First and foremost, I wanna thank God for letting me live as long as I have to see this day. I've been wanting to write about this for a long time, as this year - this particular year - has had a profound impact on my childhood and has since become, by far, the happiest year of my life. This will be quite a long article, as I still remember many of these great times as though they were yesterday.
In this particular year, I was in my last year of elementary school, going onto the 6th grade in middle school... Fountain Elementary School in Forest Park, GA if I'm not mistaken. I was doing so well that at times I was bored out of my mind and occasionally helped other classmates with tutoring and whatnot, particularly with literature and math. At the time, the main books we were covering in literature were the Chronicles of Narnia. We went about as far as "The Silver Chair" before watching the BBC TV adaptations, which by today's standards, have not aged very well.
One particular event I'll never forget in the last of my elementary school years was the fierce spelling bee competition I volunteered to represent for my school to compete in the nationals. The prize money - 2 grand toward college - was an incentive. I made it as far as state championships ranking 10th, missing the word "sulcrum", in which I misspelled the second U with an O. Beyond that, academics were standard-fare, and occasionally we'd watch Carmen Sandiego (game show) and Square One Television (a now-defunct variety show from the makers of Sesame Street that made math an actual fun learning experience, using parodies from Pac-Man and Dragnet, just to name a few).
Outside of school, this was probably the year I spent the most time with my family even outside my immediate family. I swear, I think I saw my relatives from Florida and Maryland about three times that year, visiting, traveling or otherwise. My grandparents from Florida came to visit for spring break, and at the time they knew I had an affinity for comics at the time... particularly with Marvel and Sonic comics. So we'd head out to specific comic book stores and look for the latest issues or order back issues I may have missed, and it was around this particular time they taught me the art of collecting - a lesson I'd never forget: "If you're going to do collecting, do it right... always, always buy two of everything. One you'll actually use, and one you'll actually not open." I'd then ask why I wouldn't want to open one, and my grandma showed me this huge book called Wizard magazine. Near the end pages, there was a chart that showed value comparisons of age-old comics... some with even more value in mint condition after 20+ years! If I didn't think my grandparents were cool then, I definitely knew after that day. They actually understood my enthusiasm for my hobby so much it made me cry. So from that point on I had even more incentive to keep doing well in school. The more consistent I was, the better my chances were at keeping up with the comic book industry.
About a week after school sometime on June of that year, my fam and I actually went to Disney World. That's right, Disney World. In a massive effort from both sides of my family 5 years in the making, we made the most out of an entire week at Disney World. It was totally unexpected, and I didn't even see it coming. I particularly remember Epcot, "It's a Small World" (who hasn't?) and pointing out a shitload of Disney characters and picking up back copies of older Disney movies on VHS we may have missed. Incidentally, we saw "The Lion King" on the Friday of that week, and the hype and adrenaline coming from the audience (especially around kids my age) were like none I've seen or ever will see again in my life. The laughter, excitement, and tears... there wasn't a moment we haven't shared it. It was truly an awesome moviegoing experience. The Disney experence resulted in an even stronger connection to my relatives (especially my cousins) that even after we went back to our respective homes we kept in touch through letters, if only because MCI was a bitch to work around with long-distance calls (my old man eventually wised up and got AT&T).
As far as gaming goes, it was a breath of fresh air compared to 1993. Last year was full of rehashes (Super Mario All-Stars, SF2 Turbo), not-so-true sequels (Sonic Spinball), and stupid, stupid decisions (a majority of crap Sega CD games, a hefty price tag on the Sega CD, Mortal Kombat SNES with no blood? Really?), but it wasn't to say it was all bad. There were a few interesting new games that came out later in the year (mainly in the arcade), such as MK2, Samurai Showdown, Battletoads/Double Dragon, TMNT Tournament Fighters, Sonic CD, Lunar: Eternal Blue, Lufia, and the uber-late-in-the-year arcade phenomenon, Virtua Fighter, just to name a few.
But this year was even more special, and it started off with a bang for - you guessed it - a TRUE sequel to Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic 3. Released on Groundhog Day (tentatively as "Hedgehog Day"), it introduced a new character, an echidna named Knuckles, who gets in the way of Sonic and Tails as they venture to Angel Island, tricked by Eggman (then called Robotnik). The gameplay expands a great deal from Sonic 2, but in a way, I felt cheated. Sonic 2 had 10 stages, and this game had what? 6? I liked the game, but I couldn't help but feel underwhelmed... maybe next year they'll prove me wrong. 8 months later... Sonic & Knuckles? A special lock-on cartridge? Connect to Sonic 3 to play the TRUE version of Sonic 3? Play Knuckles in Sonic 2 if you lock on with Sonic 2? My mind was blown away. Lock-on technology looked as though it was gonna be the wave of the future. Unfortunately, this would be the ONLY game to have that in a cartridge-based console.
But enough on Sonic, let's move on to the next big thing that happened a month after Sonic 3... SUPER. FRIGGIN'. METROID. Now I'll admit, I wasn't all that big on Metroid at first, but after playing a sample of it one weekend at the Electronics Boutique, even my dad wanted to get this game, as he said the game reminds him a lot of the Alien movies. So we got it, and by God, this game did not disappoint one bit. There was danger and tension around every corner, and the likes of Ridley and Kraid were an intimidating bunch. We delved into this game for about two weekends and then went back to Secret of Mana.
Things didn't really pick up until summertime, when I really started digging around after an awesome, enlightened year of school. Around this time, my dad got word that there will be an all-new true sequel to the Final Fantasy series on the SNES, which was a breath of fresh air to him compared to the Final Fantasy Legend BS and the fact Final Fantasy V was not gonna make it. But before I go into that one, I wanna talk about Six Flags on July of that year, and the one game I saw that would truly make me give a damn about 2D fighting games again after Virtua Fighter left me uninterested in them for a time... this one game my old man accidentally game me $50 and I blew almost all the money on it... the game my eyes couldn't believe and couldn't get enough of: Darkstalkers.
What made this game so great was from a visual standpoint, it shitted all over the competition. Never have I seen such colorful and imaginative sprites and backgrounds, all done in smooth, fast gameplay. This was a massive upgrade from Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, where the only gimmick at the time was fighting Akuma and a couple of new characters, yet it maintained the same graphics albeit running on the same hardware as this game. Back then, I was like, WTF? But yeah, Darkstalkers. Amazing game for an amazing year. I enjoyed it so much that I actually wanted to play every character, which isn't easy for me as I'm a very picky guy. I got to beat Pyron with every character, check out all the endings, then proceed to meet up with my dad to tell him all about the game (although he was a little upset that he accidentally gave me $50, when he intended to give me $5... but he let it slide, as this was the week of my birthday). We went on all the rollercoster rides at Six Flags (including the Ninja, which was the hardcore shit at the time), snacked on some funnel cakes which I had the pleasure of trying for the first time, and met up with my dad's family at the hotel nearby for the planned family reunion, where my cousins would eventually gather again at the arcade to not only play Darkstalkers, but Virtua Fighter, TMNT Turtles in Time, NBA Jam, and X-Men Arcade as well.
As the summer was nearly drawing to a close, kids my age needed a reason to be hyped for the new wave of Saturday morning cartoons, which back in the day was a BIG FAT HAIRY DEAL. Around this particular time, Fox was owning Saturday mornings, CBS was slowly but surely becoming second-rate, and NBC Saturday mornings were dead, just... dead. After a shitty season of Mario and Captain N with a poor adaptation of Super Mario World and most of the rights to their shows being acquired by Turner to be aired on Cartoon Network, they had no hope. But enough on that, let's talk about Fox. During this time, the big three were X-Men, Power Rangers, and of course, Batman (with Animaniacs as an honorable mention). Before the fall, they had sneak peeks of the next season for Power Rangers and X-Men in particular on prime-time spanning for two weeknights in August. It generated lots of hype, especially X-Men's preview episode before the popular Phoenix Saga, which I was REALLY excited about. So I had something to look forward to after finishing homework, quickly or otherwise.
CBS, on the other hand, was struggling, but you can't blame them for trying. Sure, they had the uber-popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as their flagship go-to cartoon, but when directly compared with Fox's big three, you had to admit the show was losing its edge. So what did they do? They revamped their lineup with an "edgier" interface and rechristened the new fall lineup the CBS Action Zone. In the process, they included Biker Mice from Mars, Wild C.A.T.S., Skeleton Warriors (my personal favorite), and a darker, "edgier" look for the new season of the 1987 TMNT cartoon (though remaining canon to the 80 cartoon by far). Combined with a couple of Disney cartoons based on movies (Little Mermaid, Aladdin), Marsupilami (a long-tailed cheetah with an ape sidekick), the Marvel Action Hour (featuring forgettable first seasons of Iron Man and Fantastic Four), and probably one shitty show based on an otherwise better version that aired on syndication (Conan and the Young Warriors... trust me, this show SUCKED ASS.), you would think CBS would be able to keep themselves afloat, but alas, for only so long. They had overlooked one other key show "Garfield and Friends", and in this particular season, the writers got hella lazy compared to its previous seasons. The new opening for this particular season was also a bit of a turn-off, and this was another long-running show that was once consistent. To think this show would actually jump the shark is beyond my comprehension...
This year would also see the end of some other shows I enjoyed watching outside of Sat AM and weekday cartoons, such as Star Trek TNG, Arsenio Hall, Dinosaurs, and one of my personal favorites, In Living Color. However, there were also new shows (or movies that would later expand to becoming new shows) that would draw my interest anew, such as Touched by an Angel, The Critic, On Our Own, Sister Sister, VR Troopers, My Brother and Me, Gullah Gullah Island, Real Monsters, The Kevin Sorbo Hercules TV movie prequels, and uber-late in that year, the spiritual successor to In Living Color every 90s kid knows and loves-- All That.
The fall and winter also came with a breakout of awesome hits and timeless classics, including Mortal Kombat 2 for SNES (which this time outshined the Genesis version), a home console release of Samurai Showdown, Samurai Showdown Sen (or Samurai Showdown 2) in arcades, the phenomenal arcade sensation Killer Instinct, Doom 2 for PC, Donkey Kong Country, NBA Jam, Virtua Fighter 2 in arcades (which was even more phenomenal than the first, and making me forget about Tekken almost immediately), and the mother of all classics in 1994, the amazing Final Fantasy 6.
Dubbed "Final Fantasy III" in the US for being the third main Final Fantasy game released stateside (as opposed to Japan where all six games to this point have been released), it was released on October, roughly five months after it was released in Japan. Running on a 32-megabit SNES cartridge, this game took more advantage of the graphics capabilities than its predecessors and awesome uses of the Mode 7 engine using an airship, as if you were flying an actual plane. But that's not why this game is awesome. In fact, in more ways than one, this RPG was way ahead of its time. To this day, it still features the largest consistent playable roster in any main Final Fantasy game, arguably the most Eidolons, accessible gameplay, an engrossing story that doesn't cater to just one character, but balances out the entire cast, and quite possibly the best villain in the series, if not the most popular. To spoil the story would be too much, so just get an SNES emulator and play it, if you haven't already.
I think I'm all good for Part One today... I'll give a further analysis on other topics I may have overlooked in Part 2.
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