Jace checked out the video games as his uncle drove, who as an admittedly safe driver, only looked over when traffic was barely moving or he was waiting at a light. The first game from the Sega stack was Mortal Kombat II, a series that was still going in his time but one that his mom would never let him play due to its ultra-violent “fatality” finishing moves.

“That’s the best of the first three. I didn’t get that one on Nintendo. I forget if that version of the second one was censored like the first one, didn’t want to risk it.”

“What, risk me not seeing a bunch of blood and gore?”

“It’s not as graphic as the later games. Also, I always sucked at it. The button-masher that you are, you’ll probably beat me.” Wes then described the next two games as Jace looked at their colorful illustrated artwork. “There’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the first in the series to allow two players—and they’re on the screen at the same time. Try to forget that Sonic’s something of a joke in the present, okay? He used to be cool, in a good way. And that one is Gunstar Heroes. A sci-fi platformer shoot-em-up. Lots of fun, awesome weapons, fast. It’ll test your reflexes for tomorrow’s arcade adventure.”

Jace moved onto the Super Nintendo stack, and pulled out the one at the top from the plastic clips inside the case. Its instruction manual was particularly beat-up.

“Super Mario World. A requirement,” Wes continued. “Gotta take turns, but it’s still a great two-player game. Mario’s transition to 16-bits was perfect, and defined the appearance of the characters and enemies for all time. Oh… and that one is a flagship Zelda title, Link to the Past. It’s the only game I got that’s single player, but that’s okay. It will give you something to do when I’m out. It has one of the best ever, most explorable overworlds. And… Super Mario Kart, first in the series. Just so we have a racing game. I hope the Mode 7 psuedo-3-D graphics don’t make you sick. They take getting used to.”

“I’ll try not to make fun of any of these game graphics too much.”

“Don’t see why you would. A lot of new games still use the style, since 16 and 32-bit is the pinnacle of pixel gaming and can produce some real works of art.”

“Small mobile games maybe… But a lot of those look hand-drawn, too.”

“Sure, but I’m talking actual pixels, a limited palette that forces color creativity, and transparency and parallax effects. I see the games as having this happy medium that allowed developers to put in just enough detail, leaving some things to the imagination of the player. Like, usually your character is small, and in RPGs especially, that have a lot of text and dialogue, you ‘own’ the guys you control. Every bit of their look and personality isn’t shoved in your face. I dunno, this era of games always felt like they had the perfect balance to me. Even as I moved on when 3-D games took over and it was all about who had the best graphics, I always went back to my ‘comfort games’ from the old days.”

“And what about your Game Boy? The graphics on that thing are so primitive.”

“Still playing the one I got you? You’re not relying on your phone games, right?”

Jace shrugged. “I got kind of bored of Tetris.”

“Mm. I’ll get you a few more games when I get a chance. Yeah, I loved my Game Boy. Back then we didn’t expect to be carrying around a powerhouse in our pocket. We took what we got if it meant playing something on the bus ride home. And if we were lucky enough to have a link cable and a friend with one of our games, sometimes we could even do multiplayer. With our own screens! That felt like something special back then. Of course, teachers took them away from us more than once.”

“I dunno if I can adjust to all these old titles.”

“Come on, Jace! Haven’t you played any of those hundreds of new ‘retro’ games, or compilations of actual ones? Not everything has to be full of a million polygons, HDR, bloom, lip-syncing, and orchestrated soundtracks. Lower your expectations and you’ll be surprised what game companies can pull off in 1995.”

“What about computer games? Do they look better?”

“Well… They’re starting to use CDs now, mostly for high-quality audio and crappy compressed video, so they have that going for them. But that’s a whole other kettle of fish. And we already got console stuff tonight and arcade stuff tomorrow.”

“I… I like video games…”

“Uh, that’s good, Jace. At least you like something.”

“I mean, they get me through tough times, make me feel better about things.”

Since Jace was now in one of his brooding, thoughtful moods, Wes cut the snark.

• •

“Okay, you got like two seconds to put it in!” Wes said as Jace’s fighter kicked away the last of his guy’s health. “Down-down, forward-forward, low punch! Easy!”

Surprising himself, Jace executed the combination flawlessly, and watched as his movie star combatant, Johnny Cage, ripped the enemy ninja, Scorpion, in half at the torso, pulling him away from his legs without effort as blood spurted everywhere.

“First fatality of the night, bud!” Wes congratulated him. “Man, I forgot how hard they were to pull off in these early MKs. So… should we move on?”

“Can we do something a little slower-paced for a bit…?” Jace huffed. “I think it’s been about three hours of this and Gunstar and Mario Kart. Time to take it easy.”

“Easiest thing I got is Super Mario World. Since we take turns in that.”

Wes got up and reached around the back of the hotel’s big TV set to once again switch around the red, yellow, and white cables from one system to the other. Jace took a look at the clock radio to see that it was past nine, and he was starting to feel tired.

“What time does the park open tomorrow again?” he asked.

“Nine in the morning. But we want to be there by seven so we’re not too far back in line. Maybe we’ll grab some breakfast on the way. You pumped?”

“I don’t get ‘pumped’ about anything. But… I guess it’s a little exciting.”

“Yeah, boy! You get a chance to be among the first kids let in the park!”

“Too bad I can’t really tell anyone that I got to do it.”

“If you go to the same middle school I did, you might get a class trip to the park just before you graduate,” Wes said and finished plugging in the Super Nintendo. He stuck in its first Mario game, powered it up, and added, “Of course, most of us had been there a hundred times by then. A city this size is lucky to have an amusement park.”

“Uncle Wes…” Jace murmured as he was a handed a controller. “I guess… I think this has been kind of fun, even though I complained a lot.”

“Hm? What, the game night, or the entire trip so far? By the way, there are two types of jumps in this game. You gotta spin jump to break the yellow blocks.” Wes started his run as Mario by going left on the world map. “I always go straight to the switch palace. It makes a bunch of blocks appear in the levels that help you out.”

“I mean time traveling. I still wanna go home, but it’s been, uh, cool seeing the kid version of you and Mom, and how the city was different when you were growing up.”

“I’m glad you ended up liking it,” Wes said, his eyes glued on the screen while he stomped on enemies. “And hey, if you ever write a paper in college about the decade or something like that, you’ll have some good research material.”

“Can I… tell you something? And you won’t make fun of me?”

“I’ll try not to.”

“Mom… just signed me up for therapy. It was supposed to start on Monday…”

Wes paused the game and looked down at Jace just to see how serious his face appeared. He looked up at his uncle, visibly worried that he was about to burst out laughing. But Wes then simply unpaused and returned to the game.

“Oh. Yeah, I guess that’s becoming more of a thing, for kids, I mean.”

“You’re… not going to crack a joke about it?”

“What? Nah. I don’t joke about stuff like that. Well, maybe only if the person telling me stuff like that clearly finds it ironic or funny, too. I don’t like having a laugh at someone’s expense, Jace. So… therapy, huh? Do you know what that is, exactly?”

He shrugged. “Do you?”

“Never had any myself.” Wes took a sip from his can of Sprite—which, to his credit, was his first and only soda of the day. “Of course, times change. I don’t think many parents came close to giving a passing thought to putting their kids in therapy here. Heck, when they were growing up, people were still being tossed into asylums and sometimes lobotomized. Not, uh… not that you need to know anything about that.”

“Isn’t that, like, when they take your brain out or something?”

Wes nearly choked on his drink as he suppressed a laugh. “The way I understand it, a therapist teaches you how to emotionally deal with problems. Maybe some psycho-analyzing too, but not, like, sitting on a couch spilling everything under hypnosis stuff.”

“Oh. I don’t know how much they can help. I’m probably a one of a kind freak.”

“I’m betting that’s not even close to true. I’m sure they’ve dealt with plenty of angry and lonely kids, who hide in their rooms yelling at their teammates all day in online video games. Am I warm? Was my diagnosis close-iss?”

Jace looked up and sighed. “Maybe. I guess so.”

“Well. Don’t be embarrassed about it,” Wes said as Jace began to take his turn as Mario’s brother Luigi. “It’ll probably help you in the end, if you give it a chance.”

“Guess we’ve never really… uh, bonded like this, huh?”

“You just trusted me with a personal secret, so that must mean something,” Wes said with a yawn. “You starting to trust me, bud? You spend more than a few hours with me, and ya realize that maybe I’m more than just some annoying nostalgic uncle?”

“I never knew that much about you before. I mean, you always talked about old stuff and gave me dumb trivia, but you never told me that much about your life.”

“Because I never thought my personal stories would interest you. So, I kept those at a minimum. But maybe seeing me as a kid and realizing I had kid friends made you, ya know, see the ways we’re similar. Anyway, it’s great that I got through to you some, maybe taught you some life lessons. And now look at us, a pair of fun-seeking time travelers!” Wes smacked Jace’s back, which almost made Luigi fall off a cliff.

“You mean like… Doctor Brown and Marty? You think we’re like them?”

“Sure, kind of. Or maybe I’m like a Scrooge McDuck and you’re one of his nephews—or, like, a combination of all three of them. Whatever fits the bill of the ‘old cool guy teaches a kid he’s related to about the world’ genre of storytelling. No, wait—you know what we are? We’re a regular old Rick and Morty. Only I’m not a total jerk.”

“Y-yeah…” Jace said with a tired laugh. “So, you do watch some modern shows.”

Wes looked at him with a flat expression and waited for Jace to pause the game and stare back. “Jace. That’s an adult show. It’s MA for a reason. Does your mom know you stay up late and watch that? You’re so busted. I’m going to tell her.”

“You’re not really going to, right? C-come on, everyone in class was watching it…”

“Relax, pal! I’m kidding. I’m not going to snitch on you. It was entrapment on my part, anyway. Ah…” Wes yawned again. “Man, it’s getting late. Let’s wrap this up.”

Charging ahead into the first boss’s castle, Wes had planned on getting to the first of the Koopa kids and defeating him soundly, but in a surprise both to himself and Jace, he instead managed to get crushed by a masher in the dungeon’s final room.

Once Jace took his turn, despite never having played the game before, he both managed to get to the end of the level—and send Iggy tumbling into the lava, all on his first try. Wes, trying to be the good uncle, rooted him on all the way.

After declaring his nephew ready to conquer many arcade games tomorrow, the long day ended after a gaming marathon in the best way possible: with good, quiet sleep.

• •

Between yawns and bites of his McMuffin breakfast, Jace watched as the steel, swerving mass of The Red Demon rollercoaster came into view. It was one of the tallest coasters on the west coast, and its peak towered above the park’s techno-industrial front gate—where hundreds of kids and their families were already waiting in four lines.

“We could’ve gotten here earlier,” Wes said after parking towards the back of the packed lot. “But I didn’t want to get ahead of my younger self and potentially mess with his route and the order he goes on rides and all that stuff.”

“What time did you get here back then?” Jace asked as the two stepped out into the soon-to-be-hot desert air.

“Begged Mom to get us here by six,” he answered. Once he saw Jace’s curious expression to his devotion, he added, “But she was cool with it! She really likes theme parks, too. Hell, she was at Disney World all the way in Florida when it opened in ’71.”

By the time they had traversed the sea of parked minivans, got their tickets, and made it to the end of one of the long lines of people waiting for the gates to open for the first time, the two only had another thirty minutes to kill.

Jace looked at the entrance marquee and past it, to see how clean and new it all looked, especially when compared to its somewhat worn, pre-loved modern state.

On the sign, the mascot’s colors were livelier than the faded contemporary counterpart, which like the rides, was in need of a fresh layer of paint. He was a beloved local cultural icon: a precocious urban prince, a royal robe over his jeans and baggy shirt. Above his big eyes was a tilted crown, and one hand gripped a gold scepter with a miniature arcade cabinet attached to the top. After having seen many other 90s kids and their attire, Jace now realized how well the “arcade prince” emulated them.

His eyes wandered down to one of the park’s generic, infringement-free video game heroes, Niegh the Knight. The armored mascot revving up kids for the opening, and it just so happened that he walked by an antsy Wessy near the front, with his mom.

Then he spotted someone else nearby in another line, with her own mom.

“Hey, look,” he said and tugged at his uncle’s sleeve. “Mom’s here.”

At this, he saw Lucy, his eyes widened, he noticed that she was wearing her new pair of black shoes, and he simply stated, “Uh-oh. She, uh… isn’t supposed to be here.”

Jace and Wes then spent the next five seconds staring at one another. Oops.