My first console gaming expereince - Contra made me crazy

Wow, I cannot imagine that I'm going to dig my childhood memories in this article. Thanks to @archdruid and @veryspider and @elfranz for this wonderful contest. I have some personal experiences playing some of the console games from 1980s. I still remember how it all started. Those were the days we didn't even have TV in our house. I used to spend most of my holidays in the streets playing lots of outdoor games. I had a big gang who will accompany me for the outdoor games and we did not even know about console games. I guess it took so many years for the console games to reach India.

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In one of the summer holidays, a new family came to our street. The family was very friendly and they had a Son who was almost my age and he gradually became my friend. The family looked highly sophisticated and that is when I first saw a console game in their house. I was surprised to see that without a computer, we can even play games using our TV. That admired me. I used to spend lots of time in his house watching the way he plays console game. I was initially a bit hesitant to start playing the game. But my friend explained me how to play and that's how I entered the gaming world. From a physical gaming world to a virtual gaming world. It was ultimately a great experience. All these things happened in the late 1990's during the summer holidays.

The Contra game

I was not a big fan of any shooting game or any game with violence as such. With few exceptions, if there is more weightage for strategy in the game, I will be okay to play shooting games or killing games. But Contra was my early days craze. I went and had a look at the Wikipedia article to gather some information to write this article. Surprisingly, I noticed that there was a story line behind the game which I never knew. It is quite funny if I read it now and realize it. But during our childhood all we cared about was the shooting and completing levels. We didn't even bother about the gameplay or graphics for that matter.

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Same applies with Mario as well. Only later after my childhood, I was able to realize that Mario was doing all the difficult stuff to save the princess. I didn't even pay attention to the fact that he had a princess to save and that is why we were struggling to complete all the levels in the game. I was just interested more in killing the enemies and completing the levels that's all. Today when I read the wikipedia article, it is very funny to see that these games really had a story line or concept behind it.

Multi-player Experience

My friend was not a big fan of outdoor games so he used to spend a lot of time in front of his gaming console. Like I said earlier, I used to sit near him and watch him play. Then gradually when we started playing together, our focus was more on the multi-player games. Contra was our favorite. We used to sit together and complete all the levels in the game. To be fair and honest, he was the best player and as a secondary player I used to just accompany him in the game. It initially took me sometime to first understand the game as I was very new to the console games. Then later I got used to it.

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This was my first ever multiplayer experience. Today the RPG games that I play with a multiplayer experience are completely different and cannot be compared with the fun that I used to have those days. After experiencing this fun, I really went crazy with Contra and other similar games. Every weekend I used to visit his house to play console games. We did not have any big restriction in my house as well as his house. In fact, their parents wanted us to stay inside the house safe during the holidays instead of roaming outside in the hot sun.

My own console

Later after a few months, we gradually got a TV and my father bought me a new console. The only problem was that the TV was a black and white TV and playing console games in that TV was not very great. I took the console to my aunt's house where they had a decent color television. But this time Contra was not a big deal anymore. My uncle managed to buy lots of gaming chips and it had so many different games.

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Today after these many years, I'm still wondering if I will be willing to play the game again if given a chance. I was able to see some wallpapers and news about refurbishing the same game with more graphics and making it more interesting. But sometimes I get this craze where I feel like playing the console game again on my mobile phone. I have seen applications in the play store that allows us to download and play these crazy old console games in our mobile phones. But to be honest, those days will never come back even if we try to recreate it.

Well thanks again for the opportunity to dig some of my old memories to write this article. It really made me feel that my Childhood was awesome.