I was 8-years-old when my best friend called me to brag about his latest video game console, Nintendo’s Virtual Boy. “It’s so cool,” he said with a hint of boyhood glee in his voice.

“Say no more,” I responded. “I want one, too.”

The day after that phone call, I begged, pleaded, hooted and hollered at my father to buy me one. So one day, against his better judgment, he bought me the console and a copy of Mario’s Tennis along with it. For what reason? “But Mike has it!”

I was a bad son. If I saw something, I had to have it then and there, regardless of how idiotic it was. Perhaps being impressionable is what defines us as children, the ability to be so captivated by what we see on the television or in a magazine. Or, in my case, being captivated by what my friends owned. And my friends owned a lot. For nostalgic purposes, I’ve compiled a list of things they owned that I just “had to have.”

-Air Jordan sneakers

-Nintendo 64 and games

-Sony Playstation and games

-WWF wrestling action figures

-Starter jacket for a sports team I had no interest in (Dallas Cowboys)

-Reversible Dan Marino Miami Dolphins jersey

-Track pants

-Any and all Chicago bulls merchandise

That list is not at all comprehensive or telling of how fickle a mind I had when I was that age. And don’t ask me what was so appealing about a pair of track pants, I still have yet to figure that out. But as it stands, I feel it is a safe bet to add the Virtual Boy to that list of things I wanted, received and never used thereafter (although I quite enjoyed the Nintendo 64; who didn’t?).

The Virtual Boy gave new meaning to the term “seeing red,” as literally every on-screen blip and bloop was presented in a painfully monochromatic crimson. Staring any longer than five minutes into the obnoxious glare of the over-pixelated screen is equivalent to jabbing one’s self in the eyes with a spoon until every blood vessel bursts. Playing more than one title on this console will make anyone look like they just got out of a pool filled with too much chlorine. The Virtual Boy mutated people so thoroughly that it makes me wonder: Is this how Scott Summers became Cyclops? By staying up all night playing Virtual League Baseball?

While the concept of a (very red) personal console was revolutionary, not all revolutions are meant to last. After just a year, the system was discontinued, and thousands of children like myself freed themselves from the torture that was the Virtual Boy. To this day, the thing is collecting dust in my attic, and for good reason. Nintendo may have taken my vision, but it never took my childhood.

OK, that’s a lie; the aforementioned Nintendo 64 did a pretty good job of taking that, too.