Last July, Gabe Marcelo wasn't sure he could attend PAX Prime. This wouldn't normally be a big deal, but the 26-year-old's lifelong heart condition had taken a turn for a worse, and he'd been stuck in the hospital for a while. The problem: PAX might be his one shot to play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the newest game in his favorite series, before he died.
"Being home bound for the most part," said his mother, Anita Marcelo, "these dates were really important. They were his calendar, just as birthdays and holidays were."
He found the strength to attend PAX. Though the plan was to only show up for a single day, due to his condition, Gabe managed to surprise everyone. His family helped him around in a wheelchair all four days. Unfortunately, Nintendo didn't bring Breath of the Wild to PAX, prompting Gabe to ask his mother if she'd ask Nintendo for a chance to play the game early.
Anita wrote her first letter to Nintendo while they were still at PAX.
"I called Nintendo on the phone and spoke to some really nice people who gave me an address to write to regarding 'donations,'" she told me. "I did not get any reply. I sent it again about a month later. Still nothing."
Gabe came into this world with a congenital heart defect (CHD), leaving him with a single ventricle and a missing area in the middle of his heart. Forms of CHD are common, showing up in eight of every 1,000 newborns. Most of the time, it's treatable, but Gabe's version was complex.
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