I’ve been a gamer for basically my entire life. My earliest memories involve sitting at the foot of my mom and dad’s bed, playing Mario. Gaming was encouraged - it encouraged hand-eye coordination and puzzle solving skills. Growing up, I lived in a Sega and Nintendo household. I can remember trading “clothes shopping cash” with my parents on Christmas Day for a Gamecube they dangled in front of me. A few years later, another trade would be made: “fashion funds” in exchange for my beloved pink DS Lite and a copy of the GOAT: Cooking Mama.

I also have fond memories of watching my dad play Eternal Champions on the Sega Genesis. I was devastated when I realized Sega was out of the console business. At the time, gaming was so fractured that the idea of Sonic being anywhere else was incomprehensible.

Even though I was an avid gamer, rushing home from school everyday to play whatever I had rented from Blockbuster and Hastings, the advent of 3D gaming managed to miss me. We didn't own a Sega Saturn or Playstation for reasons unknown to me, as my dad was frequently an early adopter of tech. I didn’t enter the strange, diverse, almost magical world of Playstation 2 until I met my boyfriend, now husband, in college. We were in a long distance relationship and he would bring his Playstation with him when he came to visit. When I fell in love with Persona 3 (fun fact: I now own five different versions of this game), he would make the great sacrifice of leaving his Playstation 2 behind with me, where it remained until it died (likely from overuse - sorry!). I was so enamored I immediately went out and bought a silver one as a replacement. What made the Playstation 2 so special to me, despite having no history with Sony as a console maker, was the length of the console’s lifespan and the wide variety of games in terms of genre and cost. One of my favorite date activities was to go digging for strange, weird and mostly cheap games (I regret not buying Rule of Rose when I saw it for 29.99 at Hastings). Now that GameStop is on life support, Hastings and Blockbuster are long gone and physical media is quickly becoming a relic from a bygone era, it feels as if one of my favorite activities is extinct. Ebay just isn’t the same as going into a store and smelling the smells, googling on the spot, touching the boxes, enduring the looks and questions, holding hands with my forever dude.

Sony recently announced that that come 2028, physical games would no longer be sold, instead choosing to go with the (highly wasteful and anti-archivist) digital-code-in-box available at retail. This makes me rethink my loyalty. I know, I know - pledging allegiance to any large corporation is foolish and will only end in tears, but I think about the hours of enjoyment - not just the actual gaming, but the many acts of love involved.

I know I’ll get used to it, eventually. I swore up and down that discs would never take the place of cartridges and cards and now I have several binders full of discs. I don’t think I’ll ever like it. Even though I guess it could make the hypothetical of what to save from my burning residence a lot easier. Since I mentioned it, the only thing I love as much as my clothes are my games. Guess which one I’d pick.