Unlike, apparently, everyone else who plays games, I never had a childhood friend whose uncle "worked for Nintendo." Or Sega, or Blizzard, or anywhere that would supposedly get them access to the latest games or consoles or rumors. So the central conceit behind The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo isn't something I have personal experience with. But I think everyone had at least one friend they were jealous of, who seemed to magically be the best at everything. Maybe they were generous with it, but maybe they seemed like they were unconsciously rubbing it in everyone's faces, at least a little. In retrospect, you might wonder if they were compensating for their own insecurity, or trying to cover up the real darkness in their lives. Or they were still figuring out where they fit in the world, taking everyone else's careful facade for reality and trying too hard to measure up. It's possible you were doing a little bit of the same thing.

Sometimes they went so far that their stories became obviously fantastical, but it was still hard to completely dismiss them — after all, their lives were demonstrably more interesting than yours. This is, in fact, how I briefly became willing to accept that government agents were stalking me and my cool friend through a soap opera. (I am not making that up.) But maybe they really did have an uncle giving them all the latest cool stuff from Nintendo. And maybe that wasn't actually such a good thing. The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo, objectively, shouldn't be very scary, and it doesn't take long to get through. A few bits seem on the nose, and for things to work right, you should probably make sure to open it in Chrome. But I played this little text game for a solid hour yesterday. Last night, it made it into one of my dreams.

That dream was, in case you're weren't sure, a nightmare.