Topic: Nagano Winter Olympics 98

Hello DF Forum readers, gather round as I tell the unbelievable story of my experience of Nagano Winter Olympics 98

Sorry it's a long one

Now, let's start off by stating I actually cannot remember barely anything about this game, so why make this post you ask? Well you are about to find out, strap in.

The year is 1998, and I'm currently 7 years old. It's some school holiday and occasionally my cousins would come up and spend the holidays, now on this occasion they had bought a present which was odd because it wasn't a birthday and Xmas had just gone.

The present was of course,a mint copy Nagano Winter 98, Mint copies with the seal on was a rarity for me, as I would tend to buy cheaper second hand games, so I knew they had spend some money on it.

So here I am, with this copy of Nagano Winter Olympics 98 for the PlayStation I should add, and I rip off the plastic and stick it in. And all I can remember is being terrible at it. Refusing to read any of the rules to the sport didn't help but I found a bit of fun in the skiing one going round the flags and maybe the big jump one.

So anyway, it's a bit of dud and once my cousins leave, I no longer feel guilt tripped into playing it.

So on the shelf it goes, and I'm sort of worried if I sell it, my aunt is gonna come back next holiday and ask what I did with it. So I keep it. And it remains on my shelf for YEARS.

fast forward, like 12-13 years? I'm 19ish and I've moved out of my mum's place, and at the time I had a habit of moving from place to place (one house be cheaper, then the next would be nicer etc) and gradually my mum's taking things from my room and I'm selling or throwing away etc.

And I'm left with this cardboard crate, that would store vegetables in and it has all this stuff in, and Nagano Winter Olympics is there, so one day it's moving time And it's really just one box to many, so it's time for goodbye (local trade in has this for pennies) so sadly out comes the bin bag and into the wheely bin It goes.

I do final checks of the old flat and head to the new house, so I'm in my new house and I'm doing all the checks, where's the fuse box, Water Mains and I find the boiler, in a cupboard in the bathroom. Now underneath this boiler is a shelf and there's an old gym bag left there.

So I open the gym bag, and funny enough there's a old PS1 in there, so I'm thinking hey not bad find. And there's a stack of games.

Now I'm going 1 by one of these games, there's like 5. And you can tell what's going to happen. As slip one case away from another I'm hit with the sight of a ski jumper,

It's Nagano Winter Olympics 98.

I'm stunned,I'm fairly certain I dropped it from shock. I'm thinking what the hell are the chances. What the hell is going on, I've literally binned this 30 mins

So I keep it, again for another 2 years because I'm pretty sure I just left the bag in the boiler room and forgot about it.

Now there's more, couple years later, I'm packing my bags as I'm now 22ish and I'm setting off to live in Australia for 1 year. Now not much relevant to the story happens here but I do meet my now wife, a Japanese Girl called Lilly.

Now Australia's visa is coming to end and I'm deciding what to do next, so Lilly and I decide to go to Japan (where I can apply for another 1 year visa, thank you youth mobility scheme)

So now I'm in Japan and I'm working at a Capsule Hotel, in Okayama. And I'm job searching. And I find this Ad “Hotel staff wanted in Hakuba” and it's one of these live at staff accomodations kind of deal. So off I go.

Now for those who know where I'm heading too, now know what's in store for me, but I do not, partly because Lilly has arranged the travel, so I'm blissfully unaware.

I also passed a job interview over the phone, barely understanding anything and just saying “Hai” and “wakarimashta”

Honestly I just got away with it because they wanted Lilly and I'm happy changing the beds.

So I take a days travel and finally arrive in Hakuba, and I'm walking out the train station, and there's the olympics rings. And suddenly it dawns on me.

IM AT WINTER OLYMPICS 98, THE SKI JUMP WAS HOSTED IN HAKUBA, NAGANO.

I've accidentally moved to Nagano Winter Olympics 98

Now I'm like stood staring at this sign and Lilly's asking me if I remembered it or something.

“No, I just played the video game”

Nice story.

I usually give up on reading a story this long I randomly came across, but I actually played a lot of Nagano 98’ on my N64 when it came out. It was actually a pretty good time with friends.

That is a really cool story! 😄

Also didn’t expect to come across this game on here.
I bought this for N64 when it came out, because we loved playing these old winter games titles on amiga/c64/pc.
Just like you I hardly understood how to play these disciplines and we always ended up on the bottom places. It didn’t take top long to realize that I have just spent an awful lot of money on a bad game.
However, about a year later Ski jumping blew in Germany and we started to watch it regularly. This then resulted in popping the game back in and playing ski jumping on it. We then found out how ski jumping worked and then ended up playing it repeatedly. 😄