>>14294364>moviebobMario and I were “born” the same year, 1981 (I’m about 5 ½ months older,) and as such I don’t really remember a world without him.
But the climactic reveal of SMB3 is burned – no, seared – into my memory the way JFK’s assassination was for my parents’ generation… or the way 9/11 would be for mine a scant 12 years from then…
In my memories, the Great Console Wars dragged on like my own private Vietnam, and it didn’t help that I was still constantly in trouble at school and in and out of therapy at the time for anger, attention and authority issues.
For me, this was it. How much sense did it make to be trying to work out the bigger relationships between the characters and the broader scope of their world? […] Why should I put so much of myself into this… when Mario’s masters couldn’t even keep his origins straight?
GBA (and soon enough a DS) was my constant companion, particularly useful for passing time sitting in the car after work, waiting for the rest of the house to go to sleep before heading home. …I promise that last part isn’t actually as sad as it sounds.
I am the man I am for many reasons: because of my parents, my grandparents, my friends and family. But also because of Mario, whose adventures filled my lonelier hours, fueled my dreams, gave me a not-inconsequential sense of stability…
I woke up to a phone message from my mother informing me that [my grandmother] appeared to be in a “fading” state, and that people were advised to stop by and say… well, you get the idea. […] I needed to get outside “the grid” of my familiar areas, and I needed to “happy up” (or at least clear my head) after that, and took the first course of action that entered my mind in that regard: My brother had raved recently about a retro-style video arcade…
