I have a story for you guys. It happened to me as a kid.
I started playing video games when I was around four years old. My first time playing was when I was over at a friend’s house and I was playing Super Mario Deluxe on her Gameboy Color. Of course, this was just a Gameboy Color re-release of the original Super Mario Bros. NES game, but since I had never played the original before this, I saw no difference.
When I reached five or six years old, my cousin gave me his old Nintendo 64 (at least I remember he did) with a few games. You know, Super Mario 64, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, Pokemon Stadium, the works. One particular favorite was Super Smash Bros.
I loved that game with a passion since the day I got it. I would always play as Mario, that’s all. Sure, I would occasionally play as Link, Kirby, Donkey Kong, Samus, and everyone else, but none of them were as satisfying to play as than Mario was. I played through everything the game could offer for Mario: beating the story mode, the challenges, playing around in the practice mode, and even unlocking the secret characters. I ended up unlocking Ness, Captain Falcon, and Jigglypuff.
But the only character that I could never unlock was Luigi.
I tried so, so hard to unlock him, doing everything I could to finally be able to play as the second half of my favorite video game duo. I even looked up cheat codes and walkthroughs online so I could cheat my way into unlocking him. None of those worked either. I couldn’t understand why it was so hard to unlock a character that never seemed like he was so hard to get.
I’m not sure whatever became of my cousin’s SSB cartridge at the time, but something happened to it. I don’t quite remember what happened, but I’m pretty sure it got ruined or lost or sold. Or maybe my cousin wanted it back for some reason. So, still feeling the need to play SSB, I ask my mom to let me rent it from our Blockbuster. She agreed and took me to go pick it up.
After our quick visit to the Blockbuster, we returned home. I ran to my brother’s room, where the Nintendo 64 was set up. I yanked out the game that was already in the system and put in the SSB cartridge. I was so very excited to play it again, but of course the game didn’t work the first time I turned on the system, so I did what I was told to do: blow on the bottom of the cartridge and try again. I did this for about five minutes and then it finally worked and a wave of relief flowed through me. I picked up the controller and waited to play.
The game started as normal: the HAL Laboratory logo appearing on the screen, the disembodied gloved hand taking the limp characters out of a container and setting up the course for them out of the materials on the desk they lied on, etc. That’s about as far as I got through the introduction before I pressed the “A” button and skipped to the game’s main menu. I proceeded to go to the 4-player mode. Something was different, though. None of the characters I unlocked before were unlocked: no Captain Falcon, no Ness, no Jigglypuff, none of them. I became a little confused, until I saw something that overjoyed me.
I was absolutely ecstatic. I selected him on the player selection screen and took a good look at him. He wasn’t in his default costume, though. He was in one of his alternative costumes, the one where he wore white overalls, a white hat, and a green undershirt. As a kid, I didn’t think too much of it. I let out a loud gasp and yelled, “Mom! Mom! I have Luigi! I have him! I have Luigi!” I got right up and ran to my mom in her room across the house and told her what happened. I told her to come into the room so I could show her marvelous Luigi in the character selection menu. After she gave me the signal that she would be there in a little bit, I just ran back to my brother’s room to start playing.
But what I saw next left me a little stunned.
The Player 1 preview box at the bottom of the screen where Luigi could be shown moving and such was totally filled with thick television static. Luigi wasn’t there.
And Luigi was locked again.
The rest of the menu and the other 3 player preview boxes were perfectly fine.
My mom came into the room and asked me what I wanted her to see. I didn’t respond, but instead, I asked myself...
“Where’s Luigi?”