Consoles like the Super Nintendo and even the Sony PlayStation were out of my reach when they first landed in 1991 and 1995, respectively, largely because of my youth and lack of free cash at both times. I'm sure I wasn't the only kid to look wistfully at consoles like those through department store windows and on the pages of Best Buy and Target Sunday circulars. "The Super Nintendo is here!" they shouted. Cold comfort for any kid whose parents made it very clear that they already had a "Nintendo."

Only one year after the PlayStation, the Nintendo 64 launched in 1996 and became the first console I could afford to buy with my own cash. This week marks exactly 20 years since that system's launch in the United States, and it's a milestone I'll never forget. My initial encounter with the N64 isn't etched in memory just because it coincided with the release of one of the greatest 3D platformers of all time or because it was the first system to ship with four-player modes as a default. For me, it marked the beginning of the rest of my life.

Say "graphics" seven times fast

Before any of my other odd jobs as a teenager (such as soda jerk and record store clerk), I got a job reviewing video games. I hadn't even become an editor of my school newspaper when the Dallas Morning News agreed to pay me $25 an article to review brand-new games (and syndicated those reviews nationally).

For the backstory: in 1996, I was a fresh-faced kid who fueled his 16-bit obsession with a year of free rentals earned from my local Blockbuster's "Video Game Championships" contest in 1993. (I won my local store's contest again in 1994; unfortunately, I also lost both years' "regional" contests.) That's right around when I saw a listing in Dallas' daily newspaper for "teenaged video game critics." I thought I was imagining things. That's a thing? That's a job? For teens? Did they also need someone my age to review pizza and cargo shorts?

I put my Brother word processor to work, on which I furiously typed a cover letter and my first sample review—Earthworm Jim 2, complete with a multi-console breakdown of how it differed on Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. (I don't have the original text anymore, but I would bet serious money that I wrote the phrase "blast processing.") I mailed those to the Dallas Morning News, then got a callback from my eventual editor, who invited me to a meeting where I picked from a giant pile of games. (The pile was mostly junk, so I picked the best-looking game on the pile: the 1996 PC version of Need for Speed.)

This sufficed as a final job test of sorts. Can you meet a deadline? Can you piece together a sentence? Can you use the word "graphics" at least seven times? Presto: you're a columnist! I could send game requests, but I was expected to play whatever crap landed in my mailbox and review roughly two to three games a month.

"I have to start plotting our next few months of coverage," the editor wrote in a contributor-wide memo roughly one week later. "Who has next-gen consoles or is buying them this holiday season?"

I e-mailed him back within seconds to plant my flag: I wanted to be the paper's N64 guy.

By then, I'd worn out a copy of Next Generation magazine with a Super Mario 64 cover feature. I had dumped about a hundred bucks into a nearby burger shop's Killer Instinct cabinet ("coming soon to the Nintendo Ultra 64," it told me countless times). I was obsessed with the dazzling water effects of Wave Race 64. I was under Nintendo's 64-bit spell. I loved the spaceship-looking controller. I beamed the first time I tested the analog joystick at a Blockbuster kiosk. I stared at those bizarre C-buttons, imagining how they'd "transform" games to come. I'd even bought into Nintendo's BS about how much better cartridges would be for games than CDs.

I'm sure I mentioned at least three-fourths of that in my plea. The editor wrote me back later that day with a simple shrug of an e-mail. Like, "Whatever, kid. Let me know when you buy your precious."

What if Lee had been my clerk?

In some cities, including Dallas, the Nintendo 64 launched a full week early thanks to a retail-embargo break by the fine folks at Babbage's (a gaming retail chain where my colleague Lee Hutchinson once worked). With the console's launch looming, I had taken to refreshing the Internet's foremost N64 news resource, N64.com, roughly 12 times a day. (This was before the site succumbed to legal pressure and changed its name to IGN64.com.) I saw news of Babbage's peculiar decision, made a store phone call to confirm, and cashed in a favor from my mother to get a ride to the mall.

I had $220 to my name, a number I'd reached solely by selling some beloved Sega Genesis games to Funcoland the prior week. I would not be able to buy a game, or an extra controller, or a memory pak. Just the $199 system and its tax, please, sir.

Why my mother didn't drive at least 90MPH back to our house, I have no idea. It felt like an eternity waiting to hook my new system up to a TV. I specifically recall the anticipation and hope I had about what would happen when I plugged this system in. Maybe there'd be a fun loading screen, like on the Famicom Disk Drive, or some sort of secret mini-game that launched if the system didn't have a cartridge. Maybe my cash-strapped desperation would reveal some incredible hidden gem.

I believe I tested about 500 button combinations on the N64 controller while staring at its no-cartridge black screen. Sigh.

Ultimately, I had to wait for the console's launch day to get my N64 gaming fix, which is when Nintendo sent me a review copy of Wave Race 64. (As it turns out, the newspaper had received a free N64 console and a copy of Super Mario 64; a grownup staffer claimed those, wrote the Mario review, and never contributed to the column again.) The Dallas Morning News' online archive system is pretty awful, so my Wave Race review is apparently lost to the cosmos, but I do recall hyperbolizing about the game's "realistic" wave system. Wave Race 64 still holds up quite well in terms of recreating the feeling of bumpy-water jet-ski races, but visually, the whole thing looks like a shiny pool of endlessly bubbling gelatin.