Every Tuesday for years I'd go over to my mate Phil's house and play Twilight 2000, Cyberpunk 2020, or the DC Super-Heroes RPG. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons had been something I'd played in my teens, thus hobbling my chances of ever getting a girlfriend, but I had since moved onto quirkier systems in the belief that it made me slightly cooler.
It's how I met Digitiser's chips & teats monkey Mr Cheese, in fact, and realised we were similarly afflicted in this area.
Phil was the only person I ever knew who owned an Atari Lynx, and my envy was off the charts; by 1990, I was an accidental teenage father, and couldn't justify spending nearly two hundred quid on a handheld console like he could.
Yet, I yearned for it. The Lynx was bright and colourful, and it looked like a skateboard with a screen in the middle. That was the handheld that I really wanted. It was the only handheld I wanted. It looked cool and futuristic, and so... of course I got a Game Boy for Christmas that year.
I couldn't exactly complain; it's a miracle my parents bought me anything, so great was their shame and disappointment.