Kick To Reset

Posted by Nostalgiaholic | on December 6, 2007

MagMax, released in 1988 for the NES, but originally released during the bronze age for arcade machines had a kind of morbid, hypnotizing charm…

I can remember back to a blistering Ontario summer, when a whatever-year-old me and my buddy Matt were hunkered down in his room playing MagMax for the original Nintendo Entertainment System (It’s called an NES… Duuuuuh). He had the kind of room everyone had as a pre-teen in the eighties; bookshelf of fantasy books, collectable figures, pennies, and un-popped popcorn kernels strewn everywhere, and a bumpy, spackeled ceiling covered with those glow in the dark stars and planets… yeah, you know the ones. The light from the late afternoon sun meandered it’s way through his open window, calling to us, tempting us back outside for another cannonball into the pool (yep, my friend had a pool…word). But we weren’t heeding the siren’s call of sunstroke today, we’d been outside plenty already… and the game never seemed to end…

You see, back in the days before Super Mario Bros. 3 united the video game world in a golden age of quality graphics and comprehensible gameplay, video games were all pretty much like Space Invaders. Fly, shoot, fly, shoot, more enemies, different background, fly, shoot… ad infinitum. Galaga, Gyruss, Abadox, this game was no different.

MagMax cover“A highly civilized group of aliens has conquered earth and put the human beings under the control of the Computer Babylon which has begun to kill the human beings. In order to stop the aliens, the people developed a transformable mechanical robot named MagMax. They also chose a brave man for their rescue.The brave man is about to depart to the ultimate battle with the aliens in order to save the human race.”

- Taken from the MagMax Instruction manual

Sounds interesting eh ? Interesting enough to merit a rental from the local MadJack Video store ? Definitely ! And even though the graphics were pathetic, the enemies all looked the same, the music was annoying, and the controls were frustrating, we were still hooked ’till dinner.

MagMax, released in 1988 for the NES, but originally released during the bronze age for arcade machines had a kind of morbid, hypnotizing charm. A giggly trance that comes from playing a pointless game while knowing full well you could be doing better things with your time. Heck, we could have taken a step up simply by playing any of the much better NES games that were out at the time. But what other game had the option of turning your shooting ship into a robot-man, thereby turning yourself into a bigger, easily destroyable target ?MagMax cartridge

Absolutely the best, I mean worst, feature of MagMax was the evil three-headed boss of every other level named Babylon. When you destroyed this big mutha (and you really couldn’t die, he’s pretty lame), he just stops moving, and you fly right by him. No explosions, not even a groan of defeat. It seems the programmers used up all the memory in the game on…. ummmmm….

The game never ended, level after level, boss after boss, no real goal in sight. It was during this marathon of silliness that Matt and I discovered what his Nintendo’s hidden quirk was. Of course anyone who ever played NES had to do the “blow into the cartridge man, it makes ‘em work better” thing, but this was cooler. Turns out when you gave the worn formica-topped table upon which the NES was perched a kick, the system would not only reset itself, but it caused the newly-reset game’s colours to be reversed like a photo-negative. Now the game was elevated from stupid fun to stupid TRIPPY fun !

It didn’t take much to amuse us back then…

Much love…

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Posted by Nostalgiaholic | Filed Under Random Goodness, Video Games  

One Response to “Kick To Reset”

  1. AvatarMatt
    Apr 4th, 2008
    at 4:22 pm
    1

    Ahhh MagMax…I remember those days…though for your information we first discovered my NES’s lovable “Kick to Reset” feature while playing another game that consumed way to much of our childhoods: “Little Ninja Bros” I’m sure you remember that one…

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