I’m a good consultant of the past. You can come to me to redress any issue that ever happened over the entire course of history or time, because there’s a good chance I have a record of it somewhere. In a journal, in a half-finished story, in comics, notebook illustrations, CD-Rs and cassettes, and of course whatever’s still rattling around in the old noggin.
I have the luxury of remembering just about everything that ever happened (at least when it comes to the things that really matter – video games, for one thing), not because my memory is excellent, but because I have just enough free time to not let go of the past, forgetting to seize time by the reins and gallop forward like most do, throwing themselves into the work of their passion, or down dark or light-dubious paths to their respective demises – nope, I stay fixed at a tortoise’s pace, sweating and living just like everyone else, but with a secret knack for hoarding time and memories.
It gives me time to write accounts of the past like this one, and with my newfound powers, I will resuscitate, re-litigate, and probably reiterate that I am the Master of this new telling of the past, and how / what a telling it shall be.
This particular episode – we’ll call in the first in a disjointed string of infinite episodes happening throughout the spectrum of dimensional-integrated spacefuck, shall be called:
Genesis, Book One
1:1 In the beginning of the 16-bit era, God thus spoke: RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE 1:2 And we rose to live out the tale of the Altered Beast. 1:3 And it was cool.
Cool kids had Genesises. God that plural looks awful. But no, I’m serious – some of the coolest kids I knew had a Sega Genesis long before I ever put an SNES controller in my hand. My best friend, K had left town after third grade, and we had grown up Nintendo together. That kid was so fucking cool, he’s still like my best friend today. From about 1987-89, we played the ghostridden fuck out Ninja Gaiden, Mario, and Rygar and knew each others’ mental catalog of soundtracks and skills when it came to anything NES. And then the motherfucker just left. Well, it wasn’t his fault. His family moved to Colorado for about a year, and then by next fall of 1990, BOOM he was back! And he had a shiny new Black Genesis with him.
That was fucking baller – a Genesis in 1990? Man, you had to be way ahead of the curve. I remember when his family came back just to visit during Spring Break that year like a preview, and I got to try it out – he had Revenge of Shinobi, a Fist of the North Star Game titled “Last Battle” and of course, Altered Beast and remember just being fucking awed by it. Fucking Sega, what had you made!? Or what you had made!
Another friend of mine who was in my fourth grade class, S, had a Genesis too – his house was where I probably played one for the first time. I liked S, and we had some things in common – Ninja Turtles, skateboarding later on, but visitng his house was comparatively rarer than when I used to hang with K. For one thing, he had a huge dog – like a boxer or something named Peg, and she was very sweet, but I’m not crazy about dogs, plus Peg a very slick coat and stinky smell, so for that one reason, I guess that I didn’t hang out at his place as often. Nah, I won’t blame it all on the dog.
But I remember that I’d have put up with the smell of 100 dogs just to continue ONE MORE TIME in Ghouls and Ghosts back in that year that K was gone. God, I was entranced by Capcom’s greatest iteration of the G&G series on the G. I played that game so much that first weekend that if his house was an arcade and a credit was a quarter, I would have spent like $50 at least. That shit was damn addictive, and the fact that the Genesis sound chip could use actual human voices blew me away much like chimpanzees are freaked out by magicians on the other side of their enclosure’s glass, but that was more of an Altered Beast perk.
Ghouls and Ghosts was its own special thing – finding the right weapon, maintaining your armor, not getting turned into a duck – plus that soundtrack, holy shit, I really do think it’s the best entry in the Makaimura series. The bosses and graphics were unlike anything I’d seen in my cute little Nintendo world. The first boss was a fucking giant suit of armor with a demon’s head on the end of one of its arms, and used at least 16 colors making it look like something, well, out of the arcade! That was the only thing you could compare it to at the time – Arcade Graphics, ha! S did have an arcade in house, and I guess it was the feeling one gets when you’re in an arcade and you’ve somehow found the custodian’s keys, and you’ve deftly set all the games to Free Play mode. I just couldn’t get enough of it.
Eventually, though I managed to conquer Satan or whatever in that game did move on. With like, life and stuff, too.
Did I mention K came back in the fall of 1990? Hell yeah. That summer before fifth grade, we’d hang out, play with lighters, listen to DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s Homebase album and play the fuck out of both his Genesis games as well as our healthily maintained Nintendo libraries. Best of both worlds shit, and I remember K was even good enough to lend me his Genesis for a period of time – like the whole console and his entire library of games for like a MONTH (INCLUDING STRIDER) – HOLY FUCK BALLS!
Now that was a good time. During it, I beat the fuck out of G&G, got a pretty good character going on Sword of Vermilion, could get to the last boss of Strider (still never beat that amazing Genesis version, I’m afraid), and I know at some point I beat Revenge of Shinobi, too — god damn, I remember K and I straight rocking out to the soundtrack of that one. It was cool shit. We loved the soundtracks to all those fucking games and later on would sample them mercilessly in the pursuit of creating original rap albums, which is another story for another book in another bible.
The funny thing about cool kids and their Genesises, though (god, we need to do something about that plural), is that when I had possession of K’s, yet ANOTHER friend from another portion in my Venn Diagram of friends, J came over and became just as hypnotized by it as I had been. As many had been . As many more should have been and yet fewer will be. Was I now the new cool kid with the Genesis?
J and I had grown up playing Sierra computer games – King’s Quest, Gold Rush and the like, but he also had a healthy love for the Dragon Quest (nee Dragon Warrior) series on the NES. When he experienced the Genesis at my house, though (why do I doubt he remembers this moment as clearly as I do?), man, that kid was HOOKED. I forget what his jam was, but for all intents and purposes, it might as well have been trying to kill Beelzebub and Satan in Ghouls and Ghosts.
I remember getting a bit frustrated with him as became increasingly dismissive of my presence in my own fucking house. I’d be like “hey you know you can double jump and shoot 8 shurikens at once? And he’d be like “Yeah, no doi. Can I get something to drink?” It was like he didn’t need me around, like AT ALL while he stared into the abyss and chucked his projectiles at the hordes of programmed enemies. I knew the addiction well and let it slide as best I could.
It’s not easy being the cool kid with the Genesis. Ain’t all roses and rainbows or goofs and goblins and shit!
Anyway, I fucking love the Genesis, and think that that whole console war thing between Nintendo and Sega was a fucking proxy war using we consumers who could only afford one or the other, to fight it for them. Fuck that noise!
I will concede. It’s true in some places that Genesis does do what Nintendon’t – one example is showing blood and the gorier fatalities in Mortal Kombat 1. Also, Sonic the Hedgehog. Okay fine – yes, it’s true, but there’s also like a ton that Nintendid what Genedidn’t… Segadon’t.. whatever the fuck – Sega didn’t do: Final Fantasy, for starters. Sega didn’t do fucking Zelda. Sega didn’t do Mario, Sega didn’t have Nintendo Power goddamn magazine. It’s such a weird statement, but you have to give them credit for inciting that Us and Them mentality with a slogan as catchy as it was.
Incidentally, the Console Wars today are so stupid that Sega now happily makes games for Nintendo systems, and Nintendo refuses to participate in the stupid charade of war altogether, now matter how much Sony and Micro$hit egg them on. “We’ll fucking make VR out of cardboard, turn a plastic circle into a catch-all exercise device, and put a another company’s IP into Smash Bros. What you got?”
“Uh, we’re gonna release Halo again.”
“Don’t forget Madden!”
“And John Madden’s Footballs 2.03K!”
I imagine that there are many cool kids today who enjoy a wide range of games and other experiences. They are the future, after all. And I bet the drugs they take are fucking fantastic, too. But they’ll never be as cool as my other friend M, who rocked both a Super NES AND a Sega Genesis in 1991.
(And he was actually kind of a douchetool.)
Holy shit, I remember this kid, M was gifted ToeJam and Earl AND his brand new Super Nintendo on the same day that winter (okay maybe it was Christmas). He was rich, and I think his dad was the senator or former senator of our state. I VERY rarely hung out with M, but my friend B was in his class, and the weird Venn Diagram of friendships intersected in my favor when I was invited to stay over at M’s on that glorious, glorious day.
We actually played more ToeJam and Earl than anything that night, even though I had been sweating and maybe even drooling bullets in anticipation for the new 16-bit Nintendo system. TJ&E was so fucking fun and just genius in its zeitgeist of cool funky young people’s culture. It stands the test of time and doesn’t violate any of our modern day sensibilities.
Jammin’
RAP
TOE Jammin
(Big Earl).
RAP RAP RAP
(Big Earl)… Sorry – I’m just remembering the feature in that game that would allow one or both players to just jam sound effects over the bass-poppin’ BGM to that game. Your character would dance and snap and say shit like, “Jammin!” according to the button input and was such a fun distraction.
I also remember the titillation of finding the secret level, Level 0, which had a 1-up granting lemonade stand, and a hot tub with cute girls in it – and you could go chill and chat with them! Like, you could have Earl’s fat ass jump in the hot tub and press C to spit some game at the girls, and they would “giggle” or “titter” in response. Don’t tell any of the culture police out there, I guess, but that shit was sexy as fuck. Kinda. For a 12-year old.
M was pretty cool, I guess, but some of the coolest kids who had Genesisisises? I hadn’t even met them yet, and they were off being cool in a world that I had no knowledge of and no jurisdiction for chronicling over. Also, let’s hear it for kids who were never taught not to put prepositions at the sentence’s end. Cool in somebody’s world, I imagine.
Let’s talk about J. No wait – J was the kid who went crazy over my.. K’s Genesis and then his family moved away… Guess we’ll have to name this guy.. Jon. That could be his real name or not.
In 5th or 6th grade, I met Jon, and Kelly and I both ended up becoming pretty good friends with him. Jon’s family had a Genesis, but Jon had gone to another elementary school across town. I didn’t meet Jon until well after that crazy night at [redacted]’s house, but Jon would throw these CRAZY fucking sleepovers in like 6th or 7th grade inviting like 8 or 9 kids to his big-ass house, and I’d be one of them from time to time, oh lucky me!
The game at that time which I played like a maniac until like 3 in the morning (most of the kids at these things didn’t sleep all night) the first time I stayed at Jon’s? Road Rash. I think that was made by E fucking A. The Genesis version? The absolute best, never replicated in any meaningful way on any other console. EA’s also never done anything of comparable value since. Well, maybe, I don’t know – but the Genesis version of Road Rash was tits, and I knew that Jon was cool as fuck. Today he’s my DM in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign that’s been going on for like three years. He and his brothers played the Phantasy Star series, which of course I had heard of but didn’t play myself, one because I didn’t have a Genesis of my own, and two, Final Fantasy was my RPG jam, but mostly one, because I didn’t have a fucking Genesis. They say it’s awesome and intense and traditional as anything out there, but today the Phantasy Star series is so monstrously extensive that I just wouldn’t know where to begin.
I’d meet another cool cat later on down the line, way after Genesis games and even Saturn games had pretty much stopped being made. I don’t know if it was the Genesis he had growing up – the Sega CD, perhaps – but damn that guy was cool. Still is. We’ll call him C and he’s a reader of this dead ass blog – that’s how fucking cool C is. I won’t embarrass him or myself any further, and should probably be working on something important or life-related now. Lunch, perhaps, then more Dragon Quest XI.
EpicuziplayiT 
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