NEW Super Mario Bros. for Nintendo DS

When I was five I lived in Woodbridge, VA, just south of Washington DC. My best friends were Jake and Allan, two boys that lived in the neighborhood, went to my bus stop, and were in my kindergarten class. Being new to Woodbridge and new to kindergarten, things were easier with Jake and Allan as my friends.

About the time I met them and started school, the Original Nintendo Entertainment System became popular. And I wanted one! I put it at the top of my Christmas list, and when our class recorded wishes for Santa, that's all I wanted. Jake and Allan, and every other kid in kindergarten, teased me. Nintendo was a video game, and clearly not for girls. But I didn't care. I just remember thinking it was cool.

Christmas morning, 1987, I tore open the biggest box in a frenzy, ignoring my parents' warnings that it was "to share." My sister was only 2; what was she going to do with a Nintendo? I didn't realize the warning was mostly coming from my mother, who would soon become my biggest Jaws challenger.

And my relationship with Mario started.

(And I CAN say that while excited, my Christmas morning frenzy was nothing like the video circulating about Christmas 2008 and the Wii shortage.)

Image courtesy of space.game and a Creative Commons license.

My NES came with the dual Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt game cartridge, so those were the first I mastered. My mom actually loved Duck Hunt, except for that sneaky dog who would laugh when she missed. And we both loved Super Mario Brothers. Between challenging my mom and Jake and Allan, I quickly became a Mario master, beating every level and ultimately the game. (Back then, there was no "save" feature. In order to win the game you had to play from start to finish - all 8 worlds worth of levels!)

Of course, as soon as Mario 2 and 3 came out, I had to have each of those. Mario 2 was the anomaly of the Mario series. You could choose to play one of four characters, warp between levels, and do some pretty cool things you couldn't do in Mario 1 or 3. My favorite level was where you had to flutter back and forth on flying albatrosses in order to make it to the end. You always had to remember which character you needed to be for the best techniques to win the level.

Mario 3 was much like Mario 1, only with much better graphics and sound, and some special features that allowed you to pause a game indefinitely between levels and move around between levels and worlds.

My sister had a Super Nintendo, but we never got Mario games for it. And I never had a Game Boy, Game Cube, or Wii. When I was a junior in high school my grama bought me a Nintendo 64 for my birthday, but instead of mastering Mario I became a Goldeneye sharpshooter.

Image courtesy of lordog and a Creative Commons license.

After wanting one for over a year, I finally broke down and bought myself a Nintendo DS. My original NES had just permanently bit the dust, and I was feeling lonely. I picked out a crimson DS Lite and grabbed the two most popular Mario games.

I headed home and plopped on the couch to give it a whirl, and I think that first day I played for 6 hours straight. This was GREAT! Mario was so much like I remembered him! There were the same cute graphics, the same fun sound effects, and I could even time it just right so I got fireworks at the end of each level.

I was hooked. I got my mom one for Valentine's Day, even before I knew how much fun we'd have stomping on each others heads in the Mario VS Luigi duels.