Way back when, in the early days of the NES, before they even had Nintendo Power Magazine, there was the Nintendo fun club. It is the very one that Doc Lewis recommends that you join.

As some of you know, I also write a comic book with my brother Jeremy. Our comic is not the first time that his art skills have come in handy.

The assignment was simple. Draw a scene from Metroid. This was the original Metroid, back when most people hadn’t even reached the secret ending and found out that Samus Aran is actually a woman. Remember when that was an Easter egg?

Jeremy had been drawing comics for the local newspaper, as one of his best friend’s dad was the owner, so he had been drawing pretty regularly at the time. He was a pretty avid gamer back then as well, as I mentioned in my Scene It review, and decided that he would throw his hat into the ring. Metroid was one of his favorite games at the time, so all the pieces were in place.

He sent in his entry, and a few months later we saw this:

Click to Enlarge

The prize was the NES Advantage and two games of his choice. He ended up picking R.C. Pro-Am (a fun little racing game by Rare), and even though it wasn’t out yet, they let him choose Super Mario 2 as his second game. We were hoping that meant we would get it early, but no dice.

Once we finally did get that copy of Mario 2, we dug right into it. It was such a weird departure from the original, primary because it was actually a reworking of Doki Doki Panic, but it didn’t matter. It was one of those games that, while fairly easy, especially by 1980′s standards, was just fun. We spent a lot of time finding all the hidden shortcuts and mushrooms hidden throughout.

Who knew that one drawing of a bounty hunter fighting a giant dinasaur-lizard would turn into quality gaming time within the Gregory Clan? So I guess the real point of this article is to say “thank you” to Jeremy for picking awesome games for his prizes and for being cool about letting his younger brothers play too.