8-Bits

For Christmas, my little brother - who works in a used video game store - got me an original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and several games. Problem was, the NES didn't really work, so he took it back, fixed it, and sent it back to me. I received it about 4 days ago. The games that he included were:

Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt
California Games
Mega Man 3
Kung-Fu
The Adventures of Bayou Billy
Dragon Warrior (which I almost beat as a kid until one of my brother's idiot friends "accidently" erased my file...)
RBI Baseball
Fester's Quest
...and probably the best Nintendo game of all time...
Blades. Of. Steel.

Anyway so I've been playing with these since I've gotten it, having to occasionally "blow them" to get them to work. RBI Baseball especially was a pain in the ass to prep, and since it had that weird Tengen shape it's really difficult to get the cartridge out once it's in. Still, though, I hadn't played a baseball video game in a while where the average final score is 21-18, so that was pretty cool. The Red Sox and Mets are pretty much the equivalent of Tecmo Bowl's Bo Jackson in the game. This is pretty ironic, actually, since the year this came out was the same year they met up in the Bill Buckner World Series. It's also bizarre to see Julio Franco and Roger Clemens, who are still playing, and people like Don Baylor who are coaching now.

Anyway, I know Bill Simmons had the link to this a while back on his site, but it's still great. I'm not really a fan of either team, but knowing what's going to happen still makes it kind of eerie to watch. It also underscores the fact that Buckner is a lot less to blame than Calvin Schiraldi and Bob Stanley. Schiraldi actually lost Game 7 as well.

THE 1986 WORLD SERIES, BOTTOM OF THE 10TH INNING, AS PLAYED BY RBI BASEBALL