My First All-Nighter (MFAN)

[esteban]

Backstory: Inspired by this tangent.

Comrades, it's time once again to share anecdotes from your earliest journeys. "All-Nighter" proper is just that, but when you are a tiny person, simply staying up until 1:00 AM is a rare treat (or feat, depending on your parents).

NOTE: As always, don't try to impress us with your fabrications. Don't try to be Kooler Than Thou, for that is __________'s (insert name of forum member) legacy.

PRO TIP: Include details like food, dress, smells, blah, et cetera.




MFAN: I honestly can't remember the absolute first time I stayed up all night, but it must have been for Metroid or Tiger Heli on NES. Weekend. 1987. My parents did not allow me to waste my brain on TV/video games, so I had to sneak downstairs. Volume barely audible. CREAK UPSTAIRS!!!??? Turn off the TV!!!! Why is the screen still glowing? Is my dad coming downstairs? Silence.
 
Silence. It's the middle of summer. No A/C. Unbearable humidity, even at 3:00 AM. Nothing but briefs. Sweat cascading down.

Silence.

TV power on. Drips of sweat channel between the buttons for channel up and channel down. GET PASSWORD for Metroid IMMEDIATELY.

Damn, that was close.

Dawn breaks.

SHIT. TV IS HOT. DAD WILL KNOW I PLAYED. SHIT!

Bag of frozen peas on back of TV set (a 20" Zenith!)...now, put a record on (to explain why the stereo receiver is warm-to-the-touch).

Human League. Dare.

[Lost Monkey]

Circa 1983 - I borrowed Asteroids for the 2600 from a friend at school.  I owned Pac Man, Pitfall, Defender and Combat but wanted some ASTEROIDS!

I started playing it when I came home from school.

The TV was in the basement (unfinished) sitting on a table that my Dad had put together for setting up a model railroad.

I took a break and joined the family for dinner.  Then went back downstairs and started the game up again.

Next thing I knew my Dad was in the stairwell at the top of the stairs grabbing his jacket.  He noticed the sound effects coming from downstairs and saw the glow of the CRT...  

"What are you doing up this early!?!?", he said.  I laughed, but realized that it hurt my eyes to look in any direction except for that of the TV.

I said, "What do you mean?  What time is it?"

When I said that, he realized what had happened, and so did I.  He was leaving to go to work.  It was 6:30 a.m..

[Firebomber7]

My first video game all-nighter was probably at my friend Doug's house when I was in grade 3 or probably 4. That would put it in 1988 or 1989. It definitely would have been the NES. Likely candidate games were Contra, Life Force, Blades of Steel or Ninja Turtles. Probably all of them! Konami freaking ruled.

[Bardoly]

MFAN

I was probably about 13-14 at the time.  Black and white 13" tv playing Mega Man 2 with my 11-12 year-old brother and 12-13 year-old sister alternating control in-between deaths.  Sittting and/or laying on the floor, because the tv was sitting on the floor of our den.  That was the night that we discovered the special invincibility super jump 'trick' by using controller 2.  I mean, whoever wasn't playing had to do something, right?  So someone, I don't remember who started pushing buttons on the second controller while someone was playing the game with controller one, and viola!  A couple months later I read about the 'secret' in Nintendo Power or some gaming magazine and felt so superior because we had guessed figured it out on our own.  I remember that we had to keep the sound low, because our parents were sleeping, and we knew that if we woke them up, that we would be sent to bed.  I also remember that when we finally got to the dragon in Dr. Wily's castle, that it blew our minds.  Also, that level in the castle where you have to shoot all of the bombable bricks at the boss, then die, then restart the level and recharge your crash bombs to be able to finish off the boss was a terror.  We did finally beat Dr. Wily sometime around 7am after which we went to bed. It must have either been a Saturday or a summer weekday, because Mom actually let us sleep all morning recuperating.  I don't remember eating anything all night - we were so entranced and mesmerized by the great game, that we just kept playing, and playing, and playing.......

Good memories.

[CPTRAVE]

Probably Solomens Key (Nintendo), I was around 11-12 years old, but then again we had a few games to play that night, Kid Icarus, Contra, Commando, Russian Attack, Blades of Steel Castlevania. It was a sleepover so my friends and I stayed up all night long.

[ccovell]

Mega Man 2... we discovered the special invincibility super jump 'trick' by using controller 2.
...
I also remember that when we finally got to the dragon in Dr. Wily's castle, that it blew our minds.  Also, that level in the castle where you have to shoot all of the bombable bricks at the boss, then die, then restart the level and recharge your crash bombs to be able to finish off the boss was a terror.

The invincibility trick was in MM3, so maybe you're combining two memories?

[Obfuscate]

Man, hard to remember exact details but I remember staying up all night with my neighbor playing Nintendo. Mostly Baseball Stars, Kung Fu and Ice Hockey.

For Turbo my buddy owned a TG16 before I did and remember sleep overs playing TV Sports Hockey, Legendary Axe and Bloody Wolf

I worked overnights right out of high school at an apartment and use to bring my Nintendo and Simcity and play all night.

[Marll]

Hard to remember for sure, but I think I had a friend stay over that had a TON of NES games (I think we owned about 4 at the time and he had like 30). He ended up falling asleep, but I discovered Zelda....it was all over from there, I could't get enough of adventure and RPGs after that.

[Bardoly]

Mega Man 2... we discovered the special invincibility super jump 'trick' by using controller 2.
...
I also remember that when we finally got to the dragon in Dr. Wily's castle, that it blew our minds.  Also, that level in the castle where you have to shoot all of the bombable bricks at the boss, then die, then restart the level and recharge your crash bombs to be able to finish off the boss was a terror.

The invincibility trick was in MM3, so maybe you're combining two memories?

You know, you must be right.  We probably did an all-nighter for both of them.

[Arkhan]

My all nighters for gaming that I remember most:

Between 8th and 9th grade I would stay up til like 5 or 6am playing DOS games like Ultima and shit.

Staying up the ENTIRE night and beating Metroid Fusion in one sitting during the Xmas Break that I got it.

and, staying up for the Chocobo Quest in FFXI even though I had to do a biology final the next day. 

Got chocobo, aced test, came home, played Phantasy Star 2 for like 12 hours, yeahhhH!

wefajagoirgjorgijadsfgasdfgasdfgsdh

[BigusSchmuck]

Civilization 1 for the first time. Or its more addicting younger brothers enough said.

[roflmao]

Civilization 1 for the first time.

Me too.

[vestcoat]

What the hell is MFAN?

I think my survival instincts were stronger when I was a preteen - I simply wasn't interested in staying up all night. Or maybe my parents and friends' parents supervised us too well. Or maybe 8-bit games weren't immersive enough to suck me into another dimension for six hours. I don't know. I remember pushing 1AM with Super Mario Brothers, Zelda 2, Major League Baseball, Castlevania, Shadowgate, and RC Pro Am.

Castlevania was played at a sleepover in my friend's foldout camper in his driveway. We alternated lives. He would play for thirty minutes before dying because he owned the game. I would play for two minutes before dying. It sucked. At midnight or 1AM he turned off the NES to watch Cheers. I got crabby and went to sleep.

Late night RC Pro Am and Shadowgate were played at a friend's birthday party in the country. He was a farm boy and worked so hard that he barely ever got to have friends over. Something was wrong with his toilet that night and I was scared it would overflow every time I went to the bathroom. Everyone went to bed in the wee hours, but it was so dark and strange not hearing any traffic that I never fell asleep.

My first proper all-nighter with Sim Earth on a friend's monochrone Mac. Then was a friend's birthday who had just received a SNES for Christmas. We played Sim City all night. The next morning I ate unsweeted puffed rice cereal that my parents packed for me because they were weirdos while everyone else ate Captain Crunch. We watched that TV video game show where kids ran around an obstacle course and won NES games by sticking them on a Velcro suit. On the show I saw a Neo Geo for the first time.

When Super Mario Kart and SF2 were released the next year, all-nighters became par for the course at sleepovers. I would regularly go to sleep the next morning with bloodshot eyes and Mode-7 images of Mario Kart swimming across my eyelids.

Still, all-nighters remained a friends-only activity until my family got Civilization on our Mac Performa in '94 or so.

[Jibbajaba]

MFAN = Mother f*ckin' all-nighter?

I've only stayed up all night dicking around maybe three times.  The first time, I believe it was the summer between 5th and 6th grade.  I spent the night at my friend George's house.  We just wanted to stay up all night just to see if we could actually do it.  I don't remember us playing video games.  Just board games.  We were trying to be quiet, but his mom knew that we stayed up.  So she told my step-mom, who was furious with me because she was and still is a cunt.  So she made me go apologize to George's mom.

The second time I stayed up all night I was in high school, and I was by myself.  Again, it was summer, and I spent the whole night f*cking around on my 386, dialing into local BBSes, downloading game demos, playing TradeWars, chatting, etc.  This was before the internet existed as we know it.

The third time was also in high school, during my senior year.  On the night of January 28th, 1995 (a Saturday night) I spent the night at my friend Rob's house.  We stayed up all night playing computer games (Space Hulk and the incredible Star Control II).  I remember the exact date because I am a huge San Francisco 49ers fan, and they were playing in the Super Bowl the next day.  So I go home Sunday morning and tell my mom (who is much cooler than my evil stepmother, and who is also a 49er fan) that I stayed up all night, and that I'm going to take a nap, but to please wake me up in time for the game.  She doesn't, and I wake up just in time for the postgame show to start.  WTF.

Although I've stayed up until 3-4 AM since them (especially in college), I have never stayed up long enough to watch the sun come up since that last time in high school.

Chris

[Arkhan]

It says what MFAN is in the thread title, lol