Stranger Kindness

Happy New Year to everyone!  I hope that you all had a chance to enjoy yourselves on the last night of 2016 and are off to a great start to the year today.  I had a mild fever last night and feel like I got hit by a truck today, so I feel like things can only go up from here, right?  Right!

I’ve mentioned a few times since starting this blog that one of the awesome benefits of being a part of the broader gaming community has been meeting some wonderful people.  One of those wonderful people I met is a Twitter user who casually asked me one day if I wanted a game of hers she was looking to part with.  When I said I’d take it off her hands, she also told me that she wanted to get rid of some NES games, and after an exchange of information, I had a package in the mail on its way to me.  I was very touched by this person’s actions.  Not only has she been a wonderful support to myself and many others in the Twitterverse, she reached out to me and gave me a gift when she barely knows me at all.  It’s not something that has happened to me before or that I expect to ever happen again, but it was incredibly meaningful to me.

She sent me a few things, and the first was a pristine copy of Final Fantasy Legend for Game Boy.  I found a copy of Final Fantasy Legend III over the summer with a destroyed label and had been looking for the first and second parts of the series ever since with no luck.  The game looks flawless, like it has never even been put inside of a Game Boy!  I promised that after I get through my Sega Master System RPG run that I’d stream this game, so let’s hope I haven’t tired of RPGs by then (as if I could ever!)

She sent me four NES games in total as well, and the first three were Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt, Final Fantasy, and Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse.  I was very excited for this, especially for Final Fantasy and the Castlevania games!  When I was testing them out, there was nothing quite like popping in the FF cartridge and listening to the intro music on the real deal.  It was so fulfilling.  A long, long time ago, my most unfavourite cousin had a copy of FF, and when I was about 5 or 6 years old I used to ask him to let me play it with him.  He never did let me play and despite me asking many times to borrow the game, his entire collection sat in his parents’ house for many years untouched.  One day when I was in my early teens, I was out at a store called the Bi-Way with my mom, and the store occasionally sold used video games.  I saw Final Fantasy there and nearly screamed with excitement, but my mom refused to buy it for me despite my pleading.  I was pretty upset and sulky, so my mom had gone back a few days later to pick it up but it was gone.  Though Final Fantasy didn’t come home with her that day, I did get the most horrible consolation game ever: Mario is Missing.  I did own a copy of Final Fantasy for a time in my twenties, but I passed it along to a friend to play and never saw it again.  It is really nice to finally have a copy of this game again!

I’m also not particularly well-versed in Castlevania games.  I got my ass handed to me quite quickly by the first boss and then had to use a continue after accidentally falling off stairs into an abyss.  I am planning to practice this game a little more and maybe seek out the first game for the NES since I’ve got the second one hanging around somewhere.  They seem fun enough!

The last NES game I received was Dragon Warrior, and what was special about it was that it came with its box!  I have very few boxed NES games from my childhood since the boxes always just got in the way when I wanted to get out my cartridges.  If boxed games appear in my life at a decent price, I normally grab them even if I already have a loose copy of the game hanging around.  I picked up the instruction booklet pictured below from eBay and have also ordered a copy of the quest guide so I might finally be able to beat this one.  Before hitting university, I think I sunk 50+ hours into my friend’s copy of the game before her brother wanted it back, so this is another opportunity to relive something from my past.  Woohoo!

I can’t say enough how positive this experience was for me.  It really gave me something to look forward to over the holiday season, which isn’t always the easiest time of year for me.  I’m hoping some day that I’ll be able to repay her for her kindness, or pass it along somehow!

Thanks for reading, and happy 2017!

-GG