Upup, down down, left right, left right, B A, select start. If, like me, you grew up in the 1990s and played video games, that bit of gibberish needs no explanation. It’s a famous Nintendo “cheat code” that grants a player unlimited lives or other gameplay perks.
I learned it during the countless days I spent as a kid playing Super Contra, a game that pitted two Rambo-esque soldiers against an army of robot-alien invaders. My brothers and I would sit together in our basement, cracking jokes, thumbs aflutter, for hours at a stretch.
I’m sure that our video game habit helped preserve my parents’ sanity during our years of frenzied, hyperactive boydom. But the idea that Mega Man or The Legend of Zelda might have been strengthening my brain or bolstering my mental health would have seemed preposterous to them.