When will the nightmare end, haha.

If you were alive and able to perceive Nintendo tapes back in 1988 then you remember the power that this game held over people. It was sold out absolutely everywhere, there were lines at stores like Toy’s R’ Us and Sears before the stores opened full of parents who wanted to snag a copy for their kids. The box even said “Mario Madness” so Nintendo knew they were inflicting a societal illness when the chip shortage hit during the release window of this game. I was twelve in 1988 and I was eaten up with the madness indeed.

I was like a junkie who was jonesing for a fix, made all the worse by my friends who already had the game. It wasn’t enough that I was able to play the game here and there at their houses, I needed a copy of my own.

If you didn’t have “Mario 2” you were basically a “shit kid.” You couldn’t contribute anything to the discussion and believe me, the discussion was everywhere. You were the dirty orphan pressing your hungry face against the window of the fancy restaurant while everyone inside was feasting. It was the first real “video game feeding frenzy” in history, and the sharks were very hungry indeed. I was, in fact, a shit kid, by the reckoning of my peers.

I was no different from the rest of the kids who hadn’t obtained the game yet, made worse by the first issue of Nintendo Power magazine, which had a clay sculpture scene from the game designed to push a child’s need for it into an all consuming rage-obsession. I chose to review this tape because in the end it is revealed that Mario’s suffering is only a dream. Which to me is a message of hope that someday the veneer of this world will be peeled back and a beautiful utopia of zero anxiety, remorse, and loneliness will be revealed.

Just like when you murder the final boss, Wart, with vegetables and all suffering comes to an end. Mario is free to awaken from Sub-Con, the dream world, and not have to suffer any more indignities like evil suns who chase him, ShyGuys falling on him from upper levels of quicksand, or senior high bullies throwing him into the bushes in front of the school while everyone laughs. These are the wrost things a Mario can endure. I do not mean me, I never endured those things at all. I was very popular.

He was the kid my mom always said “that kid will be in prison by the time he’s twenty, you need to stop hanging out with him” So I had the feeling in the back of my head that “doing something” was going to mean “lets take your mom’s jewelry and sell it” or “lets throw 25 cent slime things from the gas station at people’s houses” My mom ended up being right, he went to jail a lot after high school.

When we were older he pulled a knife on a guy in a bar and the guy hit him over the head with the receiver of a payphone then literally put him head first into one of those big grey bar trash cans. Which is not exactly the same as jail but maybe the bottom of that trash can gave him his first taste of being trapped in a gross place he couldn’t escape. The can was too heavy for him to knock over from inside and his feet were sticking up and kicking like a cartoon.

Anyway, before all that in 1988 me and Ellis were only 11 so we hadn’t pulled knives on anyone or been dumped into any trash cans yet. I’d been shoved into the bushes in front of the school at least five times by that point, a few times I got tossed out into the middle of them (they were a really big square of bushes, like the one really thick ones that have sharp, strong branches) by seniors so I had to crawl my way out and got all cut up in the process. But the secret is to laugh with them so you’re in on the joke, too. So you say something like “LMAO nice one” and if you make yourself laugh hard enough then you’re just crying because you’re laughing so hard