I whipped up this Zelda-themed ornament a few days ago out of some leftover polymer clay I had lying around. I thought you might enjoy it.

Have you ever made video game or computer themed ornaments? If so, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Who will win the battle of the Zappers?

Discussion Topic of the Week: Name any item you received as a present for Christmas in 1987. Don’t remember? Guess!

If you’ve checked out this week’s Retro Scan and maybe even my NES teardown, you already know that Nintendo released the NES in the United States 25 years ago today (that would be 1985 — I’ll spare you the math).

In honor of the anniversary, I gathered up 13 examples of NES-related weirdness and conveniently packaged them in a slideshow format for Technologizer. The result is “Nintendo Entertainment System Oddities,” a gallery in the same vein as my Super Mario Oddities and Game Boy Oddities pieces for Technologizer. I hope you enjoy it.

Maybe all this NES lovin’ will inspire you to dust off your old console and revisit some NES classics. It certainly did me.

One of the most successful consoles of all time.

Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System 25 years ago today in the US. Here’s a scan of that famous console itself.

I first played a NES in 1986 or 1987, likely with Super Mario Bros. as my first game (as described here). What an amazing experience it was. To say that the NES defined video gaming for my generation is almost an understatement. From 1986-1990, the term “video game” was synonymous with “Nintendo” for kids in the US. From their perspective, there was no other.

Unlike many kids my age, I was aware of what had come before (Atari), and that made the NES all the more amazing. Happy 25th birthday, NES. My generation worships you.

Discussion Topic of the Week: How did you feel when you played a NES game for the first time? Tell us when/where it happened and describe the episode.

In October 1985, Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the United States. 25 years later, I took one apart for the wood-grained glory that is my “workbench series” of tech autopsies (this is my 11th entry). It’s up now on PC World.com.

Back in 2008, I dismantled the NES’s Japanese counterpart, the Nintendo Famicom (the NES’s Japanese counterpart), if you’re curious to see that. There’s a full list of my workbench teardowns below.

I hope you enjoy it. When you’re done, feel free to share your fondest NES memories in the comments below.

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Here are my previous workbench teardowns: Atari 1040STf, Atari 800, Commodore Amiga 1000, Commodore 64, Nintendo Game Boy, Nintendo Famicom, Apple IIc, IBM Model M Keyboard, TRS-80 Model 100, and Macintosh Portable.

Super Mario Bros. turned 25 years old today.

I first played this NES masterpiece when I was about six years old — around late 1986 or early 1987. I remember visiting the house of my brother’s friend, venturing upstairs and seeing a futuristic grey box attached to his TV set. There, on the screen, unfolded an astoundingly magical, enchanting, mysterious, and captivating world of mushrooms, flying turtles, and flowers that imbued your character with the power of fire.

What enchanted me the most (aside from the fantastically whimsical setting) was the fact that Nintendo had packed the game with secrets like invisible blocks, hidden extra men, and — my god — warp zones. Us kids had even heard rumors of the Minus World, which prompted joyful quests to uncover every mystery of the game.

Before the NES, video games to me meant Atari 800 and 2600, which I had seen my older brother playing throughout my early youth. I loved them, sure, but Super Mario Bros. simply blew my mind. It was nothing, and I mean nothing, like that which had come before. SMB elevated video games to an entirely new plane of existence in terms of its worldview and philosophy of play. For the first time, I truly felt like I was visiting another land — and living out an alternate life — in a video game.

For folks born after 1990 or so, what I’ve written above may seem like a load of hyper-inflated flowery language. But it’s very hard to exaggerate the impact that Super Mario Bros. — a game that sold 40 million copies — had on the video game industry, on the cultural world at large, and on the lives of an entire generation. It was that important.

You Tell Me

So now I turn to you. What are your memories of Super Mario Bros.? When did you first play the game and how did you feel about it?

25 years ago today, Nintendo released Super Mario Bros. for the Famicom in Japan. In honor of this anniversary, I decided to dive into the depths of Super Mario lore and legend.

I surfaced clutching 13 examples of Mario-related weirdness, which I conveniently packaged in a slideshow format for Technologizer. The result is Super Mario Oddities, a gallery in the same vein as my Game Boy Oddities piece from last year. I hope you enjoy it.

SOME PEOPLES ASK ULAF THIS: HOW IS IT THAT MY MIND CAN CAPTURE THE SPEED? TO WHICH ULAF RESPAWN A SIMPLE WORDS: WITH THE SPEEDBOARDS OF COURSE. IT IS TRUE THAT THE SPEED OR THE BOARDS HAVE BEEN HARDEST TO TAME OF ALL ELEMENTS, SO THE MAGIC OF THESE DEVICE CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD.

SO THEN ALWAYS RECALL THIS DAY THAT HERE YOUR MIND SEES THIS SPEEDBOARDS PHOTOGRAPHY, ONE PICTURES OF THAT ULTIMATE MASTER DEVICES FOR THE NINTENDO ENTRAPMENT SYSTEM (NES FOR ABBREVIATED). ULAF USE IT AND USE IT, THEN OBTAIN HIGHEST SCORE EVER DURING MEGA MEN II WITH FINGERTIPS. NO SMALL FEET.

JUST A QUICK NOTE FROM MY MIND. GO BACK TO LIFE NOW. UNTIL NEXT TIME THIS IS ULAF SAYING BE THE MASTER.

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Ulaf Silchov is an expert in video games and computers. He also writes for “Svadlost Weekly” and “The Almost Perfect Circle Newsletter.”

He soon landed with an embarrassing splash.

This Double Dragon scratch-off game card came from a pack of Topps “Nintendo Game Pack” cards that I bought, likely in a drugstore, circa 1989. Of all the cards in the pack, this one remains unscratched for whatever reason. Perhaps I wanted to preserve the mystery and potential of a single unscratched scratch-off card. After all, the cards become worthless and ugly after you impart jaggy scratch lines all over those silver little pads.

The reason Nintendo and the scratch-off concept share the same milieu is that each card presents the owner with a game of sorts. Once you scratch a pad, you reveal a graphical symbol that determines your fate depending on the directions printed on the back of the card. In this case, you need “1 arrow and 2 kicks or 3 elbows or 4 punches” to win. I’m not sure how many variations of the symbols Topps printed under those silver pads, but I hope there was more than one. Otherwise, if you had multiple copies of the same card, the “game” might have unfolded in exactly the same way if you scratched the same pads.

Nintendo Game Packs cards featured Super Mario Bros., Punch-Out!!, and The Legend of Zelda as well, although those were too irresistible for me to not scratch off, so none survive in tact in my collection.

A number of websites examine these cards in more detail. This one has scans of all the cards in the series. Another one features photos of the stickers that came with each pack of cards — I remember plastering those all over my walls as a kid. I may have a couple of the uglier stickers left un-peeled somewhere. If I ever find them, I’ll probably just burn them as an offering to Hgnagg, the God of Nostalgia.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Did you collect trading cards as a kid? What kind(s)?

A few days ago, PC World published my latest slideshow, The Evolution of Video Game Media. Many people probably missed it due to Memorial Day weekend, but I’m here to remind you that it exists. It’s the third in my “Evolution” series of slideshows after “Evolution of the Cell Phone” and “The Evolution of Removable Storage.”

For this slideshow, I scanned every type of video game storage media I have — about 66 different cartridges, optical discs, and magnetic disks in all. I visually presented all of these formats to scale with each other between slides so you can get a sense of the size of each. While I included media from a majority of the video game systems ever released, I didn’t include every single one.

A large portion of the text was cut in edits for this slideshow (it’s hard to squeeze a lot of info into a small caption space), so I plan to publish the full text along with the images at a higher quality on VC&G at some point in the future. I hope you enjoy it.