In December 2004, my boyfriend came to the door of my apartment with a carrying box. “I brought you present!” He said, clearly excited. “Open it!”

‘In season, I thought, wrapping it up. I turned the box. “A … Nintendo … DS? Is this, … kind of a game boy?”

When I fought my way through layers of cardboard and plastic to open my new toy, he pulled the matching unit out of his messenger bag, opened it and began to explain. I never had a portable console – I would rarely I also owned a regular console, I was a lifelong PC gamer and when I enthusiastically tried to grow this gift, I had no shame in realizing why it was given to me on earth.

He could say I wasn’t completely on board. “Trust me,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then Great For the train. “I lived in Boston, he lived in Manhattan; we spent a lot of time on trains.” You will like it. “

I hate to give him the right to brag, but: he was right. Nintendo DS My relationship with him has separated my relationship with him for more than a dozen years, and I am saddened by the grief of his passing.

This week, as we now know, marks The end of an era: After 16 years and nearly a dozen total models, the Nintendo DS family of handheld gaming systems is no more. Nintendo has sold well over 200 million cumulative units of dual-screen devices over the years, but times have changed.

Nintendo DS more boring than fun. I was not the only one to welcome the no. The DS was a weird little device when it started, occupied a special place I didn’t know yet I wanted to fill it.

Video games were not a new idea in 2004. D.S. In many ways Nintendo’s incredibly popular game was the next iteration of the handheld console on the Boy Line, first launched in 1989. D.S. But was not the first. Fold: The last major product in the Game Boy Line, 2003’s Game Boy Advance SP, featured a rechargeable internal battery battery and flipped easily into a chisel, convenient to leave behind in your pocket or purse at any time.

DS, however, was optimized for the beginning of the 21st century. The world of multiplayer games is yet to come, with Wi-Fi support from the start. And there was a “dual” in the “dual screen” Actual selling point. In 2004, the idea of ​​an in-pocket, affordable touch-screen device working in your pocket was a brand new concept – the early DS. Games, alas, are mostly used for sports, if they don’t use it.

I didn’t use my launch model, “Crack“DS before all this. I was wrapping up my last semester of grade school, and I was so close to campus that walking at least half the time was honestly faster than waiting for T. I still picked up frequent books, from Boston to New. Long bus or train rides to York – especially since, again, many of them had school readings. Super Mario 64In the first game, I had – I got motion sickness while transporting the ride.

Months passed. I completed my degree and left Boston, moving with my boyfriend to the Brown Stone basement in Brooklyn. I needed to make a little quick cash while hunting for a full-time job. So when I saw myself walking through the gamestop with a “want help” sign in the window a few weeks after I landed in the Big Apple Moment, I went inside.