“That is the coolest controller I’ve ever seen!” said Sam, my six-year-old, when he saw the strange sight of my new Nintendo 64 controller sitting on the counter.

I thought to myself, “Yes, it certainly is son. If only you knew”.

My buddy Scott bought me the official re-release version of a controller originally launched in 1996. It’s a controller so unique (like a lot of Nintendo’s hardware) that it doesn’t look like anything before or since.

This controller is bound to the Nintendo 64’s games in a way that makes it hard to play many of them without it. They just don’t feel right. That couldn’t be more true than with the game that we were obsessed with and the game we’ve spent countless hours on.

The entire point of Scott getting me this controller was so that we could play the recently re-released video game Goldeneye 007 (originally released in 1997) as we did back in ’98-’99 at college.

Wait, let’s back up.

When I say we “played” Goldeneye 007 in college, what I should really say is that this game was our fireplace we relaxed next to, it was our poker table we gathered at each night, it was our Netflix, our Amazon, our Google. Our dorm’s social life revolved around sessions with this game.

So, when Goldeneye FINALLY came out for modern-day video game systems earlier this year (with online play!), it was cause for celebration.

Unfortunately, playing on modern controllers just doesn’t work very well. The N64 controller is just too damn unique.

Luckily for us, Nintendo also re-released its iconic controller for the Switch.

And now it’s in my hands.

It is beautiful.

Playing as Bond again is so sweet. I can slide and glide like an assassin now. My muscle memory is coming back. License to Kill. Turbo Mode. Complex.

I remember.

“This is the coolest controller I’ve ever seen!”