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Best or Worst Christmas as a Child Gamer?
Tzen
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I was pretty spoiled growing up, but I was not a brat (honestly! ...). I would just smile and fake excitment after opening "The Big One" Christmas after Christmas only to find something I never once expressed even the slightest bit of interest for... ever. An electric guitar? Great!... (not!) However, that would all change one Christmas.
I remember it like it was yesterday. I got a call from my friend. "My mom just got me a Sega Satu..." I dropped the phone and bolted out the door before he could even finish his sentence. Sucking lungfulls of cold night air deep into my chest, I sprinted non-stop to his place. My brother and our other Saturn-less friends feebly followed my trail of smoke through the darkness. I was going to be the first one to thrown down with him in Virtua Fighter.
Needless to say, I spent a lot of time over at his house in the following weeks. We spent hours playing Sega Rally, Virtua Cop, and the afformentioned Virtua Fighter. The only other thing I spent a significant amount of time doing was telling my mother how much I wanted a Saturn of my own for Christmas. NOTHING... ELSE... I promise. I just want a Sega Saturn. Pleeeeeeeeease. Please. Please. Please. "Okay, honey," she would say in a not-really-paying-attention sort of way.
Finally, after a long, sleepless night of giddy wiggling and strange squeaking noises, the sun crawled up the horizon. It was mine. I could practically feel the gamepad in my hands. I flew into the living room, grabbed THE box (the shape, size, and weight were just right), and began to shred through the paper like a military invasion of France.
I remember it like it was yesterday. I got a call from my friend. "My mom just got me a Sega Satu..." I dropped the phone and bolted out the door before he could even finish his sentence. Sucking lungfulls of cold night air deep into my chest, I sprinted non-stop to his place. My brother and our other Saturn-less friends feebly followed my trail of smoke through the darkness. I was going to be the first one to thrown down with him in Virtua Fighter.
Needless to say, I spent a lot of time over at his house in the following weeks. We spent hours playing Sega Rally, Virtua Cop, and the afformentioned Virtua Fighter. The only other thing I spent a significant amount of time doing was telling my mother how much I wanted a Saturn of my own for Christmas. NOTHING... ELSE... I promise. I just want a Sega Saturn. Pleeeeeeeeease. Please. Please. Please. "Okay, honey," she would say in a not-really-paying-attention sort of way.
Finally, after a long, sleepless night of giddy wiggling and strange squeaking noises, the sun crawled up the horizon. It was mine. I could practically feel the gamepad in my hands. I flew into the living room, grabbed THE box (the shape, size, and weight were just right), and began to shred through the paper like a military invasion of France.
THERE IT WAS! IT WAS FINALLY MINE! ALL MINE! A... Sony... Playstation?
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Xbox : gunst4r
I can't really think of a worst Christmas. Whenever I asked for electronics my mom always paid a lot of attention and got me to write it down so she wouldn't get the wrong thing.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
turned out great as it started me on the course of writing for a living. which turned out ace.
in hindsight, i was gutted at the time, but it was the better gift.
On that day, I became a true gamer.
...HOW IN THE NINE HELLS DOES THIS HAPPEN?!!!!
Look, I can understand a parent not getting that games are violent these days. I can understand just not giving a damn. But how the hell do you look at two games, one with a relatively abstract title, and one with THE NAME OF A CRIME for a title, and decide the more abstract one is more violent?
Though, I'll admit, 3 is less explicit about this than later titles, which had the tits and the guns and stuff on their covers.
Still, though.
As for me, my best gamer christmas was getting my first launch console; A launch PS2. Good times, those were. Grand, fantastic times.
First read: :?
realizing: O_o
Truly realizing the implication:
XBL Gametag: mailarde
Screen Digest LOL3RZZ
Though when it came to the SNES and N64 I didn't get those until a few years after release, and then finally the Gamecube and Wii(Which I camped out for, and my Mom came at 8am to actually purchase) I actually got the years they came out. Come to think of it, the only Nintendo system I've actually spent my own money purchasing was the DS.
if you're implying MGS2 is bad, I'd have to tell you it's one of my favorite games of all time.
Xbox : gunst4r
So this is I dunno, around the time I got a Dreamcast. Me and my sister were mid teens and were actually kick ass at soul calibur.
Friends of the family come over christmas day (this is the year AFTER I got my DC the previous christmas) and they bring their children. who are not toddlers but maybe 6 or 7 i cant remember. they themselves also had a dreamcast which amazed us but hey.
so we were sent away to entertain these kids into the 'play room' which was actually just this empty store room we stuck a huge tv and a sofa into. their parents said we should play some sega with them, yeah using sega asa catch all term for gaming. those were the days.
we crack open soul calibur and proceed to go super easy on these kids cause well they are having fun just mashing buttons and watching the flash lights. they have understanding of the game and how it works, but arent taking it too seriously.
then one of them picks up the controller and throws it at the fucking window and it smashes straight through breaking it.
my father runs in and sees the window, and the controller on the other side covered in broken glass, and glares right at me, even though i was still holding my controller.
I explained what this kid did and he didnt fuckin believe me. no way could a 7 year old maliciously break our window like that. i must of course have been too excited at christmas and thrown it in anger or something. bullshit.
i was 15 at the time so i was more independent, but he still confiscated my dreamcast for the rest of the holidays, so i didnt get to play it at all over christmas. fuck.
my sister was pissed too, so we decided to plan revenge on this little brat.
the following day on boxing day (those friends had stayed over for three days) we were told to entertain the kids again, only we werent allowed the dreamcast.
so we told them the squares story.
dunno if anyone knows it. its basically a scary urban myth type scary story where a woman keeps getting phone calls all day and the voice just says 'squares squares squares' and she gets home and her husband is cut up into squares. i know it sounds shit but its all in the delivery and well, its a little creepy when done right.
we fucked the minds of these kids so bad. we got the meat pounder thing from the kitchen cause we were having steak for the lunch. its basically a big hammer with spikes on it. only ours was more of a grid type thing. you press it on your hand hard and it leaves a waffle type checker pattern.
so my sister has that pressed in her hand behind her back hard while i tell the story. i totally ham it up, and it drags on for like 5 minutes. you keep repeating squares squares squares over and over and ramp up the tension. they were young so were shit scared already by the time my sister whipped out here square emblazones hand and started screaming in pain and writhing on the floor. they fucking shit themselves and ran out of the room bellowing screams of unspeakable horror.
i feel bad about it now, cause well it properly fucked em up. they didnt sleep for a few weeks after that all over christmas and new year. but on the other hand the little shit got my dreamcast taken away over the holidays just because he lost at soul calibur, on purpose, and laughed about it afterwards.. vindictive little bastard i hope he dies.
No. No I wasn't.
VF > Watching 2girls1cup > Battle Arena Toshinden
Sega Rally > Riiiiiiidge Raaacer
Anything > ESPN Extreme Games
The launch titles sucked, of course. But the "famous" library is really overrated. I think the only games I wound up really playing were RE, RE2 and Syphon Filter. Sure, I've since gone back (on a new PS, of course. lolsony and their QA) and played some of the classics (MGS, FF7) but really, they are insaaanely overrated and simply can't match the Sega classics in one simple aspect: FUN.
My best Christmas was definitely wandering into the dining room and seeing a computer set up on the table. It was a second-hand Dell with a 5.25" floppy drive in the time of shiny new CD-ROMs, but I loved it. I spent of ton of time playing Rome and The Blue and The Gray (man that game sucked, but that was the beauty of the time before teh intarnets: you didn't really know when a game sucked), and even more time trying to get them to work or play with sound. Of course later came Sim City and the Doom demo. Ah, good times.
Then, hrm, worst. Aside from the year all I got for Christmas was a home-made necklace, probably the year I got Zelda instead of Pokemon. I was devastated. I cheered, but in my heart I was thinking "Noooo wrong game noooo." Having never played a Zelda game, I shelved it for about a year, until one day my copy of pokemon red ceased to function.
Well, I decided to plug it in and try it out, and I was pretty much glued to my Gameboy Colour until I beat it. It was the first Zelda I'd played, so I really didn't know what to expect, and I still look back on it as one of my favorite games of all time.
The mind boggles.
I remember when I got my Sega Genesis for Christmas. Huge box, came packaged with Altered Beast (and the box had some of the game scenes on it). Dad bought Sonic aside from that. Those two games alone pretty much had me stoked at being a Sega kid, as opposed to most everyone else I knew who had the Super Nintendo. I was proud to be a minority.
My mom topped that, aside from getting us a Sega Genesis to use at home the next year (seperate parents, two Sega Genesis', I know it was goofy), by getting us the Sega Channel the year after that. I fell in love with that damn thing. We've had threads here about the Sega Channel before though, and I need not say more than what I have.
Still, the most memorable Christmas was when we got the NES. Man, this was like... 1989 or 1990. I was born in '85, to give some scope on this. I still remember that day. We were at my grandmother's, and there was this freaking huge gift wrapped under the tree. I think only my two oldest brothers were aware of what it was. When we unwrapped it (we being my third brother and I) I was like, "Wow video games!" I can barely remember the box... it had the NES with a couple of controllers on it, and like a starry background. After all the gift opening was done we took the box into the living room and started to pull out the contents. My oldest brothers were more keen on being around the family but were told to help us hook it up. They got there too late though. I opened the manual to the NES, looked at the pictures, and hooked it up myself. There was much Super Mario Bros. / Duckhunt played that day.
to make it worse, GTA3 wasn't on my list. the only game i wanted was MGS2
Xbox : gunst4r
Well, I still played the hell out of it.
The NES was the only Christmas I ever got a console. All of my other consoles (SNES, Dreamcast, PS1, PS2, PS3) were all either birthday presents or personal purchases.
When I was an actual child, I never really got anything that awesome.
Fast foward to today, where I own a Wii, DS Lite, DS, GameCube, PS2, PSP, X-Box, GameBoy Advance, GBA SP, and soon a PS3. The GBC was my true introduction to games, in a sense.
that's my worst
Buddy, you're all right in my book.
1992 - My mom buys us a SNES for christmas along with copies of the "SUPER ULTIMATE COOL SECRETS AND CHEATS GUIDES" or whatever the hell those 300 page monsters were called. I wake up for whatever reason at 2 in the morning and wander upstairs to find my mom and my brother playing Super Mario World in the dark.
The next year we got a stack of new games, including Turtles in Time. That Christmas morning my brother and I beat the whole thing in one sitting, which felt like a giant accomplishment at the time.
The next year we're all at my grandma's place just hanging around while mom does some shopping. I'm in the living room watching something or other when I hear my brother gasp at something, when I get to him he shoves a receipt in my face. I realize at that moment that we are in fact getting motherfucking DONKEY KONG COUNTRY for christmas... it was awesome.
As for the worst...
December 25, 1994 - The day we were "gifted" a 32X
My Little Game Blog - http://profundospielen.blogspot.com/
Yeah.. My mom had this thing where she wanted me to work all the time for my stuff. It pays off now cause I know the value of hard work and all, but when I was a kid I'd be LIVID. None of my games came from presents, they were -always- bought with the money I earned doing odd jobs. I bought myself a PS3 last week.. does that count?
I only got socks, underwear, and stuff like that all the time. Except for one time when we got the super soakers with the backpacks. Anyway.. Now that I'm grown and out of the house, I STILL buy all of my own video games AND my own undergarments. So now I don't really want or need anything for Christmas.
...Well.. Except those big dinners.. I need those.. I'm small, but I'm a fatboy at heart.
I love my momma.
Worst Christmas ever: When I sat outside a goddamn GameStop at 6 AM, twenty people deep in a line, waiting to buy a Wii for my little sister, knowing that the store was only going to get maybe 10 units that day. I was hoping that at least ten people in front of me would get to the front of the line and discover they'd left their wallets at home or something. Sadly, no.
Christmas present opening was done. My dad asks me if I'd like to play a game of chess. I accept.
I opened up the chess set box and inside is a copy of Rock 'N' Roll Racing for the SNES.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
Wow, that's probably the best christmas story I've heard so far.
XBL Gametag: mailarde
Screen Digest LOL3RZZ
I think, that very Christmas, you and I received the same gift. My parents were the best at surprising my brothers and I with pure awesome surprise gaming presents. The game systems and games were always the ones hidden behind the tree or in the case of DKC, in the tree. And we never caught onto the secret until very late in the game.
All of my best gamer Christmases stem from the SNES. First receiving an SNES at the ripe age of 6, shortly after it came out, and I asked my parents if they had to go to an ATM to get the money. Ah, the ignorance of youth. If only it were that simple.
Then I got Jungle Book one year for Christmas, that was actually a pretty damn good game. For some reason licensed Disney titles weren't by and large pure shit then.
The year we got a launch PS2 was crazy. We KNEW we had it, but weren't allowed to touch it or even see it in it's pure blue box. So beautiful. So new. So earth-shatteringly amazingly revolutionary graggle glomph etc. etc. And we got SSX. I was the most frustrated PS2 owner ever on Christmas day. It was not a choice I would have made for myself at the time. And much swearing and gritting of teeth was involved. But after a day of training with this, my only PS2 game, I was hooked, and tearing it the fuck up. Ever since then, regardless of how I feel about XXXTREEEEM SPORTZ titles, SSX has always held a space near and dear to me.
Some bastard stole SSX from me my first semester of college, but left SSX3, what's up with that?
So that was this year?
Sega fucking Genesis.
I had been talking about wanting one for months, but I honestly had zero expectation of actually getting one. The only game system I owned was an NES, and that was a hand-me-down from my cousin. My parents simply didn't buy me expensive toys, and I was fine with that.
I'm surprised I didn't die when I unwrapped my Genesis. It came with Sonic 1 and had that coupon you could send away for Sonic 2.
I played Sonic 1 non-stop for the next few months or so. I was in heaven.
Close runner-up is the Christmas of '95. Funnily enough, the situation is mildly similar to that of the OP. I had asked for a Saturn, but a while before Christmas...
Mom: "Are you sure you want the Sega? The guy at Electronics Boutique said that the Playstation is way better. It looks like it has more games, too."
Me: "I will be amazingly happy with either one."
So the PSX I got. I do somewhat regret not getting the Saturn, but it's not like my PSX didn't get any use.
Son of a-
I forgot all about the magical Gameboy Christmas where my brother and I got the old fatty gray gameboys (before the pockets were out, mind you), and Link's Awakening and Mario Land 2. So magical. It started a long string of events which have led me to own at least 2 of every iteration of the game boy to be made, excepting the Micro.
My Little Game Blog - http://profundospielen.blogspot.com/
maybe it was 1993.