I asked my mom for a copy of Mike Tyson's Punch Out for my birthday mid-1988. She came home with this game that I had never heard of. The box art was deeply concerning. I was distraught. She said some guy at the store told her it was a good game. No Punch-Out!? Some guy?

Little did I know that this random game department employee had just altered the course of my NES life. I fell in love with this game almost immediately. It was non-linear. When you defeated a boss, you acquired its weapon. Using certain weapons on certain bosses made things easier; use Gutsman's weapon to smash Cutman's blades, use Cutman's weapon to cut Elecman's wires. use Elecman's weapon to electrify the water in Iceman. Logical, amazing... and yes, demanding. It required a lot of practice and pattern memorization to get through the game, and I spent at least the entirety of the summer of 1988 working on it.

Mega Man 1 still stands as my favorite game in the original series. Although I also remember when Mega Man 2 came out, how excited I was for it's release, and how hard it was to find it in a rental store. The original Mega Man has a special place in my heart; the sheer dumb luck in how IT found ME.