Brunix's Gaming Blog: Early Memories of Gaming pt. 3

I love playing old school arcade games. I have this yellow cartridge for the NES that has 52 arcade games such as Tetris, Galaxian, Galaga, and Super Mario and I've spent so many hours playing it. Even though I was really young when I played it the most, it was still really fun because almost all of the games were incredibly simple.

Circus Charlie was one of my favorite games on the cartridge. You played as a small clown that would perform circus acts like bouncing on balls and jumping lions through flaming hoops. It was all timing based. The silly animations combined with the goofy circus concept and the AMAZING circus music made one incredible arcade game.

(Circus Charlie riding his lion through fiery obstacles)

Another great game on the cartridge was Balloon Fight! You could play this game in co-op, versus, or single player. Basically you controlled a man that was lifted off of the air by balloons and your enemies were all hovering around you attempting to pop your balloons and make you fall to your death. The goal was to pop the enemies balloons by running into them (it sort of worked like Mario where the person on bottom got hurt) and stay alive as long as possible. Have you ever played a game that was so intense that your own body would move with your character and you would jerk around and flail your legs while you play? Balloon Fight was exactly like that, especially when you were playing with a friend. I would always be swaying back and forth with my little airborne character, standing up when I got higher up, and ducking down when my character was going down. Balloon Fight was my first ever multiplayer experience.

(Not a very good position to be in for our balloon buddy)

Last, but certainly not least, we have Galaxian! Galaxian is one of those fixed airplane shooter game that was set in space with alien invaders called the (you guessed it) Galaxians! In the game, waves of aliens would come down and shoot at you and the waves would get progressively faster and more aggressive. The goal here is the highest score possible. I was much more of a Galaxian fan than a Galaga fan, probably because of the fact that my whole family liked it. I remember doing a sort of king of the hill competition with my two older cousins and my aunt to see who could get the highest score. I loved Galaxian because it was a good test of strategy, game sense, and reflexes all bundled into one game. Best of all, the sound effects were so good that I would still be able to pick them out of a crowd (of sounds?).