Story time.
Growing up, I lived about 3.5 - 4 hours away from my grandma on my mom's side. My dad's parents died before I was born. My mom's dad also died before I was born I think, and my grandma remarried. Her husband was my grandpa growing up, but I'm just giving the backstory. He died several years ago.
So, as a child, I remember visiting my grandma once or twice a year, and always looking forward to playing Nintendo. Yes, my grandma played the NES, and she shredded some Mario. She introduced me to video gaming and I played with her before we ever had a system at home. I remember sitting on her couch and literally jerking up the controller to try to get Mario to jump. I eventually got my thumb dexterity.
Eventually I got my own NES, but I liked watching my grandma play. After a while, I got an SNES and started owning that, but my grandma stuck with the NES. Sometime later, we both got N64's. She taught me how to get 120 stars on Mario 64, and I still loved just watching her. She stopped playing the NES, but kept it around. I also got rid of my NES and SNES because they just didn't compare to the N64.
A large portion of my childhood and memories I have with childhood friends revolve around the N64. Mario Kart, Duke Nukem, Goldeneye, Super Smash Brother, and a few others really occupied our time. My grandma, however, only added Yoshi's Story to her collection.
I loved watching her play Yosho's Story. There was something about her and her command of the games. They were just adventure games, but we had a lot of fun with them. Up until the later years, she knew that I would jump out of the car after a 4-hour car ride, run up to the door where she was waiting with the best smile ever, and I would look up at her and say, "Wanna play Nintendo?"
I grew up and went through the stages. Playstation, PS2, Wii, Xbox 360, but I kept my N64. My grandma's interest lessened as her health did, but she lived a good life. The last few years were a little harder.
She passed away a couple years ago shortly after Thanksgiving. I'm so glad she got to meet my son before she passed. While in the hospital, she said something to my mom that I will always remember, but that's another topic for another day. After she passed and we had our time to grieve and celebrate her life, we had to go through her house and figure out what to do with everything.
I went to the back room where we always played Nintendo, and where they had always been, I saw her NES and her N64, with Yoshi's Story in the system. These items, over all others, had the most sentimental value to me and I brought them back with me.
After doing the magic rituals that everyone remembers, I managed to get the NES to fire up and play a bit of Mario! It just made it that much better, but I would have been okay if it didn't work. So now I have an NES again, and now I have two N64's, with two Mario 64 games.
I'm not quite as attached to my other systems and games, but I'm not sure if I'll ever get rid of at least that NES. If not for simply the classic preservation of technology from a different day, I still see so many vivid memories from my childhood, and really the majority of my early bonds with my grandma, when I look at that box.
It's funny how we can attach memories to objects.
