To set the scene, I was a regular reader of video game magazines, so I was fairly well-versed in titles I hadn’t actually played yet. I tried to be cool and say that I knew that this new Mega Man adventure introduced a new character who was Mega Man’s brother, and that this character’s name was Bruce. And this kid I was talking to — whose first and last name I still remember, BTW, not that I’m bitter about this — wasn’t having it, saying something like, “Yeah, weirdo, there is no character who is Mega Man’s brother in this game, and there is no character named Bruce.” I tried to protest, because I was fairly sure that I was not wrong, but I also hadn’t played the game, and therefore I didn’t really have a leg to stand on.
The memory of this incident has lingered in my head ever since, mostly because being the kid who knew about video games was, like, my thing, so being so very wrong about something like Mega Man having a brother named Bruce was a real blow to my playground status. Years later, I’d wonder why the hell I was ever so sure that I had this wrong fact in my head. Had I just made that up?
No, it turns out.
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