Rookie of the Year: Breaking Up With My Xbox

This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Weekly. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

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I just packed up my Xbox and Wii games, my Wiimotes, my nunchuks, my Xbox controllers, my controller charging station, even my Xbox and Wii consoles themselves, and I did something both wild and strange.

I gave them away.

I have a kid now and no more room or patience for things I don’t need. Frankly, I wasn’t even sure the Wii worked anymore; the Xbox has been dormant for months and, with a new console update out now, what’s the point anyway?

Have I given up gaming? If you read my column regularly, you know I pretty much exclusively play iOS games now. And I’m on board for when the Oculus is ready. So I’m not done entirely. But I have come to the end of an era – I am finished with the gaming consoles that inspired me to begin this column in the first place.

Out with the old.

As one final goodbye, however, I figured I’d pay tribute to the Wii and the Xbox with my three favorite memories of each.

The Wii

3. Beating my now ex-girlfriend’s brother – and everyone else – in Wii Sports tennis. I was smokin’ at that game.

2. Revisiting my youth through countless hours of playing old NES games, highlighted by finally beating the original Legend of Zelda and getting my ass kicked by the real, Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2.

1. Playing hours of Twilight Princess while my sister Becca watched and cheered me on. I wrote a column with her about how to get your significant other to watch you play videogames, but, really, she was – and still is – the only one who would ever do that for me.

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Matt Marrone is a senior MLB editor at ESPN.com. He has been Unwinnable’s reigning Rookie of the Year since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @thebigm.