Ron322

22 days left from resisting food from my job and thus far, I’m doing pretty well. I haven’t caved to sandwiches, sodas, smoothies or store-made snacks. The worst I’ve done is buy 1 guava cheese danish the other day. Last night, I just had 2 Lenny & Larry cookies. That’s it. The best? Water throughout the shift and my gallon jug has been my best weapon! Sleep has improved, bloat not as bad. This is some willpower at work and I guess I’m “gittin’ gud” at this again!

I promised on a recent post on Threads that I’d share my list of video games close to my heart. They’d be predominantly from consoles I’ve either owned or primarily played on.This is the blog.

From the NES, my top games were Super Mario Bros. 3, Mega Man, Mega Man 3, Batman and Bionic Commando. I’ll go ahead and throw in the NES ports of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade games.

Mario 3 was a game that I often got stuck on by Ice Land. That one cursed stage where you needed a Power Wing, Tanuki or Raccoon power in order to get it over with. It took me years and not until the Sega Genesis era did I, one day, get it done! Once done, the rest of the game was simpler to overcome!

Mega Man was what it was. Before Elden Ring or Dark Souls, you had Mega Man. Once you understand Mega Man’s system of understanding a boss’ weakness to a specific weapon, you weaponize that to the upmost and the fight is yours. That principle applies to every FromSoftware game we enjoy on this day. Mega Man 3 is on this list because it was the one that had us meet Proto Man. The cartoon show got me intrigued with him even more. I enjoyed the high energy and variety in MM3 that was more than the 1st or even the 2nd entry. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it and Mega Man 3 shows how awesome it is.

Bionic Commando was shooting and grappling. Not jumping made this game difficult to my memory but that grappling hook arm was special. Essentially you’re an American dude shooting off neo-Nazis. Talk about being ahead of its time!

Batman was surprisingly awesome; from the music to the controls, it was fantastic. It did what Mega Man X on the SNES would eventually do — jumping between walls to get higher instead of just climbing stairs or ladders like Castlevania or Mega Man.

The NES imports of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game was something special — especially when the horsepower required for a 1:1 console adaptation of the arcade classic was impossible. I will say this — giving us 4 arcade beat-em-up style games of TMNT was special and they were fun. Talking about this gives me flashbacks of the pizzeria that used to be behind my dad’s building back home in Brooklyn. It also hearkens back to the times I played NES in my late grandpa’s house in Puerto Rico along with my brother.

Stay tuned for the next blog, where I cover my memories of the Sega Genesis years!