When I was growing up my cousin would sometimes come to visit us. He was the nephew of my mother, and was from Korea. He was some kind of successful businessman of some kind but I never had any idea of what he did. All I knew is he had plenty of money though I don't know if we'd call him rich. My Mom absolutely doted on him, and I learned later that he had defended her from bullies when they were both very young.

The last time I saw my cousin was about a year before my Dad passed away. He was traveling and happened to be nearby, so he stopped to visit my Dad in the hospital during his first round of radiation treatments. We had not seen him in almost twenty years since we left California. He gave us great gifts to help us through the rough times, as he always did when we saw him. But I guess part of us knew he was saying goodbye.

I always associated my cousin with great gifts. I first recall meeting him in the very early 90s, when he was doing some business in Silicon Valley. I was around 4 or 5 years old and he gifted me with a Nintendo Entertainment System. It was the coolest thing I could have ever received at the time.

I started with Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt, which were combined into a single cartridge. I will never forget my initial wonder and amazement at what was on the screen. I had played a couple games on my Dad's computer, but this was something else entirely. Music and sound effects and a scrolling screen (A big deal when it was new). It was a big deal.

The first time I played I discovered the warp zone in the second level, beginning a habit of looking for shortcuts and cheats for every game ever since. To this day I have only played the second and third worlds of SMB a handful of times. I also have not completed the game except by exploiting warp zones clear to the end.

I someday intend to play through the whole thing level by level. I had a girlfriend a few years ago who had managed to get through the entire game as a child on the Gameboy Color version, whose screen is one quarter the size of the NES version. She could still do it, too, managing to clear the entire game in a Covid Lockdown afternoon, blocked only by that one jump in World 8. You know the one. It's extremely difficult even with a full screen.

Every few days my Mom and Dad would take me down to the videostore a few blocks away to rent a new game. Tetris was all the rage at the time, and my Dad and brother got a kick out of it but it was not for me. I like characters and scenes and abstract games rarely get my attention.

Still, my Dad got me Klax, and I still enjoy that game much more than I ever liked Tetris. Maybe it's the fairly interesting backgrounds or the movement of the tiles. The music also slaps. Personally I feel the mechanics of the game are more interesting than Tetris' and the variable of color has become a lot more intuitive than shape to me.

One day when I was 6, my Dad comes home and drops off a couple games he got from a video store that was closing. He knew I loved GI Joe and one of the games was a GI Joe game, specifically the second NES game GI Joe: The Atlantis Factor.

It starts with this simple but effective intro and then dares you to save the world. The music pulls you into the action and it really does feel like you're on a daring mission. These days I get a little hung up on the fact that you play as the general going into the field with a rifle and his fists, and are getting mission control from the special forces veteran who was in Vietnam. Though you also get to find and recruit many of the popular characters, like Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow. I'm a little disappointed now that there are no female characters in the game, not even the Baroness. Missed opportunities all around.

Still the game is an excellent one, and I learned it thoroughly. It was the first game I ever finished with no assistance, though it took a couple years. Finishing it was one of the great achievements of my childhood, and to this day I play through it fairly often like visiting an old friend.

So of course everyone has played a Legend of Zelda game. It's almost as ubiquitous as the Mario series. When I was around 5 or 6 I was at the toy store perusing their selection of games and my attention was held by a shiny golden cartridge. As I held it in my hand looking at it, I was informed by a random lady that the game was very very hard. I became discouraged and so I put it back.

A few years later when I was around 8 or 9, I was at the fleamarket. My Mom and Dad taught me how to haggle, so I decided to go and put it to the test out in the field. I remember saving so much money that day simply by asking people if I could buy things for a dollar or two cheaper. I felt so very awful about it that I never did it again, but I did acquire the Legend of Zelda that day.

And let me tell you: that lady was not fucking around. It was a very difficult game, and it does not tell you where you need to go. Not for the feint of heart. I spent hours wandering around getting manhandled by monsters and hearing that damnable death tune again and again. I have no idea how I eventually did get as far as I did. I might have had a Nintendo Power issue or maybe my Dad printed off a walkthrough. I remember getting fairly far, maybe as far as getting the Master Sword. I mostly remember frustration. I definitely did not finish.

During the Covid-19 Lockdowns, I took my emulation laptop into work a lot. There was barely any work to be done at the time while I was alone in a locked server room in a nearly empty building, and so I played through the Legend of Zelda. It was about as frustrating as I remembered it, and it took about a week to eventually get through. But I finally did get through it. Only took close to 30 years.

My hardcore Nintendo craze would not last too long due to me getting a Sega Genesis on my 7th birthday, which affected me more deeply than any other videogame phenomenon. But that's a tale for another day.

The NES was something that symbolizes childhood to me. Long warm afternoons ostensibly having fun while suffering through some of the most frustrating digital slogs imaginable. It was the source of most of my distraction in school and I sometimes wondered if my parents had disdain for it. If they did they still kept getting me games. Maybe my memories of shame are exaggerated. Still, the are precious memories to me, shame and all.