September 28, 1996.  A date that I would remember throughout my life as a red-letter date:  The evening that I picked up my most anticipated console since the Super Nintendo, that being the Nintendo 64.  I left work early and played it until the dawn's early light.

December 13, 1996.  A date that I would remember throughout my life not only as a red-letter date, but later with a kind of  nostalgic sadness.  It was the day that the Nintendo fanboy inside of me died.




Once upon a time, I was a Nintendo fanboy.  I wasn't one of those confrontational ones, ready to throw down at a moments notice, nor would I steadfastly refuse to play games (or even acknowledge them) from rival Sega.  No, I was a pretty chill fanboy, who would readily play ToeJam & Earl and Road Rash as much as I would play Contra III or Super Mario Kart (though I did not own any Sega systems).  When I saw them, I would often lament the negative tone of the Sega Genesis and Sega CD commercials rather than rail against them.  Really, I just wanted us to all get along (and play Nintendo games).

None of this would have been any surprise if you had grown up with me.  While I was truly a child of arcade games (located in nearly every conceivable store within Southeast Michigan in the mid 80's), by early 1988 Nintendo began working it's hooks into me, as many kids I knew began saving their precious bottle money (at $0.10 a bottle) not to play the newest cabinet at the local 7-11, but to save for weekend rentals for their precious NES.  I would soon follow, though I would keep up my gaming visits to the local 7-11 and laundromats.  But by Christmas of '88, Nintendo owned me, much like every other kid I knew.  We in North America weren't the Nintendo robots that some countries would later try to paint us, it was just many of us didn't have anything at home, save perhaps a family Atari VCS or Odyssey2 (many for monetary reasons).  To tell us we could play these amazing games at home for one price forever, well it was just too much.  Even I was willing to overlook the deficiencies of Ghosts N' Goblins on the NES (compared to the arcade) if it meant I could play it constantly without hours of work hunting down returnable bottles, mowing lawns, and shoveling snow from sidewalks.

With the help of Nintendo Power (a subscriber since Christmas of 1988 with a brief break for 1991 and some of '92), I rode that narrowing Nintendo-only line all the way to 1996 (though I did buy a Genesis in '95), with the launch of the Nintendo 64.  I had heard all the rumors and read everything I could and I knew I needed one.  While I had played a bit of my friend's Sony PlayStation (we passed a controller back and forth playing Resident Evil one night) it seemed like a non-factor to me.  I had spent my time and money playing the amazing SNES games (mostly RPGs) that released throughout 1994-1996, so I was looking to continue this trend with Nintendo's next system.  It all seemed very logical. 

By my birthday in early September of 1996 I had the cash and a plan, so I paid in full for a pre-order of the console and a copy of Super Mario 64, which cost around $275 (counting tax, USD).  With the exception of Pilotwings 64 there were no other games at launch, and the games on the immediate horizon didn't really speak to me (i.e., no Nintendo or Square games).  I decided against the Legend of Zelda(!) preorder, seeing that it didn't even have a proper name yet (it was Zelda 64 or something). At the time they had pre-orders for about twenty games, most of which I didn't recognize, which seemed strange at the time, but who cares?  The night before launch, September 28th, the manager agreed to give me my wares before I went home that night.  I (and the manager) didn't think it was all that early, but it turned out to be rather fortuitous, as you will see later.

I didn't get much sleep the following month as I powered through SM64 at night and worked through the day, so that I have very little memory about what happened outside of SM64. Eventually, after a great deal of effort, I was able to "100%" the game, and received the somewhat disappointing reward for doing so.  Still, it was an amazing experience, and one of a kind as far as I was concerned.


While some of these memories took years to dig out the half-rotted attic that is my memory, what happened in the first week of December '96 is very clear.  A little bored (I had rented Pilotwings 64 and was super happy I didn't buy it), I visited my buds who worked at the local FuncoLand to weigh in on their SM64 opinions, as well as get some dirt on upcoming games (hopefully some RPGs).  I was a little shocked to hear that neither of my friends had even seen an unboxed N64, much less play one.  According to them, there were no more consoles in the Metro Detroit area to be had, and within hours of going on sale it had went from being endangered to extinct, no doubt fueled by the news of a shortage that everyone knew about save me.   

For hours I shuffled around FuncoLand, thumbing through magazines, pouring over the backs of display boxes, and having little side conversations with customers.  I learned many things, not only the Sony PlayStation (a console I had all but ignored) was currently a home to a number of RPGs (!) but my beloved Square Soft was going to publish the next Final Fantasy game on it, instead of the N64!  I still remember the sinking feeling this news gave me, a panic akin to claustrophobia. Once the store closed my friends popped in a weird game called Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen into the PS1 demo unit, perhaps in an attempt to cheer me up, and that is how I remember that night: Terrible news framed by the intro sequence of Blood Omen, played over and over.


To say I went home down in the dumps would have been an understatement.  I was seriously depressed and my thoughts whirled through my head:  What was I to do?  I had seen pictures in a magazine that seemed to confirm that the next Final Fantasy would be on the N64, but I hadn't really read anything in months save Nintendo Power (which didn't report on it).  If I had only been an EGM subscriber in the early part of '96, but ah, maybe not.  I still don't think I understood what was happening inside me yet; that craving that even SM64, in all its next-gen glory, was unable to satisfy.

I spent about a week thinking and thinking.  The upcoming games list at FuncoLand for the N64 had not changed, with the only game that even remotely interested me being Shadows of the Empire, which had been released but for some reason didn't interest me.  But what did was the lone pic of FFVII that I found in an issue of Game Informer, which was enough for me to bundle up my N64 and trade it in for store credit.  It was easier than I thought (even though the trade in was more than I originally paid) and I could almost see a couple customers salivating as I did it.  I walked out with a refurbished Sony PlayStation (back when they were still refurb'd by Sony), a memory card, a preorder for FFVII, and copies of Suikoden and Blood Omen, as well as a bargain basement copy of Beyond the Beyond.  On the ride home I remember feeling like I was in freefall.  What was I even doing?  It was pretty late when I got home, so I snuck in past my siblings and hooked my new-ish PS1 onto my crap 10" color TV and fired up Suikoden.  And the rest is history.

Looking back I can see where my inner Nintendo fanboy had been compromised, probably by the time Final Fantasy IV had been released.  For years I had thought I was solidly in the Nintendo camp, playing all the new games and reading the required magazines, but something that I didn't anticipate was my devotion to Nintendo being supplanted by a powerful pull to RPGs on Nintendo console, something that didn't even occur to me until recently.  All of my Nintendo experiences, starting with the original Final Fantasy in 1990 let up to that moment.  While I still remember such landmark action titles such as Super Metroid and Contra III with only the choicest of nostalgia, the pedestals of my SNES experiences are crowded with nearly every RPG that Tom, Dick, and Harry could manage to publish in North America.  In other words, while I really thought it was the Nintendo system that I loved, it was really the RPG that I played it on.

So in retrospect, as amazing and groundbreaking as the N64 was in its first few months (and make no mistake those shockwaves are still felt today), for this kid it just couldn't stand against the RPGs on the PSX not only promised, but had already delivered.  While there weren't a ton out by December of 1996, what I had purchased that first day (and more by late spring of the next year) held me over until that special day when the real reason I abandoned that beautiful ship captained by Nintendo, Final Fantasy VII, would finally arrive.

But that, is another story.

Thanks for reading!

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