REMEMBERING NINTENDO

I remember when I was in middle school, Nintendo decided to do away with the dust covers for the SNES. The first game I realized this had happened to was Street Fighter II Turbo. Back in the 90s, when I went to pick up my copy at Toys R Us, the dust cover was missing. I thought maybe perhaps this was some packaging error. Lo and behold, every copy of Street Fighter II Turbo had a missing dust cover. The associate at the store opened up an older SNES Pac-Man game, to hand me (and another kid) dust covers.

I remember going home afterwards and writing to Nintendo about this eventual issue I had as a kid. To my surprise, I received a detailed letter from someone at Nintendo; explaining to me why they did away with it, and they included a generous amount of dust covers. I felt that Nintendo truly cared for a random kid. I eventually wrote them many more letters (one of them regarding the long awaited "Ultra 64"), and always got a detailed reply from them. They cared, and I cared. It was a nice relationship I thought.

Recently, in my adulthood, I wrote them a letter. It wasn't about any concern, or any issue. It was more of a "thank you" letter, for all the wonderful memories they've influenced in my childhood. I thought I needed to write a letter, versus an e-mail, because that's how I remember my experience. I wanted to relive that piece of my childhood. Unfortunately, the reply wasn't what I wished or hoped. It was a computer-generated print-out, with my name being spelled in the opening letter as "Dear Isaac E.," . The letter basically suggested that I write them an e-mail instead, as they are too busy to reply to personal letters.

I understand times have changed, and we no longer live in the limited internet relm; that everything is easily accessible to us via a smartphone, tablet, and/or a computer. My point is, I miss the times when people used to take time to write. I don't take it personal of course, but just today, I was reflecting on the quality games we had back then, compared to what we have nowadays. They might have been simpler, but they feel like a lot more love and passion were put to making them.