Nester 64x: My Favorite Gaming Memory

This piece is a fanboy satire. The views and opinions expressed herein do not state or reflect those of Nintendojo or any of its affiliates.

You guys wanna know what this particular Power Player’s favorite memory is?  Not surprisingly, it involves the NES.

We all know that the NES is the best system of all time, so I don’t need to belaborize that point with you all.  Only a hozer would believe otherwise, as a matter of fact.  The NES was important not only because of its innovative game library, new control schemes, and being the first game console to ever include an actual robot as part of the package, but also because of how it royally rocked multiplayer.

Don’t worry — I didn’t spend all of my multiplayer time with that complete TOOL HowardNTR.  There was quite a bit of it spent otherwise, in fact.  I logged several dozen hours playing that greatest of NES sports games with my father.

Now, you shut it right now.  I already know that you’re thinking of some game that involves ice and fat guys.  Don’t even consider it.  And no, I wasn’t referring to Kickle Cubicle, either, even though I totally ruled at that game, too.  No, the best NES sports game ever doesn’t involve John Elway (that horsefaced hozer), John Madden (not that it could), or John Adams (he was the second President, not an athlete, you MORON!).  The best sports game on the NES was the black-boxed classic, Nintendo Soccer.

That’s right — it was the soccer game so good, it didn’t need a title beyond the name of the game itself.  What makes it the finest simulation of the sport available on Nintendo’s 8-bit console?  Well, for one thing, there hardly were any soccer games available in America.  I’m sure that Mr. McHozer himself, Nintendojo’s own Adam Sorice, could give us a five-hour-long diet-tribe on how soccer (they call it “football” over there, but it’s nothing like the REAL football) is the most influential sport in the history of history and how there were five thousand separate soccer games available for the Mattel NES in the PAL territories, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

Like most Americans, I participated in soccer from the ages of 6-8, and was horrible at it, then didn’t play it anymore.  That’s all right, though.  When I was kid, it meant I still had enough fondness for the sport that I was wiling to give it a go with a different kind of soccer since I kept passing out when I would run more than twelve feet for some reason.  Do they use feet in soccer?  I don’t think it matters.

Anyway, some of my favorite memories were of my dad and I playing NES Soccer over and over again on the TV downstairs.  What’s awesome about NES Soccer is how slow-paced and strategic it is.  You wouldn’t get that playing Ice Hockey or Nintendo World Cup.  You have time to think up your next move, and your opponent has to out-think you, and you have to out-think him back, and then he’d have to out-think you, and you’d have to out-think him again, and it gets really complicated after that.

Unlike real soccer, you are actually likely to score goals on a regular basis, even if both of you are playing at the top of your game.  Plus, Soccer has a really catchy background tune.  Which reminds me:  Why don’t sports games have background music anymore?  I realize there aren’t any chiptunes blasting out at the ballpark, but that was another of my favorite features of being an 8-bit couch jockey.

Anyways, this one’s for NES Soccer.  Old popster and I had many a time playing it head-to-head in the old rumpus room.  I have no earthly idea why Soccer didn’t make the cut for the GBA NES Classics series, but you’d better believe I downloaded it onto the Wii the second it was available, which, I think, was pretty much immediately.  We’ll see if we can relive the memories this Thanksgiving.