The games weren’t bringing me joy; they were just ghosts trapped inside jewel cases. The collection was a weight I was dragging from house to house, and opening a bin only to find boxed NES games always felt like metal poured into my gut. These games made me picture a young woman wanting to hug me when I was hurting, then deciding not to. The games were bottles of expensive, and then cheap, scotch in the garbage, double-bagged so the neighbors wouldn’t see how bad it was getting.