Weapon of choice: Spread

"That's going to kill you every time."--Bro. Skinner

Just got off work this afternoon and I open my apartment door to find Dr. Jones playing Super Contra. Yup, the old 8-bit system still works. He proceeded to look at me and then got hosimified. Twice. Jones then stated that he needed to start over and I said "You clearly need another person to play with you." There was an agreement and we started a new game. Jones always takes the blue pants. I always have the red pants. It can't be any other way. We get confused. We have a system of playing. It's unwritten and it just sort of came about. Man, we're good!! It's the double rapid spread combo. That pretty much destroys everything. We beat the game in about 30 minutes. It was my turn to shine this time around. I don't know how many times we've beat it. The ending's lame. But we love it nonetheless.

Like many of the old Nintendo games, we have no idea what the story line is. Contra starts out like many other war type-ish games. Then it gets absolutely weird. Nothing is explained during gameplay. You just run around shooting everything in sight. The story line is always in the instruction booklet. At least back then they were. Take a look at Metroid and the Legend of Zelda. You just killed things. Anything. Plus, you probably didn't even know the names of the things you were killing. Possibly the end bosses like Ridley, Kraid and Ganon. And they gave you power-ups, 1-ups, energy tank-ups and all kinds of flashy things. It was beautiful.

The great thing was, that you could beat many of these games within two hours. The original Zelda. I timed myself at an hour and 20 minutes. Not bad if I say so myself. Can you do that nowadays? I thought not. What the I must waste 70 hours of my life getting every single item and doing every little sub-story line? Eh.... I swear that those games keep time solely for the purpose of showing you how much of loser you are. [I will say that I am that big of a loser when it comes to the Zelda games, CRAP!!]

Another sign that I am a loser is the fact that I have many of the theme musics memorized. Like unto Mario's 1 and 2, Legend of Zelda, MegaMan, possibly even Bubble Bobble along with many others. I believe I can whistle or doot-do any of them. Yes, I am old school.