My weird adventures in the parallel world of Videoland began one fateful summer I went to the Hart Drive-In.
In the late eighties, they didn't have eBay or Amazon. The best you could do was plug in a computer, dial a phone number for an electronic billboard service and hope it had what you wanted. This was why the Hart Drive-In Swap N' Shop off Eastwood Trafficway was such a magical place.
The drive in movie industry had fizzled somewhat in recent years. There was a Facts of Life episode about their general decline. People preferred actual movie theaters, or, even better, video cassettes at home, so places like the Hart Drive-In fell into disrepair, and would have been completely bulldozed off the map, if not for informal sales gatherings like this one.
Now, instead of cars and trucks parking between the broken gray speaker poles, there lay random assortments of new and used goods spread out on blankets or tables, or the back of the occasional pickup. The big screen still towered over the lot, but the sun and weather had reduced it to a cracked, faded, off gray square.
If you didn't know what you were looking for, it seemed like a lot of junk, old farm equipment, cheap Mexican toys, dishes, baby clothes, like a huge garage sale...but sometimes you could find electronics. It was the promise of video games, peripherals, especially Nintendo products, that kept me coming there every Sunday. I'd don my letter jacket, hop on my bike, and pedal down five blocks with Duke, my Jack Russel Terrier running along beside me in his blue neckerchief. I chained my bike to a tree (people have tried to sell it out from under me before), wander the rows of vendors.
I own more than a hundred Nintendo cartridges and dozens of Atari games, maybe more if you counted the games I borrowed from the library and kept overdue. If you go through the normal channels, the department stores and shopping malls, a collection like that could easily put you and your parents in the poor house. But at the Hart, you can get some pretty good deals. One of my favorite dealers was a little Peruvian guy that went by the nickname Squeegee.
His real name was Jorge but people generally called him by the other name. I swear, if super Mario came from south of the border, he would be Squeegee. Overalls, plump body, mustache, ball cap...the Brazilian soccer shirt was the only weird part of his ensemble. Some of my best treasures came from Squeegee's sale space, Zelda, Maniac Mansion, Magic of Scheherazade...he told me his wife left him and took the kids along, leaving behind all that stuff. Not sure if I believe his kids agreed to have all their stuff sold off at discount price, but why look a gift horse in the mouth?
Upon seeing me that fateful day, Squeegee got up from his rug, flashing a handful of cartridges in my face. "These look amazing. Amigo, you hear about Mother? It's Japanese. I just got it in. You like those dungeon games, right?"
I shrugged. "Does it work in a U.S. machine?"
He grinned, probably thinking he already had a half a sale.
"Amigo, it's called Famicom, but it's not any different."
"Have you actually tested it?"
The look on his face said he hadn't. "Well, I put it in the machine. It fits, señor."
I chuckled. "That's okay. I don't speak Japanese anyway. What else you got?"
He showed me a couple more things, Thunder and Lightning, Kiwi Craze, an obscure title called Pilgrim by Mutiny Software. The last one turned out to be a little weird. Squeegee said you had to press reset to start it up, like those cheesy Bible video games, but apparently it was an excellent game. I bought all three.
"I got something else for you, amigo..." He showed me a wooden box, covered in carvings of birds and cornstalk people. "This one...I don't know. I show you because you're a serious collector. Let me know what you think."
A chill ran down my back as I examined the thing. I felt an almost electric tingle traveling through my hands as I held it. The box contained a metal Nintendo cartridge, gold and shaped like a game genie, but with little red crystals and embossed arabesques. No manufacturers labels, just a title emblazoned across the front reading `Videoland' in the fancy script they used for the covers of Dune novels.
"I tried getting it appraised, but they say it's not worth that much. Some fancy aluminum and plastic, a couple pieces of quartz. Not sure what it does either. I put it in the tray and the games look just the same as before. It's nice though. Got it from an old Indian guy. He says it's magic, but I say he loco. I only buy because I like how it looks. Now that I know it's cheap, I'm liking it less."
"How much you want for it?"
He wanted fifty, but I argued that was too much for a non functioning accessory, so I talked him down to thirty five.
"You let me know right away if it does anything," Squeegee joked. "Maybe you owe me money."
I smirked. "Right. I'll do that."
Thanking him, I handed over the money, leaving him to stroll the rest of the flea market.
I didn't see much else I really wanted. People were selling motorcycle and Mercedes engine parts, lots of clothes, I found a collection of view master slides, Gremlins memorabilia, and a whole bunch of McDonald's toys, but nothing that really grabbed my attention. I went home.
I lived in a nice suburban ranch house, in a bedroom directly above the garage. To be honest, my room looked a little nuts...I had issues of Nintendo power piled up everywhere, NES and Atari cartridges stacked up in towers around my TV, and huge full color maps and posters for various games covering my walls. Some guys liked to put the centerfold up there...well, I did have Princess Zelda and Samus.
My furniture was solid oak, family heirlooms, mostly. I had the power glove, rapid fire joysticks, controllers with built-in sticks plus rapid fire and slow mo...you can thank Squeegee for that.
The floor kinda belonged to Duke. His toys were all over near his bed, though I did have my baseball bat and glove and other sports stuff lying about.
Squeegee was right. The device really didn't seem to do that much. I plugged it in, played Duck Hunt for a few minutes, but I couldn't tell a difference, other than the fact I was way out of practice, and the ducks seemed a lot smarter than I remembered. They kept getting away. I had school the next morning, so I gave it up and went to bed.
I didn't actually sleep that much. After a few hours restless tossing and turning, I got up during the night and played some other games, Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Tiger Heli, Startropics, Mario...all the games seemed...more difficult than before, as if they knew my every move before I made them, but I couldn't prove the metal device had anything to do with it. After all, in Startropics, you only have four squares to jump on while fighting Octo the Huge (the octopus boss), so the chances are one in four that the monster will randomly strike you and end your game. That's not magic, it's probability with crappy odds.
I ended my late night marathon with another failed attempt at Duck Hunt. Chalking it up to fatigue, I took in a little shut eye.
My alarm awakened me four hours later. Groaning, I switched it off and got up.
The moment I gained a vertical position, I felt something like a dish breaking under my feet.
I looked down, frowning at the broken shards.
It was gray, its concentric rings resembling a Frisbee, the word Remington embossed across it. My brain, having not fully awakened yet, decided that Duke had brought the thing into the house somehow.
I didn't give the thing a second thought, just shuffled to my dresser, digging out my clothes for the day.
Feeling feathers under my bare feet, I glanced down, scowled, decided that Duke had ripped open a pillow, went to take a shower.
More feathers outside. Mom kept the hallway immaculately tidy. I could already imagine the complaints she'd be making when she started picking up. "Duke...what did you do?"
As I stumbled further down the hall, I noticed Duke growling at the bathroom door. I yawned, grabbed the knob.
The moment the door opened, a cloud of feathers exploded in my face, flapping wings beating against me, angrily quacking beaks pecking me in the head.
I stumbled into the staircase railing, fell over the side.