Playing Nintendo with You

thirty years apart, same game

Dear Kids,

I didn’t expect this.

Of all the things we’d end up doing together, I didn’t think playing old school Nintendo would be one of our favorites.

Especially since I wasn’t allowed to have one when I was your age. But that’s a story for another time.

And now, here we are.

Mario 3.

Foxtails and fireballs. Goombas and Koopa Shells. The same worlds. The same bad guys. The same killer soundtrack that lives in my head in all its 8-bit rhythmic glory.

Now we’re sitting there together, passing the controller back and forth between levels. Working through the same problems I was trying to solve thirty years ago.

There’s something incredible about that.

You’re shooting your hands up in the air when you need Mario to catch that little extra air. You’re crashing to the ground in agony when he gets hit by a slow-moving fireball spat out by a red plant.

You’re seeing it for the first time. But I’m seeing it again... just differently.

I still know what’s coming. I’ve seen all the traps. I know where the hidden boxes are and when you just need to do whatever you can to fly over the trouble.

But that doesn’t make it any less fun to watch you.

If anything, it makes it better.

Because now it’s not just about beating the level.

It’s about watching you figure it out.

Watching you miss a jump, almost throw the controller, and then go again. Watching it start to click.

No outside noise.

No strangers yelling into a headset from somewhere across the world.

A closed loop to open your mind.

Just a game that starts, gets more difficult, and asks you to keep going.

You fail. You learn. You try again.

And then you beat it.

Or maybe you don’t.

Either way, when you’re done for the day, it’s over. Nothing saved for someone else to judge. Nothing to replay later, just the memory of it.

I can’t tell you how many stories I heard about someone’s older brother or someone’s distant cousin’s friend’s otherworldly Mario exploits. Beating the whole game in under 10 minutes or something. With no proof aside from the conviction in the reteller’s eyes.

That’s the beauty of it. It just happens. And then it’s gone.

There’s not a lot like that anymore.

But the best part isn’t the game.

It’s that we get to share it.

The same levels. The same enemies. The same small victories.

Thirty years apart, solving the same problems.

I wonder what that will look like for you someday.

What you’ll sit down and do with your kids that somehow bridges that kind of gap.

Maybe it’ll be Mario.

Maybe it’ll be something else entirely.

But either way, I hope you get a version of this.

Because it’s better than saving the princess.

Love you more than you’ll ever know,

Dad

P.S.

If this letter landed with you, would you forward it to someone who you think would like it too?

This letter is original work from The Unfinished Dad (© 2026). Feel free to share it, quote it, or forward it; just please credit the source and don’t present it as your own.