The joys — and lows — of playing Super Nintendo games

November 21, 2021


Recently, I’ve started re-playing my old Super Nintendo games. I was never a big-time gamer, topping out at about 15 games in my SNES collection, and when I was a teenager I wasn’t interested in classic adventure games like Chrono Trigger or The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Rather, I focused on sports games like Madden 94, Super Tennis, NCAA Basketball, Super Bases Loaded, Super Goal!, and NHL Stanley Cup.

Firing up the cartridges today, I was pleased to find that Super Mario World, Yoshi’s Island, and Mario Kart still hold up as perfect games, but my sports titles, ones I played for hours on end in the 1990s, are mostly unplayable today.

READ MORE >>

The Pachyderm

November 14, 2021


This is a short story I wrote a few years ago and have revised slightly for publication here. If you're reading this by email, know that it runs long and will probably get clipped by your mail client, so you can just click the title link right above here to read the whole thing.

🐘

Jaden Driscoll was already awake, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember his father’s face, as the early morning rain pattered against his bedroom window. Black hair, gently sloping jaw, sunken eyes, a small burn scar near the left ear, a mole on the right cheek near the nose.

He thought of every detail as he remembered his father, Mark, twenty years ago throwing a football across their street, ten years ago handing him a Miller Lite in the back yard, and three weeks ago confiding which nurses he was flirting with.

Jaden couldn’t tell if the women had found his father’s come-ons playful or tiresome, but he suspected the latter. Now, he worried he was already forgetting the way his father pursed his lips when mulling something. Worse, he worried he’d already forgotten important details. Had his father crossed his arms or put his hands on his hips when he was disappointed? How much of the Texas accent from his youth had he actually retained?

READ MORE >>