Precious Holiday Memories

When you’re a kid, there aren’t all that many opportunities to get new games. Unless you’re Richie Rich, most of the time it boiled down to one or two predictable periods—your birthday and Christmas. I talked to a few editors to hear their favorite holiday gaming stories. After you’ve read through ‘em, it’s your time to share.

Tim’s brother is 10 years older than him, which worked out in his favor one year. That brother received a Genesis and played with it a few minutes before seeming completely bored with the console. Tim, who was seven at the time, swooped in and immediately started playing the pack-in game, Sonic the Hedgehog. He was immediately smitten.

From then on, young Tim received a Sonic-themed gift for Christmas. Sometimes it was an RC car, other times it might take the form of a stuffed toy. One year he got the game Sonic Spinball, which completely confused him. “I didn’t really follow games all that much at the time, so it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me,” he recalls.

There’s a lot about Tim and his Sonic obsession that doesn’t make sense, but that’s an entirely different reader discussion.

Joe says he used to be quite the Tazmanian Devil fan back in the day, which led to a somewhat disappointing Christmas. The fact that the Genesis was the exclusive home to the Taz-Mania game was all the prodding Joe needed in making a decision between it and the competing SNES. After playing it and Sonic one Christmas morning, he realized that he’d made a huge mistake.

Fortunately, his birthday was in January. His parents let him trade in his console for a SNES (with F-Zero and Super Mario World), and paid the price difference. To this day, he says the Super Nintendo is his favorite console—and it was all thanks to Taz and his awful, awful game.

These stories are too heartwarming. Here’s mine.

Back in the day, I begged my parents for an Atari 2600 (so old). They never gave in. Then I discovered a mysterious paper sack in a closet sometime around November. It had a used 2600 in it, which was certainly better than nothing. I wasn’t allowed to play with it until Christmas, but that was OK.

Anyway, it was the greatest Christmas of all time, and then the infamous video game crash occurred. I had to wait until the NES launched before I could go to a store and buy games again. Awesome.

You kids have it so good you don’t even know.

So… what are your favorite holiday gaming memories?