Hard to describe what a huge deal this was. It was the first of what we’d now regard as a widely anticipated triple A title, but it was the first that I ever felt palpable excitement from the people around me, even people who I didn’t think cared about games.
Back then, every group of friends had one kid who claimed to have a relative who worked for Nintendo. Ours was funny but spazzy boy who would often make claims such as “if you do this one code Mario get naked but you have to have a robot do it because human fingers don’t move fast enough.” We all, understandably, thought he was full of shit.
Well, he wasn’t. And so even though he had snaged a copy of SMB 3 months before it was released, we all refused his offers to come over and play it. I finally relented right when school started, which would have been late August, and even after seeing it with my own eyes no one believed it could possibly be true.
I was, what, 7 years old? Just turned 7?
More than 11 years later, I went on a disastrous first date with a woman who would turn out to be my steady girlfriend for the next several years. My idiot friend suggested that 6 of us go out together and hike through a park. Normally not a bad idea, but it was early February in Iowa and there were several feet of snow on the ground and park was absolutely unrecognizable. The couples got separated and me and this girl I desperately wanted to impress wandered through the woods in sub-freezing temperatures for over two hours. By the time we got back to my old, rear-wheel-drive car, the tires had frozen into a puddle and we couldn’t move.
We warmed up in the car for a while and then walked together, the girl and I, about a quarter mile up an icy hill, toward a row of creepy old houses. We got near and a big-sounding dog barked. The girl flinched. I could hear, ever so faintly in the distance, the World One Overworld theme from Mario 3 coming from the porch. “These people are alright,” I said, and in one of the few times in my life I’ve ever acted bravely I walked forward, into their yard, where a golden retriever and a friendly pothead greeted me. It was early 2002, 12 years after the game’s first release, and 2 little girls sat transfixed by it. The monitor was the only light but it felt as warm as a fire and I could tell, deep down and foolish but correct, that things were going to be okay for a while, everything else still laid in front of me but for the time being it was all right, I could calm down.
