Christmas morning, 1985. I’m sitting cross-legged on our shag carpet, staring wide-eyed at this gray box connected to our family Zenith TV. Dad’s showing me how to blow into a cartridge “to make it work better” (complete myth, turns out, but we all believed it). Mom’s already worrying about my eyes sitting “too close to that thing.” And me? I’m watching a chunky Italian plumber stomp on mushroom creatures, completely unaware that this moment would…
“Are we there yet?” I must have asked that question two dozen times during our family’s epic road trip from…
I still have dreams about the sound. That chaotic symphony of electronic bleeps, bloops, explosions, and synthesized music all competing…
I wasn’t always a Sega kid. That’s a confession that might get my “hardcore gamer” card revoked, but it’s the…
The battle lines were drawn in my neighborhood sometime around autumn 1991. The day after my friend Chris got a…