The Nintendo 64 changed my life on September 29, 1996. I know the exact date because I’d circled it on my calendar in red marker three months earlier, counting down the days like a prisoner marking time on a cell wall. I was eighteen, working part-time at a local grocery store, saving every paycheck for the console’s launch. The original release date was supposed to be September 30, but my local Electronics Boutique (remember those?)…
It started with a whisper. Scott Thompkins, a quiet kid who sat two rows ahead of me in Ms. Harrington’s…
The first time I fired the NES Zapper at our wood-paneled Zenith television, I was convinced I was witnessing actual…
I was thirteen when I first stepped into the rain-soaked opening of A Link to the Past, huddled in the…
How Mario Kart 64 Became the Ultimate Party Game The smell of microwave popcorn and Mountain Dew. The glow of…
The Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES, took the video game console further and higher. It has left a lasting imprint…
The first time I saw Star Fox in action was at a Toys “R” Us demo kiosk in early 1993.…
It was the summer of 1995, and I was working at Electronics Boutique in the Woodland Mall—one of those summer…
November 1994. Clinton was president, Ace of Base was somehow on every radio station, and I was a gangly sixteen-year-old…
Christmas morning, 1985. My dad had worked his usual night shift as a security guard at the mall, but instead…
