This 13-year-old voice recorder captured my entire professional career

Image: Andrew Webster

I panicked when I was about to go to the Montreal International Games Summit because I had no way to record an interview. I was supposed to speak with Yoichi Wada, the president of Square Enix, along with several other notable industry people. The cheapest voice recorder I could find was locked up in a glass display case, so I went to Radio Shack and bought it. I don't know what model it is, but it followed me through my entire professional career and is finally being retired.

I kept that device because I trusted it the most. The sound quality of the recorder was ok, but it was annoying to have to keep a bunch of batteries. I have always been paranoid about losing an interview and wasting time with someone who agreed to speak to me. As long as the recorder worked, I didn't need to replace it. It worked every time. I stayed by the button even when it fell off. At Summer Game Fest, I came to a sad conclusion that the recorder didn't work because the rewind button didn't function.

It had a great life. It has been with me for the entire time I have worked at The Verge. I have done in-person interviews on that machine every single time. I took it with me when I traveled to New York to hear about Shigeru Miyamoto's plan to bring Super Mario to the iPhone and when I was in Montreal to learn how the team at Ubisoft recreates an entire city. It was with me when I sat down for a long chat with the directors of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

In order to report on the state of the Japanese game industry, explore Nintendo's plans for the future, and understand Phil Spencer's philosophy for the XBOX, I took it with me to many E3s in Los Angeles. As I tried to keep a straight face, I asked Nintendo veterans what a version of Luigi would taste like. The man with the mask spoke without it. My favorite games as a child were Super Mario, Metroid, God of War, Devil May Cry, Monster Hunter, and Dragonquest. I always felt safe when I traveled to an event or studio or just went for coffee with someone from the entertainment industry because I had a recorder in my pocket.

I used to record a lot of phone calls in the past. It was difficult to place the recorder next to the phone, but it worked. Sean Bean told me what it was like to be killed in a video game when I tracked down the artists behind classic Atari box art. I locked myself in the bathroom so I wouldn't wake my first child up from a nap.

The recorder hasn't gotten much work with the proliferation of video calls and lack of in-person events. It has been in a desk drawer for over three years. Summer Game Fest put on its first-ever in-person event in Los Angeles and I used it again. It was reliable and I used it to record interviews with the directors of The Callisto Protocol and Street Fighter 6. It was too time-Consuming to actuallyTranscript those conversations.

I don't know when I'll be going back to an in-person event, so I have time to think. Replacing a companion for more than a decade is difficult. I know I won't be using my phone to record interviews; again, I'm paranoid, and I'd prefer something simple and straightforward so that a dead battery or software update doesn't mess up an interview I like the idea of a single purpose device. The act of conducting an interview is a key part of my job, and as a result, the recorder has become an object with memories. I will find a way to help me capture more.