YES! Yeee-eees! Yeees! Yes yes! ... YESS!

Mock me if you will, but I've spent every year since September of 1987 -- 14 years! -- attempting to solve Goonies 2 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. In fact, Christmas of that very year, when my parents asked me what games they should buy for me, I told them "None." That's right. None. I was determined to beat Goonies 2 before I would move on.

It was tough. All those Zelda games came out. Then the Super Nintendo. By then I had already rescued my third Goonie and found the diving suit, but I still had a long long way to go. Howabout those early nineties? Pretty painful to browse through the gaming stores back then, knowing that Goonies 2 was still unsolved. Oh, and the Nintendo 64? That Mario 64 game looked pretty hot. But I refused to touch it. Not until I conquered Goonies 2, and by that point I was systematically going from room to room in the adventure screens tapping on EVERY SINGLE WALL with a hammer.

At one point my NES broke. I had to buy a new one at a garage sale.

The Sega Saturn came and went, and the Sony PlayStation .... you know, I heard somewhere that the Sony PlayStation 2 just came out, which is probably pretty exciting. I might look into that. The fact is, it wasn't until this morning that I TRIUMPHANTLY reigned victorious over the Fratelli brothers and rescued the mermaid!

What now, you may ask? I don't know, I'm still flush from my triumph. I think I'll let it settle in, you know, just relax and take a break from gaming for a couple of days. Then I'm going to look into what all happened during my vigil -- I understand that there's an "Internet" now that has games you can play. After that? Yeah, I don't want to dive in too early... but ... Well, it's been haunting me for quite a few years. I think I'll move ahead and try to beat Ghosts and Goblins.