Sega Forever
I wasn’t always a Nintendo kid. Early on I was all in on Sega—Sonic, Alex Kidd, Ecco, that whole weird corner of gaming that didn’t become the default way everyone played. Saying you preferred Sega feels like admitting you picked worse, except I didn’t feel like it was worse. It was just different. It was mine.
The Game Gear was objectively a disaster. The screen went dim if you looked at it sideways, batteries evaporated, the thing got hot enough you couldn’t hold it. Even as a kid you knew it was broken. The Game Boy was doing it right—indestructible, boring, practical. The Game Gear was what you wanted if being into things that didn’t make sense was your whole aesthetic.
Never owning one probably sealed it. There’s something about not getting what you wanted as a kid that crystallizes it into permanent preference. I don’t know if I loved Sega or loved the story I told myself about loving Sega, but thirty years later the difference doesn’t matter. It’s the same feeling either way.
Picking the console that lost becomes part of your identity in some dumb way. You’re the person who went sideways. You had taste that didn’t match the market. Most of the time that’s just dressing up a bad bet as principle, but I couldn’t help thinking about it that way. Still can’t. Sega forever, whatever that means.