Well, howdy. It's been a while. Sorry about the lack of updates recently. Not too much new to report, sadly.

I dusted off my old Nintendo Entertainment System earlier this evening. It has been many, many, many years since I've played that thing. I was all eager to boot it up and play, but it took me close to thirty minutes to get the system to work. I wish I were joking. I tried all the tricks from the old days: blowing on the cart, blowing inside the machine, and using a cassette tape case to hold down the cart. That last option finally worked. But man, what a mess.

So I decided to play this game that I'm about 100% sure no one has ever played before, mainly because it's probably illegal. I wish I could ask my dad about the details, but the story goes something along the lines of this: My dad found an ad in the classifieds. It was for "1500 games in 1." Now, circa 1991, 1992, this seemed unfathomable. In fact, it's still a rather ludicrous claim today. So me and my dad went to investigate. It wasn't available in stores -- no, that'd be too legal -- so, instead, we went to the seller's house. Yeah, sketchy, right? But, again, this is 1991/1992, and, as we all know, crime didn't exist in the past. Rape and murder and stealing are only contemporary scourges. So, yeah, it was completely, 100% safe. (Shut up, all you people saying, "But in 1991/1992, that was your present, not the past.") Anyway, we went to the guy's house and he booted up the game for us. Sure enough, there's a menu that says "1500 games in 1." Each screen holds about 50 games. And he showed us a few of them. Paperboy. Tetris. Galaga. Pinball. I was in awe. This game was the motherfucking shit! Of course, a six or seven-year-old Brian wouldn't say that, but I thought whatever the six or seven-year-old equivalent is. And so my dad bought me what is surely a super illegal pirated game of some sort.

I found out later that the "1500 games" part is rather misleading. True, the menu goes from 01 to 1500, however those are not 1500 unique games. There are essentially 50 core games that get recycled. But the variations (sometimes as many as, like, 100 or 200) involve changing the character(s) in the game. So, for instance, Donkey Kong. You get the original. But then you get a version that changes Donkey Kong into a witch and Mario into a turtle. Or Donkey Kong into a devilish thing and Mario into a sexy woman. (As sexy as an 8-bit woman can look, I guess.) Or you get a basic racing game with normal cars. But then you can also race as bubbles. Or saws. Or snowflakes. You get the picture.

Lesson? Pirated shit is a bit of a sham. Still, where else can you witness an epic battle between a barrel-throwing devil and a sexy 8-bit woman?