I didn't have Mountain King for my 2600 so I looked it up. What a neat glitch. Platformer glitches are fun, I really enjoyed breaking the early Sonic games for things like the Hyper Sonic glitch, or some of the map glitches.

I think this is one thing about Super Mario Bros. 3 that felt so magical to me. With the addition of the hidden whistles and intentional "glitches" like crouching for an extended time on a white platform, running behind map elements, etc. you felt like some kind of plane walker just bending time and space to your will. Fantastic implementation of a level skip mechanism for veteran players. It gave an already incredibly expansive game quite a lot of extra replay value, just like Minus World.

That is one of the saddest thing I've ever heard. Did your parents just not know it needed games, or was it a budget thing?

I was extremely poor growing up but I did get lucky and get a Gameboy Color for Christmas with a copy of Pokémon Gold at age 5, right before my guardians went insane and forbade any non-Christian media such as "Pocket Demons" or any fantasy content. That game expanded my mind so much, introduced me to a lot of things I'd never encountered before. It seemed so mysterious and huge, especially with the entire extra Kanto campaign. Still one of the greatest and most complete games ever made.