007-373-5963.

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, start.

Start, up, down, left, right, a, b, start.

If you were able to identify any of the following codes above, you probably grew up in my generation and were a serious Nintendo player.

The first code will take you straight to the title fight with Mike Tyson in the classic Mike Tyson’s PunchOut!! The second will give you 30 lives in the epic run-and-gun battle game Contra. And the third will restore your life to full in the awesome arcade classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. All for original Nintendo, release dates 1987, 1988 and 1989, respectively.

Wow. That’s when most students in Cornell Class of 2009-2011 were born.

I feel old.

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Today, most video games played by college-aged students are pretty complicated compared to the original Nintendo. PlayStation systems have at least 12 buttons, trying to figure out how to correctly hold an Xbox controller is as complicated as performing a Caesarean section and regular success when playing Nintendo’s new Wii largely depends on the accuracy and vigor of one’s arm flailing.

I prefer two buttons.

So when I read on a Cornell list-serve that a recent grad was selling her brother’s old Nintendo with two controllers and Nintendo zapper for $30, I caved. She also threw in a free game, Bad Dudes, where you pick one of two bad dudes with the objective of fighting ninjas to rescue the kidnapped president. Two buttons: jump and punch. That’s all it takes to save the president and kick ninja butt.

Or was it? After getting my butt (and thumbs) owned by ninjas that were no more than a long string of 0s and 1s, I had to buy more games. The Mario Brothers series. Tecmo Bowl. Mike Tyson’s PunchOut!! And others, via eBay of course.

So here I am. Less than two years away from earning a Ph.D. by day, lost in sweet 8-bit nostalgias by night. Playing Nintendo brings everything back: the simple pre-adolescent life filled with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, recess, Lucky Charms and sleepovers.

I’m sure I could be doing a lot of other things in my spare time to further enhance my training at Cornell. Like reading scientific papers or doing extra experiments. No! Not when the princess needs to be saved and I still haven’t beaten the Giants. Why study about the maternal effects of docosahaexanoic acid status when broods of aliens need to be taken out with a rapid-fire rifle?

Despite what it might sound like, I am really not an addict sitting in front of a flashing screen for hours a day (especially if you are on my thesis committee). I have simply found a convenient escape away from covalent adduct chemical ionization mass spectroscopy. Believe me, most grad students choose more destructive ways to unwind.

What Nintendo so perfectly achieves for an overly worked student like me is that it engages the opposite side of my brain, the side that has been dormant long enough for me to manage getting through undergrad and into Cornell. Or was that my minority status?

Either way, I doubt that with Nintendo back in my life, that old, newly aroused pre-adolescent part of my mind will beat my intellectual neurons into submission. In fact just today I was reading an article in a scientific journal that described fish oil supplement’s effect on enhanced motosensor reflexes.

Hmmm… maybe that can help me finally beat Mike Tyson.

Behzad Varamini is a graduate student in Nutritional Sciences. He can be contacted at bvaramini@cornellsun.com. Gain Through Loss appears alternate Tuesdays this semester.