This happened many years ago now and I don’t have contact info for them or much desire to find out if they’re less of an asshole now. I would’ve thought if they were interested in returning it to me they would’ve done so at my request back in the day so I imagine asking again now wouldn’t make much of a difference.
I’m not too broken up about it; a much better friend who heard the story got me a used GBA and a couple of games for my birthday a while ago so I’ve managed to rebuild some of my collection. Mostly just upset that someone who stole from me called my character into question when I requested my stuff back. It made me feel like all the time I’d spent helping them with their issues was a waste of my time seeing as they were so quick to make me responsible for their own bad behavior.