What Is Bonus Life?
Ten years ago this summer, I had a heart attack. Cardiac event, technically.. that’s what the doctors call it, and what it means is that you are in the middle of dying and the machines are what keep you here. The odds they gave me were 17.5 percent. I’m a numbers guy. I did the math. That’s close to one in five, and four of them don’t make it back.
I came back.
Bonus Life is what you call the time after that.. if you are a gamer like me. It’s the actual name I have for the decade between then and now, and July 2026 is ten years. That’s the number that makes you stop. Makes you look back at what happened, and at everything you came that close to not seeing.
The way I’m celebrating it: I’m rebuilding a Nintendo 64, on stream, every Tuesday and Saturday at 7pm Eastern on Twitch. It came in broken. I’m taking it apart down to the board, recapping it, doing a full RGB mod, USB-C power, loading it up with every game it ever deserved. Better than anything it shipped with in 1996. When it’s done, it goes to someone in the community. Come watch the build, be there July 3rd, and it might be yours.
The N64 isn’t a coincidence. A broken thing, taken all the way apart and put back together better than it was. That’s what this whole thing is, really.
I’m giving away two.
Here’s the honest reason for that: rebuilding something is almost never as simple as you planned. You open it up and there’s another problem under the first one. You go in thinking you’re fixing one thing and it turns out to be two. That’s true for a console. It’s true for everything else, too. The second N64 is me being straight about that. Sometimes it’s just twice as hard as you thought going in, and you keep going anyway.
Both of them go to people watching. Because that’s the point.
If you got here because you saw some guy on Twitch fixing an old Nintendo 64 and wanted to know what the deal was.. now you know. Come watch. Tuesdays and Saturdays, 7pm Eastern, at twitch.tv/thernd2. July 3rd is the celebration. You’re welcome to be there.
Need to catch up? Here is the Bonus Life Youtube playlist