Nintendo Power Couple
What is your history with Nintendo?
Favorites consoles?
DANNY: My favorite console has to be the Nintendo 64. I grew up with both the NES and the SNES and have tons of memories playing those incredible games with my younger brother, but it wasn’t until the N64 came out that I felt some of the best video games ever created hit the public. Mario 64 was my first 3D experience in a game (and it taught me how to swim as a kid) and I have fond memories of playing Starfox 64 with the rumble pack, the entry in the series that kicked off my fandon of Starfox! Mario Kart 64, Super Smash Bros, Goldeneye and Conker’s Bad Fur Day were how my brother and I spent our summers non-stop playing multiplayer together! The N64 will always be my favorite console!
FELIA: Still to this day my favorite console would definitely have to be the Super Nintendo Entertainment System! It was my family’s first venture into video games and every single game we owned was like a new adventure and exciting to me. I remember playing Mario Paint for hours on end and being so amazed that I could create my own animations and music. Maybe it’s just my nostalgia goggles but I really do think every game on the SNES was fantastic, everything from Earthbound and Mario RPG to Clayfigher and Super Buster Bros… pure gaming gold!
Favorite games or series?
DANNY: There are so many great games to choose from but I think my favorite game would have to be Super Mario Bros 3 on the NES! I remember getting it for my birthday and being so excited to see Mario flying on the yellow box! I loved the overworld map with the level selection, the various worlds included and all of the hidden secrets I still remember to this day!
Although SMB3 is my favorite game, I have to say my favorite series is easily Starfox! It started with Starfox 64…I was playing it at the kiosk in Toys R Us and blown away at how realistic I thought it was…I was flying as Fox McCloud and I had my team of Falco, Slippy and Peppy talking directly to me (or at least it felt like it as a kid) and reacting to how I played! From that point, I got the SNES game and continued buying and playing every Starfox game Nintendo released! Fox McCloud is also my main fighter in Smash…I love Starfox!
FELIA: My favorite series of all time is hands down The Legend of Zelda. Every time I’ve picked up a game in this series I’ve always felt like my life has been enriched by the experience of playing it in some way. There’s just something about the magic in those games that make you feel like a real-life hero and teaches you valuable lessons along the way. I actually even have a pair of Triforce earrings that I always wear if I feel like I need a little extra courage to tackle a particularly difficult day.
What’s one of your favorite Nintendo memories?
DANNY: One of my favorite Nintendo memories has to be going to the original Nintendo World Championships when they held the qualifier in the Meadowlands in New Jersey! I was sadly deemed too young to compete at the time but I remember costumed Mario characters walking around and arcade cabinets with the latest Nintendo games to play! We still have the original ticket stubs and promotional booklets my parents had gotten from when we went!
I’ll also add in another quick memory…at the Super Mario Run launch event in NYC, they had a Q&A with Shigeru Miyamoto. Someone had asked him what character he wishes would have more success and he answered with Fox McCloud. I immediately went “woo!” and pumped my fist in the air (involuntary reaction to hearing Miyamoto mention anything Starfox) and he looked at me in the audience, smiled, pumped his fist in the air back at me! From the outside that might seem like a small moment but, to me, that moment was huge!
FELIA: I don’t think I could compete with having a special moment with Mr. Miyamoto himself like Danny but a very special moment for me growing up was when my family won a SNES system that came along with Super Mario All Stars. We had entered a contest where we had to mail several boxes of Colgate toothpaste in order to get a chance at winning a SNES. I remember we sent it multiple entries, one for each person in our household, but I didn’t imagine that we would actually win. It was such an unbelievably happy day when our prize arrived. At the time I didn’t even know Super Mario All Stars excited to it was like winning the lottery twice, at least the little gamer kid version anyway.
What’s a Nintendo game that you haven’t played or haven’t completed that others will judge you for?
DANNY: This is a tough one! I try to play as many games as I possibly can these days but I can say when I first met Felia I never played Chrono Trigger, Earthbound and Super Mario RPG (I know!) for the SNES! We ended up downloading them on the Wii and played (and finished) the three games together!
FELIA: Well this one is tricky but I definitely know I’d get the hard stare of disbelief for never having played most of the NES library! I never had the system growing up so I jumped right to the SNES games and beyond. In my adult life I did go back and play a couple of the popular NES games through the virtual console and the new NES classic but even those I’ve mostly never completed… *Gasp*
What kind of Nintendo Content do you create?
THE NPC: We create positive, family-friendly Nintendo videos from the perspective of a married gaming couple on our channel! We are Nintendo Brand Ambassadors that play games together in onesies showcasing the latest to hit the Nintendo Switch, we unbox Nintendo toys and collector’s editions of games and we also do creative episodes like commercial parodies and stop-motion animation!
What advice would you give someone wanting to start creating their own Nintendo content?
THE NPC: For advice, we would tell anyone who wants to start a Nintendo YouTube channel to just get out there and do it. Don’t worry about if you don’t have the best equipment or set-up, you can always get those things and advance the quality of your channel as time goes on and you (and your channel) grow.
We would also say to find what makes you different and go for it. For us, we didn’t see a huge representation of gaming couples online so we wanted to make our channel completely focused on a married Nintendo gaming couple. Since then, a lot of people who know of our show have then begun incorporating their significant others into their channel as well! So with that, we’d say being a couple’s show has had a positive effect on the Nintendo community!
Where can we find you and your content?
THE NPC: You can check out our Nintendo videos on YouTube: YouTube.com/c/TheNintendoPowerCouple
We also love engaging everyone on social media so you can chat with us on Twitter (@NTDOPowerCouple), Instagram (instagram.com/thenintendopowercouple/) and Facebook (Facebook.com/TheNintendoPowerCouple).
We are also working on getting live-streaming up and running on Twitch (twitch.tv/thenintendopowercouple) so we can then start playing multiplayer games live with the Nintendo community!
Do you have a piece of content that you’ve created that’s your favorite?Â
DANNY: There were a lot of fun videos we created that it’s hard to pin it down to just one…but if I had to choose, I would say it was when we surprised the kids in upstate New York at Bill Vacca’s Nintendo Club!
Bill had commented on one of our videos how we were the inspiration for him to start a Nintendo Club with his students and, once we got to talking, we realized he was only about two hours away!
So we arranged to come up and surprise the kids in his club for the afternoon; we brought toys and Nintendo goodies and ended up racing everyone! They drew pictures for us and bought us the Alm and Celica amiibo two-pack since it reminded them of us (two of our most cherished amiibo in our collection).
It was one of our favorite things we did on the channel and, from that event, an incredible friendship with Bill and his wife Sarah bloomed!
Here is the link to our video:Â
FELIA: Danny totally stole my answer on that one!
I would also say we’re very proud of the creativity we incorporate in our show. We work really hard on creating content that unique and entertaining so our parody and stop-motion animated episodes also hold a dear place in our hearts. Those episodes usually entail a much larger workload but they are totally worth it when we see people commenting to us on Youtube when they enjoyed it.
One of my personal favorites was the stop-motion animation we did right around the launch of Mario Odyssey. It was a funny little piece that gave a special nod to the newest addition to the Mario universe, his trusty partner in heroism, Cappy.
Here is a link to the video:
