Things I Like

On my way to work today I was thinking about "Foutaises", a seven minute Jean-Pierre Jeunet film which illustrates a character's various likes and dislikes.  Thoughts, experiences, a sort of observational nostalgia. Similar to the observations of the angels in "Wings of Desire" who, since they cannot experience them themselves, find insignificance and poetry in things that would go otherwise unkremarked.   If "Foutaises" seems familiar, it's probably because the same approach was used again a decade later for the character introductions in "Amélie".

I'm starting to think of my own whimsical list.  The first entry might be "I like inserting and removing Nintendo cartridges". U.S./Euro-size gamepaks on the N.E.S. to be specific.

Back in the early 80s the first "video games crash" had meant U.S. retailers were reticent towards stocking new video game consoles, so Nintendo redesigned their console to look like something different.  Grey, boxy, and a bit of a non-nonsense industrial feel.  At the time most homes didn't have computers in them, and (to 1985) this plausibly was what they'd be looking like.

Instead of the top loading approach of almost every cartridge console ever it had a unique front loading system.  You'd open the flap, slide the cartridge down a slightly angled tray into a metal cradle and then push down the cartridge down against a spring until it the cradle locked into place.  Press down on the cartridge for it to spring out of the lock, pull back to remove.

Outside of the intentionally entertaining, it was one of the most satisfying  physical interaction experiences I can remember (although it's a memory approaching two decades old now - I've been playing Super Mario Galaxy and am feeling a little nostalgic).  It wasn't perfect, the connections became more prone to mis-aligned pin connections and occasional complications from dust which also led to the kid-logic "remove the cartridge and blow on the pins" fix-all solution. But with time this is forgiven.

As Alan Partridge would put it, "Nice action".