In winnowing down some of my boxes marked "memorabilia," I discovered these instructions I'd written to myself for l33t l00t in a classic Nintendo game. Can you guess which one?

Of course: Kid Icarus. It was my favorite game as a kid, and that's solely because of the music, which I thought was incredible. I think it may have just covered a wider scale than most Nintendo music. I would have been in about sixth or seventh grade when I wrote this down.

IIRC, the advice is aimed at successfully playing a sort of Russian Roulette in which you guessed which of the items on the shelf was loot and which marked your doom. Choosing in the right order was key. If you chose right, the instructions appear to note you'd get high purchasing power with a "credit card." If you chose wrong, the Grim Reaper would chase you out of the room (if he didn't actually kill you).

This would have been one of the few times I sought or wrote down advice about games. I wasn't that into them. Sylvie probably had more examples of written instructions than I do. But this game was pleasantly challenging, not impossible like Mega Man or a pleasant walk in the park like Mario. I would have gotten these instructions from Javier Mora, the class video games expert. I think he subscribed to Nintendo Power, not sure.

This is interesting to me in that my masters' project is ostensibly about kids' literacy practices surrounding games, and this is a rare instance of my own. Note grease stains (probably wrote this down at lunch) and terrible, terrible D'Nealian handwriting intended to prepare me to write in cursive (who needs it? I type everything!).