My parents did eventually buy one, just not for me. No, of course not. One day they asked me "Hey, where would be the best place to buy a Super Nintendo?" It's the kind of cryptic question parents ask when they're fucking with your head, trying to pull something over on you. I imagined a vast conspiracy that included all my relatives secretly exchanging funds, piecing together snippets of conversation to determine which games I would want (Final Fantasy II and Street Fighter II).

It turned out I had vastly overestimated my parents. There were shadowy back door meetings going on, they just didn't have anything to do with me. They were buying a Super Nintendo for my grandparents.

I'll just let that sink in for a moment. Grandparents.

They bought them three games: Wheel of Fortune, PGA Pro Tour, and Bubsy in Claw Encounters of the Furred Kind. Needless to say I became an outright master of all three games. My grandfather still calls me Double Eagle to this day, veiled threats about breaking my thumbs if I try to beat him at that game again starting most of our conversations.

When my grandmother passed away my grandfather decided to move out of their home (across the street into the arms of another woman whom we all adored) and my family descended upon their untouched possessions with zeal. We picked through boxes of memories, plates we cleaned after Thanksgiving, scratchy blankets we suffered under during long television-less nights.

There was only one thing I wanted: that Super Nintendo. I eventually found it, buried behind a DVD player we had all recently purchased them, coated in dust and with PGA Pro Tour still firmly lodged inside of it. For some people, catharsis comes during the funeral, or over a shared drink with family much later. For me it came sitting cross-legged on my grandparents shag carpet, knocking out one more double eagle on that par 5 course nobody thought I could beat.