When I was in second grade, a new family moved in across the street with a boy my age. We were fast friends, best friends even, and did almost everything together. My parents were a bit ambivalent, but I didn't understand why. It's true that the dad did drink at neighborhood social events, but he was never *drunk*. The dad was a lawyer, and they always seemed to have just a little bit more than we did in this idyllic all-white, very middle-middle class neighborhood.

Gaming was a huge component of our friendship, and he always seemed to have the latest. He had a power-pad and I did not. He had Nintendo Power and I did not. And as the rich always get richer, he got the free Dragon Warrior promo giveaway from Nintendo Power and I did not. But we spent many late nights hunting metal slimes together, and this bond continued as we graduated to the 16-bit generation.

Within a few years, it became an open secret that his dad was sometimes there, sometimes not. At first, this was attributed to business travel and the rigors of the law. Then, there was talk of a "separation." Eventually, rumors of a "drinking problem." All concepts foreign to me and the sheltered family life my parents had created.

In junior high, we slowly grew apart. He fell in with a rougher crowd. Latchkey kids. Kids who already had access to alcohol and occasionally even drank it. Even low murmurs of actual drug use. Eventually our circles no longer intersected and we were barely speaking at all. Halfway through high school, he moved away and that was the last I saw or heard from him.

When I was applying to law school, I became a bit curious about the dad. What kind of law was he practicing? What had been his career trajectory? So I looked him up and eventually found him: a disbarred paralegal at an insurance defense firm in a small town in Wyoming. The disciplinary records revealed a sordid tale...the man was never able to get a handle on his drinking.

Now for the belated punchline: when we "graduated" to the 16-bit generation, I got a Super Nintendo. My friend got a Genesis.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5662801&forum_id=2:#48546969)

There are many such cases btw. I had a couple of friends of my own iirc. We started with the NES. It was the great equalizer. Duck Hunt in one house, Tecmo Bowl in another. Late nights trading turns, the room lit blue by the glow of the CRT. It didn’t matter whose console it was. We were kids. But the '90s came, and something shifted. The world got sharper, colder. The end of history was upon us. We didn’t see it for what it was, not then. But the forces were moving. Families were shifting, falling apart. And the consoles—they followed suit.

One friend had money. His family never talked about it, but it was in the way they moved. The new furniture, the vacation pictures. He got a 3DO when no one else even knew what it was. The price didn’t matter. He had Gex and some racing game with too much smoke. He’d shrug when he played, like it was all beneath him. The other friend had less. His parents were splitting up, though no one said it out loud. He got a Genesis late, second-hand. He loved it like it mattered. Streets of Rage, Sonic 2. And then one Christmas, the 32x appeared. His dad had given it to him. His dad was gone by spring.

We still played together, but it wasn’t the same. The 3DO friend started pulling away, spending more time with kids who had swimming pools and bikes that cost more than cars. The Genesis friend got quieter, angrier. He spent hours alone with Knuckles’ Chaotix, pretending it was a good game.

By high school, it was over. The 3DO friend went to private school. The Genesis friend moved across town to a smaller house with bad plumbing and peeling paint.

We never said goodbye. Boys don’t. The NES days were gone, buried under time and the weight of what came after.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5662801&forum_id=2:#48547019)

then one year his dad got him a Gaming PC and it was over for the mom

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5662801&forum_id=2:#48547159)