Grinning Dogs

The Wii is a lot of fun. However, before the Wii there was the Nintendo Entertainment System. And this Christmas it did exactly that, it entertained. Dad was in the mood to play 'Duck Hunt'. So I went downstairs and set it up for him. Our NES may be over twenty years old but it still works great. Long ago I took it apart and "fixed it". Now you do not even have to push the cartridges down to get them to play. Blowing is a thing of the past. We keep it hooked up to an old TV through my parents old Betamax VHS player. This is beneficial because apparently new TVs cannot even play Duck Hunt, because Duck Hunt relied on the technology of old TVs to work with the Zapper. I set it up, and gave Dad the Zapper. He did very well, making it to stage 10. Then Brittany gave it whirl. She didn't do very well. She kept losing, maybe getting a few ducks at random. Then I tried and made it to stage 4. This was very aggrevating.

Then Brittany decided to try again. And this time, with Dad's guidance, something clicked. Getting several perfects, she made it all the way to level 20 before she missed one duck and lost. At that point the game requires you to hit them all. She did so good that I ran up stairs to call Mom, who also came down to see her perform.

After that, and being very competitive, no one was really in the mood to play Duck Hunt anymore. So we pulled out the Track and Meet. To get back some self-esteem, I quickly played through and won the tournament mode against the computer. Then we did two player modes. That was fun.

After that I played Super Mario Brothers, and Brittany and Dad played jacks. I beat the game real quick, and kept yelling out various check points to them but they were completely absorbed. When I made it to Bowser, to my surprise I did something I had only seen on video with small Mario. Being big Mario with fire power, I ran towards him at full speed. He shot a flame at me which I slid under. Then he started with the hammers, which, while still running full speed, I jumped up and through a small gap in between them and landed right on the axe. I screamed out loud, and that finally got their attention. Dad simply said, "You beat it already?" Brittany said, "Yeah, but I saw you warp". And I threw my hands up in frustration and tried to join them in jacks, which I apparently cannot play very well. But if you'd like to see what I did, the end of this video is exactly what happened, except I was big with fire power.



After a while we were flipping through TV stations and decided to watch some American Ninja Warrior. Brittany became motivated. This is what ensued.