As I'm grinding out a season of Tecmo Super Bowl on my Famicom (which, ironically, plays host to a Japanese version of the game that is literally identical, text and all, to the U.S. release), I concretely decide on my literal future. I plan it out right there, as I blip video Phil Simms around on the screen. This is the power Tecmo Super Bowl has over me now, these ancient players, my perpetual heroes, and I find myself being mentally sucked away to 1991.

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As I hammer A to send that unmissable extra point through the uprights it all materializes before my eyes. I will grow up, enter the NFL and get drafted as a quarterback, then make sure my team somehow ends up with a player named Gary Reasons, who is identically named to the 1991 New York Giants offensive linebacker also named Gary Reasons, as depicted in Tecmo Super Bowl. If I have to I will pay someone to change his own name legally to Gary Reasons.

Over the course of the season I will electrify the National Football League with my unique brand of punishing, bladder-emptying offense, ensuring that in my wake NFL Commissioner Goodell will whimper and pout until rules preventing destructive yardage gains are instituted and named after me, like "the Brandon rule," which prohibits anyone from throwing a 99 yard pass at over 300 miles per hour. Mr. Reasons and I will become known as the "Gary Pairy," an unstoppable duo that somehow links up for dozens of staggering gains per game.

On the night before the Super Bowl, in a move that shocks the nation, I will release several of my teammates into free agency. As I deliver my final answers to the slobbering press, Gary Reasons at my side, one meek reporter will approach the locker room as the rest of the reporters peel away. He will ask me, reverently but with the slightest hint of fear, sweat forming on the arches of his small-for-his-age feet:

"Uh, mister Daiker, um," his voice cracking, "can't you let me know about the players you released this morning? What would cause you to take such action? Why would you do it, so close to the big game?"

I will turn back to face him, already angled slightly away, my five-o'-clock shadow blocking out the goddamned sun, and as I deliver a right-side-only grin, the light of his cameraman's gear will twinkle off the edge of my blazingly white incisor. I will say one thing, and one thing only, before closing the door with finality.

"I have my Reasons."