Game Boy Camera
Something mentioned in the fukubukuros of old was a habit of buying Super Famicom RPGs to see what the save files contained. What were they named? Where did they stop? This struct me as a delightful habit.
I had travelled to Kawagoe, in the first essay of this piece, and bought Dragon Quest I and II with the full intention of playing it on my Super Famicom. The next week I went to my in-laws and opened their closet to find my Super Famicom not there. We dug and still could not find it. My missing Super Famicom has consumed my thoughts for the last month. I have asked my few friends if I just forgot giving it to them.
At my inlaws I also picked up and held my wive’s brother’s childhood Super Famicom collection. Of which the only RPG was Estopolis 2, and well that’s a tale for next year. This was not however, my Super Famicom collection. Which remains missing to this day.
I was so consumed with My Super Famicom I travelled even farther than Kawagoe to Shakuji-Koen on the Seibu Ikebukuro line. This station would also have an arcade deprived of Astrocity cabs, which again is one more than any given station in Yokohama. But buried there was a closet of store called G-Fan.
If the store in Kawagoe is 9 out of 10 this was 10 out of 10. The closet was filled from floor to ceiling with games. I couldn’t believe how visually dense the store was. I tried to take it all in. Gunhed for PC Engine. Herzog Zwei for Megadrive. Multiple Twin Sticks for Sega Consoles. A full shelf of 3DO and PC Engine. PS2 and Super Famicom games scattered all over.
My brain couldn’t focus. I was thinking too much about My Super Famicom. I ended up walking out of there with a Super Famicom, a stack of games and my second junk copy of Dragon Quest VIII for PS2. I didn’t remember I had bought DQVIII in Kawagoe as well until I got home. That’s okay that is the best boxart there is.
At home I sorted my purchases and unwrapped the Super Famicom Fukubukuro I bought. This excited me greatly even knowing it wasn’t going to be rewarding. The front game was Yossy Island. The back game was Dragon Quest VI. I loaded up Dragon Quest VI. it starts with white text on a black screen informing us of the credits and that this is Dragon Quest VI as the music swells. It was captivating. There was no saves. I turned it off unwilling to not save my game, and denied someone else’s nostalgia.
I would proceed to play through someone’s Yossy Island save. I played straight through World 3. It was maybe the most fun I’ve ever had with Yoshi’s Island. If you want to know why I keep saying Yossy look at the Super Famicom boxart.
“Where is MY Super Famicom?”
It didn’t help me. This surrogate Super Famicom. it sits behind my head as I type this. Maybe the MiSTeR is all I need. It doesn’t have save states either, but I don’t have to worry about thirty year old hardware suddenly failing on me and losing my save. Each night I would play the Super Famicom would require putting it together and dissambling it before going to bed. My house as it is now, isn’t fit for a Super Famicom.
Lady Rude at least played the first world of Super Mario World on a dead battery. Replacing the batteries requires a soldering iron and the space and time that a Yokohama Family Apartment does not have.
Last night, I was still consumed by the question of the location of My Super Famicom. I began to relay this whole story to my friend, Dylan. I knew of their interest in Game Boy games, and opened my drawer to show if he was interested in Yugioh 2 for Game Boy Color (he was not.) We kept talking. I stopped mid-sentence. While I was in America I had grabbed my Game Boy Camera. I looked at the Game Boy Color in his hands, with it’s cracked screen. I hadn’t cracked it, I don’t think. But I had only played it very little.
I took the handheld from his hands. I loaded up My Game Boy Camera. I navigated the menus. I loaded up the photo library. I found pictures of cousins and friends I couldn’t remember the name of. I saw a picture of the Christmas tree this Game Boy Camera had been under. I then saw a picture of my dead father. He was alive and pixelly. I choked to Dylan, “That’s my Dad.”
We finished the night looking at the Japanese Game Boy Camera I had bought a year ago for a different reason. It held only selfies covered in stickers of the old owner. One of the pictured declared “Sabishii“. “I’m lonely.” We considered the life of this person. The lives we could find on other Game Boy Cameras. I thought my own life from a lifetime ago. We both took a selfie with My Game Boy Camera. We turned it off, and I wished him a safe journey home.
Thank You for Reading
Rudie Overton
Dec 29th 2023
Hinge Problems 
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