I've been wanting to write about this game for awhile, and the RetRose Tinted Corrective Lenses Competition gave me the impetus to do it.

My dad brought home an NES in 1987, ostensibly as a present for me and my little brother, but we were two and one respectively, so we didn't quite get into it until we were a bit older. We played Super Mario Bros., of course, but our game selection was pretty slim. Advertisement wasn't then what it is now, so our gaming library was tiny and we had no idea we were anything but the luckiest kids in the universe. In 1990 I was five years old, and one of my parents brought home what would become one of my favorite NES games of all time:



I'd seen the cartoon and was excited to recognize the characters -- the cartridge went right into the NES, and I remember the sheer delight of realizing the game was two player. Because he was only a year younger than I was, me and my brother did everything together, so to find out we could both play a game was always a great boon. We each took "our" controllers and got ready to play. Even though I was older, I always took player 2. I preferred Luigi's green to Mario's red, and my little brother, though only four, was already a total video game whiz. He couldn't read, but he could get further than my dad in Super Mario Bros. He'd earned his place.



We had Contra and loved it, but we were tiny, and it was too hard (we got better). To find a game where both players played at the same time, and yet wasn't quite as hectic as a shmup, was an unexpected joy. The graphics had surprising style (characteristic of early Disney games) and they stand up to scrutiny today. The characters are depicted as faithfully as possible in an 8-bit environment. The music, too, was catchy and recognizable. The gameplay has a pleasantly even pace, jumping is satisfying and the characters' movement is intuitive. You can't shoot anything in Rescue Rangers, but you can throw whatever you can find, and if you carry a crate pressing down lets you turtle and hide for as long as you like.

One of my favorite gaming memories is centered on the ability to lift and carry objects in the game: along with apples, you can also lift and throw another player. Against that person's will, in fact. All you have to do is sidle up to your friend and suddenly they can't do anything at all until you put them down. This makes for hilarious cruelty, of course.



But also surprising friendliness. Maybe it's because I'd only just started school and hadn't learned about jerks yet, but me and my brother played our co-operative games pretty darn co-operatively. Maybe it's because we needed each other -- he didn't read yet, so I read the text out loud for him, and in return he beat the tough levels in Super Mario Bros. for me.

Rescue Rangers, like most retro games, got hard really fast, and soon I was dying a lot. Once I got past the tower-climb in the first level, I was okay, but I didn't often make it. My very pro four-year-old brother was patient, but once I died it was obvious that I had less fun just watching him. So finally, after plummeting to my death for the umpteenth time on the first level, he turned to me and said, "Hold still, I'll carry you."



So there you have it, it's kind of sappy, but it's one of my favorite memories. Some people say that gamers are violent and anti-social, but when my little brother was playing he carried me through the hard parts so that we could both keep playing together. He didn't gripe about it, he did it because we were friends and he wanted me to be able to play, and the game had a mechanic that let a stronger player help out a weaker one. Allowing that kind of co-operation -- where one player can take responsibility -- isn't an oft-used mechanic (though it should be, and it got lots of good press when it appeared in Mario Galaxy), but it should be. This game let two kids at different skill levels have lots of fun, and at the same time demonstrate that the people griping about video games are dead wrong.

A little boy played this game, and he had the option to just torment me and throw my character into the baddies or electric wires, but instead he chose to help me every time. Playing this game with him is definitely one of my favorite memories.