Retrospective

I was driving home with an adolescent entourage in the backseat. Michael Jackson was blasting on the radio (from the iPod via FM transmitter) and those of us old enough to remember the awesomeness of MJ were grooving to the beat.

One of the pubescents piped up, "He sounds like a girl."

I immediately thought how callous and ignorant a statement that was. First of all, this man just died. Secondly, this was Michael freakin' Jackson.

But it got me thinking bout how we're all products of our upbringing. We're all results of the things we're exposed to as kids. No doubt when the next generation grows up, they'll be able to say to their friends, "Hey, remember that thing with the music and the stuff they did?"

The great thing is, you could use those exact words, and your friends would still agree and say "Yeah! That was cool!"

For me, it was British Knights, Fun House (with the ubiquitous Hawaii vacation prize-- Waikiki!), M.A.S.K., Thundercats, Michael Jackson, Sesame Street (pre- Elmo),The Centurions, Super Mario Brothers, Contra, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage (a.k.a. Bare Knuckle), and so on. The mere mention of these would cause the faces of many of my peers to light up with that "I-just-ate-an-ice-cream-covered-cupcake" look. Even the themes to many of these childhood mainstays are ingrained in our minds. Try playing the Super Mario Bros theme around any 80's child and watch his/her face. Heck, even non-80's kids will recognize it. Or you could try saying "Poweeeeeeer EXTREME!" and watch them smile.

All these different media had a way of squeezing into your subconscious and making being a kid awesome. Case in point-- Contra. I remember running around the levels of Contra and yelling at my brother because he stole my Spreadshot power-up, then laughing in disdain as he got shot in the face by a stray bullet from one of the enemies that looked like what can only be described as a projectile-spitting alien version of female genitalia, not unlike what you would see at a ping pong show, except in Contra the ping pong balls kill you if you touch them.

Hmm, maybe it's not so different.

But Contra definitely has the advantage, since you could easily get 30 lives to spare.

By Chester with 1 comment