Lost & Never Found Again: My Gameboy Advance

Man, it really shows the passage of time when you look up a product’s release date and it just seems like yesterday when you got your hands on it. I got my Gameboy Advance in 2001 as part of a “group gift” with my sister; she got a pink one, I got one of the translucent purple models. With it, I had received Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, which at the time entertained me to no end; I mean, I got to play as Spider-Man—as a comics nerd, I was in nirvana.

So it was during one of many summer trips that I learned a rule I still keep to this day: don’t lend anything out that you’re not prepared to lose. My brother, who had started enjoying video games himself, had pulled the ol’ “Share with me” argument with my mom, which kept him quietly kick-flipping all the way home.

However, when we unpacked the van, the Gameboy was gone. Since then, every couple of months I would go into that van and tear it apart, looking for my lost friend. Eventually, I just gave up; I would have to resign myself to knowing that 2000 Dodge Caravans possessed a mystical black hole property, and that I would have to save up my money for a DS.

For the time I had it, though, it was amazing seeing the dusty SNES I had in my room smooshed down into a handheld frame. Seeing that visible progress served to get me interested in it as a whole. RIP, GBA; you will be remembered forever.
—Matt Demers