Granato's renewed quest began in 2011, when he discovered some drawings he and a friend made as 8-year-olds. Deciding this was a video game whose time had come, and passed, and maybe come again, Granato started a crowdfunding campaign (eventually raising more than $50,000); enlisted a bunch of friends, along with gaming and design experts, to bring "Mystic Searches" to glorious 8-bit life; and set about to create a game that would be playable on the Nintendo Entertainment System consoles he'd enjoyed as a kid (and which Nintendo stopped making in the U.S. in 1995).