Although, I do owe nintendo....
In 1988, I entered a contest that WTBS had put out with Nintendo and Night Tracks, a music video show on WTBS. You had to watch the show for six weeks to get clues to complete a phrase (or send in a SASE for the answers which I did... I played a lot of sweepstakes back then) and then come up with this phrase.... "Mario Moves his Feet to a Rock and Roll Beat".... I sent in 7 postcards (lucky number and all that)
1.3 million entries came in. I won the grand prize. I got this letter in the mail from someone called Integrated Marketing Group. "Congratulations. You have been selected the grand prize winner in the Nintendo Night Tracks Video Game Contest. You prize has an approximate retail value of $9,754. Please complete the attached tax and eligibiliity forms so we may begin processing your prize."
Everyone in my office (I was fresh out of college at 22) thought it was a Tokyo timeshare until I told them I had entered the contest. Got two plane tickets to Tokyo, two tickets to the rock concert of my choice that was playing at the time in Tokyo (actually, my choices were Helloween and Poison, and I could care less for either so they let me sub two passes to Tokyo Disneyland), $3,000 in spending money, they let me pick the hotel so I picked the Imperial Hotel, a 5 star Western Hotel designed by Frank Lloyd Wright right off the Ginza shopping district, and a tour of the Nintendo factory. Somehow the factory tour fell through, which I was looking forward to actually, but they sounded relieved when I said I would accept two Japan Rail passes (train passes that let me go anywhere the rail system went for free) instead. We wound up taking a bullet train to Kyoto during the week we were there. Gina, my fiancee at the time, and I wound up having a Pre-honeymoon in Japan. I'm 6'3" and she is a petite blonde of 5'3". We just SCREAMED gaijin (foreigners) as we walked through town. Tons of clubs actually prohibited non-Japanese from entering. I can imagine the uproar if clubs tried that here.....
I had all those games!
