I was two years old. So if I were to say I remember when the NES first hit I'd be lying. As a two year old your world is mostly food and toys. Being born into a working class family also limits your access to the latter. Most of my playthings were hand me downs from cousins and uncles. So later that year, when I turned three, my father came home with a plastic bag full of what looked like little black bricks and a big wooden box.

"It's an Atari!" he said with a big smile. I just looked at him puzzled. What the heck is an Atari?

He proceeded to pull a bunch of wires and sticks and stuff out of the bag and attach them to the back of the TV. He put the wooden box down and plugged one of the black bricks into the hole at the top and flipped a switch.

The TV lit with color and sound like I had never heard before. It beeped and booped with a little green man jumping over big alligators (or crocodiles, I don't think anyone really knows) and I was hooked. My Dad gave me the stick thing and I pushed it and the little man walked across the screen. I was so excited. Did I just make him do that? Is the little man inside my TV under my control? This was a lot for a three year old to take in. I tried it again and yes; I was controlling the little man on TV. I couldn't understand how nor did I care. It was so cool! I made him walk to the next screen and I fell into a hole and died. Pretty soon I got the hang of pressing the red button to make him jump and I was playing my first video game.

My mother wanted to know where this came from since we didn't have that much in the way of money at the time. He said that my Uncle Mike had just bought one of those brand new Nintendo's everyone had been going nutty for and he gave me his old Atari.

Now I've forgotten a little detail, the fact that we lived in a basement apartment my Father built in his parent’s house. So my Uncle Mike was still living at home when I was a little kid. So whenever family would come visit my grandparents I would always run upstairs to see them. So when my other cousins got wind he had a Nintendo they all lined up to see it. I had no idea what a Nintendo was. I just learned I could control a little guy on my TV. What ever this Nintendo was, it had to be good cause even my Dad was in my uncle's room playing it.

Well if I could remember exactly what happened that night I'd write it here. In fact I was going to try and do that but there are too many gaps in my memory. I do know, however, from then on I was hooked on games. For years I would bug my poor uncle to let me play his Nintendo. He had so many games too. Every week it seemed like he had something new Castlevania, Guardian Legend, Wild Gunmen, and Super Mario Bros. As anyone reading this knows these games are now classics.

As I grew older I got better at playing games. I was always asking him if I could hang out with him and play his Nintendo, then when he got one, his Genesis, then his Super Nintendo and well you get the idea. When I look back, my cousins and I must have driven him insane asking him every weekend if we could play his games. He always let us come in and hang out with him though. He was good to us like that.

I just turned 27 this past Columbus Day and it's funny because I had just picked up a new Castlevania game and I still have a Nintendo. We had a bunch of family over last month for one last barbecue for the summer and my Uncle was there. He has three kids now his youngest is 6 (which makes my Grandmother's grandchildren count at 17) so when he came running over to me begging his big cousin Andrew if he could play on his Nintendo Wii I couldn't say no. Because memories like that don't come around that often.