himself.  

As I was playing, I was thinking about all the kids I know between the ages of 7 and 15 and all of the fancy dancy gaming systems they have now.  I wonder if they would even know how to play the Original Nintendo.  I haven't the slightest clue how to play most of the new stuff out now; I wonder what it would be like if they went back into our world.  I would like to challenge one of these know-it-all, DES, PS2, Xbox Kinect, totin' kids on an old fashioned Nintendo.  I don't think they would stand a chance.  They wouldn't even know where or how to begin!  They wouldn't know what exact bricks to hit in order to get those extra coins to get an extra guy, what warp zone to go to if you want to avoid the cloud that throws the fire and they of course wouldn't have the slightest clue what pipes to go down to get to the dragon in order to save the Princess!  And let's not forget the most important thing-- getting the game to work.  It takes a very gifted person to know precisely how to get a Nintendo game to work: *blow into game, Reset, Reset, Power, Reset right when the words come down, blow into game, Reset, Power, blow into game, flick game up and down inside the slot a bunch of times, blow into it again, Reset*

I may not know how to drive a Mario Cart using the Wii remote, but I do know exactly where the vines are to get up into the sky to the world of coins, where the extra guys are hidden, and how get past the dragon to save the Princess, even without your bullets.