Saturday, April 26, 2008

Mario Madness

Sometimes there are moments in life when a person feels a sense of pride. I (Nathan) recently had one of these moments when my wife beat Super Mario Brothers for the first time. It was just a beautiful thing.

Sarah bought me an Original Nintendo for my birthday last September. I played it quite a bit through last Christmas, but then didn't play it much until a few weeks ago (work got busy, and Molly came along, and I kinda forgot about it, so the Nintendo got neglected). Having recently been reunited with the NES (due to a recent visit from family), I've come to reappreciate it's goodness.

As I mentioned earlier, Sarah beat Super Mario Brothers all by her self for the first time just last night. I was so proud. She's learned the tricks necessary to warp through to level 8, and then get through Koopa's last castle. After continuing once, she got to Koopa with one life left and sailed under Koopa for the win. Here's a picture of Sarah celebrating the victory:


We went out to dinner the next night in celebration of Sarah's victory.

I've also been re-honing my Mario skills. As some of you may know, during my last year of college my roommate (Jeremy) and I played quite a bit of the original Super Mario Brothers game. We learned many of the time-saving tricks and had a bit of a competition going on to determine who could beat the game the fastest. While we never got our elapsed-times down to World Record status (if I remember correctly the World Record time for beating the game is around 5 minutes 15 seconds) we did get kinda close. Jeremy and I called it a "draw" when we both got down to 5 minutes 45 seconds. It was just taking too much time to get any quicker--it usually took us several attempts to get a time even close to this low, and if you messed up even a little bit (slowing you down by a second or two) the entire attempt was rendered useless.

In honor of those Super Mario "time-attack" days, tonight I recorded a run through the game that took 5 minutes 56 seconds to complete (from the time I hit start to the time Koopa is beaten on the final level). You can definitely see some of my sloppiness in this run which cost me precious seconds, but oh well.

(Unfortunatley there's an annoying black stripe moving down the screen as a result of recording a TV screen with a camcorder. However, if you're so nerdy as to actually want to watch the attached video, you probably know what the black stripe is covering anyway and so it won't matter too much) :-)

Here it is:


8 comments:

Nathan and Sarah said...

My husband is a nerd!!!

Sarah

Cameron's Corner said...

Now that is a reason to celebrate! And just for the record,Cameron watched your game Nate. We should create a nerd club. Too bad I suck at Mario. I could be your cheer leader.

Betsy

Kimmy said...

Guess I'm a nerd because I watched and it was very impressive! You guys are so funny :)

Sister Mullen said...

Nate, I'm impressed that you can still move through the game with that kind of speed, and the sound effects take me back many years, but I must say I'd rather see six minutes of Molly :) I guess that's Grana talking.

30 year-old Dad said...

Aww...too bad about those fireworks on world 8-1. You could have been done 3 seconds faster...

Just kidding, I am really impressed.

Karisa said...

Pat and I did the exact same thing when we got married. I told him we never had mario growing up, and whenever I wanted to play at my friends houses, my turn ended quick and theirs took years. Or somehow my controller ended up in their hands. So finally when we got married I played at my leisure. It was so fun! I however have never beaten the game. I'm not that much of a nerd! Just kidding.

*ehu. said...

Wow, I did not think I would be spending 6 minutes and 13 seconds of my life watching someone play Super Mario Bros. today.

I don't know which I enjoyed more, watching the game or hearing his fingers move with such speed.

I was impressed but also envious...I want an NES now.

JPx said...

Hey My Elder Mullen this is Ismael, wow that was amazing! i am a real mario fan, and that was awesome, hahah do you remember the kids in the pura pura pension playing?

That was Impressive!
haha.