Blog: Working through the hassle of the Nintendo "METROID" namedrop

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Working through the hassle of the Nintendo "METROID" namedrop

May 10, 2023 at 10 P.M. Eastern Time

Intrigue, thy name is Nintendo. Ah, yes. Nintendo: The name you expect. In fact, the name moms and dads looked almost exclusively for in the 1980s. To almost monopolistic ends.

So when I noticed my name fit into the password request screen in Metroid (1986) for the Nintendo Entertainment System, and the password actually logged on to a working session of the game, it became a bit more important to start cross-checking media to see if there were any other oddities in other software that I own from that company. The internet has been good about overcoming the limitations of the Nintendo hardware and just focusing on raw information, which isn't my purpose since I'm a hardware determiner and collector.

A friend of mine is the owner of a PlayChoice-10 arcade machine, which has a novel e-reader for game manual information integrated into a separate display or session of the computer. The limited e-reader worked whether or not you put coins into the arcade machine's coin slots. I have an owner's manual for his arcade cabinet that he was kind enough to give to me.

These screengrabs were changed from the virtual machine's default 'Dual Under-Over' monitor setup, so the main game play is not shown here. This is important for reasons we'll talk about. I'll update this article later with more information, but suffice it to say my Nintendo cross-checking has now encompassed half-a-dozen computer game platforms, hundreds of software titles, and gigabytes of external publicly-available multimedia.

Why am I utilizable as a password in their software? There are no explanations yet other than I may have been noteworthy as a struggling student from a family that lost a parent in 1984. I visited the Nintendo Company's neighborhood in 2007 as an excuse to take a ride on the Japan Rail Shinkansen train. Try not to worry. This specific game (hiding wartime grudges in versatile text) seems to be as old as my grade school social studies textbooks.

In the context of everything else that has transpired around me in recent years, possibly by way of others who knew of the Metroid (read: Metro I.D., or mass transit) password in the 1980s and beyond, it is relevant that the corporation must be accountable in compensation for victims of name piracy. I have not used this password incident to try and be hired by the company in question.

To make my claim clearly understandable: It is my understanding that my given name is coded as a password into a 1986 Japanese video game that refers to the term "Metro I.D.". The D.C. Metro is a nearby mass transit system that our local bus system links its CharmCard fare card to; it is the technology provider for the Maryland system. I did not know of this Metroid password's existence at the time of the State of Maryland causing me to relinquish my family vehicle and housing arrangements. I was then forced to depend on the State's increasingly antagonistic mass-transit system from 2017 to present-day 2023. The buses have been affixed with video camera technology, said to be for safety reasons, and the Maryland MTA, to this day, is stalling on legal and logistics grounds while claiming that proprietary multimedia software prevents them from sending me an important video of the bus staff abusing me during Coronavirus travel restrictions. (Winslow versus Fermaint). Additionally, the Metroid software with my name as the password starts the player on top of a large letter 'H', which may hint at the hospital and homelessness problems that are now resolving in my favor. Do not allow the Governor to force you to work for free. There is increasing support for my case among elected representatives following the voters' discontinuation of Larry Hogan's governorship, and the continuing support of the United States federal government as well as several key local representatives, and my friends and family must be noted in what appears to be a double-present threat from the programming industry; in hardware and in software, in state and in local vicinity, and in volunteer efforts versus financed necessities, that is seemingly meant to place me at a stable or unstable intersection of most of my professional career's demonstratable abilities.

I could claim ownership of Metroid (1986) and its source code given the lack of response to my questions dispatched via Nintendo's preferred expressed route of internet social media. This should trouble you as an intellectual property rights holder, as it also troubles me, which is why the system is allowing that company to wedge me against you in this fashion. I am, however, still waiting for a response from Nintendo of America, as maybe you should be. Maybe your name was also led into a problem when you were a novice computer user. (Note that there are no valid contracts that I have signed with Nintendo or its subsidiaries, and I do have full legal rights, including those afforded by my American citizenship.)

If you want to keep accurate an accurate score, this overall problem started in 1999 when the DVD CCA decrypter lawsuit hit many people days after I purchased a Sony VAIO laptop with Microsoft Windows co-installed. The problem then got backdated to start somewhere between 1999 and 1986 or earlier. This is why I'm not going to let Apple win either. You deserve more honesty from the template of the 'game company', and I'm not going to let games break me out of information systems on that side of the network until someone other than me is held accountable for the real-life concerns that have come upon me from something that may have been intended as either a friendly or foul gesture from an artist looking for a place to post their software.