buying a nintendo ds in 2025 to feel something

i've joined the bandwagon of inner child consumerism and i have no regrets

nostalgia has never gripped me like this before, like a mother’s arm reaching for her child about to walk into a busy road. i never felt old enough or like it was an appropriate time to be nostalgic. i have never liked the idea of wishing to be older than i am, for it to be a season that it wasn’t, to be further along than where i was already standing in life. i knew as a child (somewhere tucked behind one of the shelves in my brain, next to all the names of my barbies) that this would be a time i would miss, that this is something i’d look back on as adult and wished i had stretched out a little longer like my spine first thing in the morning.

but recently, i have been captured by a wave of wanting, of yearning for a past that in some respects never happened. i think a lot of us feel this way, one kind or another, where some need wasn’t met, something never came to fruition, a moment missed, and no one tells you that, actually, sometimes you can go back, in a way, and recapture the parts of life that seem to have gone with the smoke of a blown out candle. if you visit a church every now and then as an adult, you can inhale that same smoky scent all over again.

when i was a child, a lot of things went over my head. looking back, it’s like i was always out of the loop somehow. i didn’t know which songs were popular; i didn’t even know how to know which songs were popular. i didn’t know (and still don’t) the names of celebrities who were beloved at the time. instead i lived in my own world almost constantly. when i was a little older, i asked someone how she knew all these songs that everyone else seemed to know, and i still think about her kindness to this day. she didn’t make fun of me for being some sort of alien who couldn’t possibly not know who lady gaga was, she gave me a few ideas to help me stay in the loop like specific radio stations to listen to and watching music channels on tv. i also still remember hearing poker face by lady gaga for the first time, which wasn’t inside my bedroom and getting to dance along with the other kids because we all knew the song. i finally felt like i belonged to my age group.

fast forward a few (a lot of) years and now i can see more gaps. but i am not sad about these gaps. gaps are inevitable. but if anyone was going to miss most of those gaps as a child, it was me. i had an imagination that could reach all the way to saturn, circumnavigate its rings and return to earth. my barbies went through hell and back with the plot lines i gave them. i even had a collection of tiny cars i would give storylines to. the days seemed to stretch on forever and i filled them with enough drama, characters and plot twists to direct a tv show with ten seasons.

but i did feel a little left out when i went to my friends’ houses and watched them play the sims or mario kart or play around on bebo and other wild websites (definitely could have gone without exploring omegle to be honest), and this feeling has never really gone away, until now. some are calling it inner child consumerism and slapping a huge red cross in the middle of it because it’s just another way for capitalism to hold the grip on us a little tighter, and i think that is true in some cases (see: labubu). but for others, it’s buying old games and consoles they couldn’t afford as a child, finally holding their own tamagotchi in their hands and seeing what all the fuss was about with cooking mama. it’s falling in love with physical media again, digging out old dvds or hunting for all 15 seasons of supernatural in charity shops. it’s wondering whatever happened to that digital camera and falling in love with the grainy quality. it’s reminiscing about companies that used to care about creativity and innovation and not just how much money they could squeeze out of you (see, unfortunately: nintendo).

so i bought a cd player, and there’s something so special now about hearing the grainy sounds of lorde’s voice come out of the speakers, and the physicality of holding the disc and placing it into the machine, the couple of seconds of silence before music begins to pour out. it’s like a little time portal, a little reminder of how slow life used to be. i didn’t care much about sound quality when i went looking for it because it was the scratchy charm i was after anyway. in a world where everything is fine-tuned and filtered, i ache for imperfections like this.

and then i received a nintendo ds lite (in pink of course) from my partner and i loved going through the process to make it feel like mine. the little start-up sound tickles my brain and holding the console that looks like a mini laptop is so charming to me. with every new phone looking exactly like the last and people practically walking around with the same face nowadays, it’s refreshing to look at this thing that looks so different compared to everything else i own. it’s the same way i feel about my new phone. i love the physical response i get from pressing buttons and how it slows down communication. i love that it is also teaching me that i have been relying too heavily on spell check!

and then i dived into the deep end and after searching for ages, i found a barely used nintendo 2ds xl, which has captured my entire heart. i never reach for my nintendo switch as a handheld because it feels too big and clunky to me. but this 2ds xl makes me feel like a kid who walks around with a handbag filled with nothing but a couple of cheese puffs and their favourite toy. i want to carry this thing with me everywhere i go for no reason. the size of it strikes the perfect balance between practical and cosy and playing animal crossing wild world, and soon new leaf (two games that are well loved in the cosy game community but again, something i missed out on) is an absolute dream.

nothing really feels innovative anymore and the sentiment is that we have exhausted all forms of creativity, and while i don’t think that is true at all, despite the repetitive nature of “new” products and trends and apps, i think life is more than the products companies make for us. the sun rises every morning but it is still something that can take your breath away every morning. i think my sudden interest in collecting old tech and swimming in the forgotten lakes of time is an escape, my answer to the ubiquitous apathy we all feel about living in this particular moment in time. it’s a spark of joy, a moment to feel child-like wonder again. i think i’m finally coming to understand what our parents felt when they insisted everything was better back in their day.

my collection!

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hello quiet readers, is everything feeling a bit bleh lately? honestly i’ve been so bored with a lot of modern trends, every website looks the same, every phone looks the same, the switch 2 magnetic joy cons are cool but what’s really wrong with the switch i already have? but buying old (i hate saying that) tech like this is so fun! look at all the different colours and sizes and capabilities! and i’m just going to say it, music was better then too. call me grandma.

also please appreciate my washi tape skills on that 2ds xl. i hated that i had to get an orange one but i think i have covered that up pretty well. maybe one more sticker?

tell me your thoughts in the comments, and i hope you enjoy the rest of your week xo

if you’re a paid subscriber, i’ll see you again on friday for more from my quiet notes from my journal series <3