It was Christmas 1985 and I unwrapped a Nintendo NES.

In 2023 I bought several anbernic devices as well as a trimui smart pro and gifted several to my friends for christmas. i am excited about the trimui brick and am currently enjoying my rg cube xx.

Well, the game memories I treasure the most are the hours spent with my father and my little brother playing and competing at on racing games on the new, second hand, commodore 64, 30 years ago, and then, a few tars later, playing Alex kidd on the Sega master system II with my younger brother (my father wasn’t really too fond of the “new” console)

I’ll never forget the winter of 1998. I was 25, married, and living what I thought was my best life—until the kissing disease came for me like a stealthy FOXHOUND operative. That’s right, Infectious Mononucleosis. Mono. One moment I was living large, scarfing down microwave burritos and watching reruns of Seinfeld, and the next, I was bedridden, sweating through my third T-shirt of the morning.

It all started when I woke up feeling like I’d gargled shards of glass. My throat was killing me, and my energy levels were on par with a sloth’s. My wife, Emily, looked over and said, “You look like a deflated balloon.” After a trip to the doctor and a blood test, the diagnosis was clear: mono. I didn’t even get it in a cool way—no wild college make-out parties for me. Just your run-of-the-mill virus.

Emily, bless her soul, took it all in stride. She rolled her eyes at my pathetic groaning but decided to make the best of the situation. That’s when she returned from a shopping trip and handed me two items that would define the next week of my life: a plush, navy blue bathrobe and a copy of Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation.

“You’re stuck in bed, Snake,” she said, grinning as she plopped the game into my hands. “Consider this your mission. Save the world. Or, you know, at least save yourself from whining for the next seven days.”

Now, I wasn’t much of a gamer, but I knew Metal Gear Solid was a big deal. All the guys at work wouldn’t shut up about it. “It’s like playing a movie, man,” my coworker Dave had said. “But with more sneaking and fewer Kevin Costner speeches.”

So there I was, draped in my new bathrobe—a garment so cozy it felt like a hug from a sentient cloud—with the PS1 controller in my hands and my destiny ahead of me. From the moment the opening credits rolled, I was hooked. The stealth! The intrigue! The graphics that, in 1998, felt like a revelation, though now they look like someone slapped pixelated LEGO bricks onto a screen.

But the real magic came from the voice acting. David Hayter as Solid Snake? Absolute perfection. I found myself muttering “Colonel, what’s the situation?” to Emily every time she walked into the room. She was less amused when I referred to her as “Otacon” after she brought me soup. “Stop calling me that,” she groaned.

Of course, I had some “cultural differences” with the game. The first time I tried sneaking through Shadow Moses, I was spotted immediately because I couldn’t figure out how to crouch. I sat there, yelling at the screen, “What kind of super-spy can’t kneel?!” Emily popped her head in and quipped, “Is that a part of the virus, or are you just bad at this?”

I made it through, though—mostly because I discovered the joys of hiding in cardboard boxes. I started to take the box strategy to heart. “Emily,” I said one afternoon, “if the pizza guy ever comes when I’m napping, I’ll just hide under this blanket like a box.” She rolled her eyes so hard I thought they’d get stuck.

By day three, I was deep into the story. Psycho Mantis blew my mind when he “read my mind” and commented on my save files from other games. “Emily!” I hollered. “This guy knows I played Crash Bandicoot! He’s a wizard!”

“I think it’s more of a gimmick,” she said dryly, sipping her coffee. “But sure, let’s call it wizardry.”

And let’s not forget the Kodak moments—both in-game and real life. The game was constantly telling me to “press the Action button” to climb ladders or hang from ledges. Meanwhile, Emily was pressing her own “Patience button,” keeping me hydrated and relatively sane. She even caught me trying to use my bathrobe belt as a makeshift bandana for my “Solid Snake cosplay.”

By the end of the week, I’d beaten the game and regained enough energy to shuffle around the house without looking like I was reenacting a scene from Night of the Living Dead. I was healthy, victorious, and—dare I say it—a new man. Mono had knocked me down, but Emily and Metal Gear Solid picked me up.

Now, whenever I hear the Metal Gear theme or see a cardboard box, I’m hit with a wave of nostalgia for that ridiculous, robe-clad week in 1998. And to this day, Emily insists she’s the real hero for not smothering me with a pillow during my Solid Snake impressions. I can’t argue with that.

I don’t really have a story to tell. I am just leaving a comment.