Merry Christmas! We wanted to do something a little special for this very special time of year by writing about our favorite Christmas memories for you all to enjoy. These are all gonna be related to video games, obviously, and, when you think about it, Christmas is a very very very important for video game players like us! Twelve months of playing our video games, twelve months of reading up on video games that we wanted, twelve months of eager anticipation, all leading up to that wonderful day when we get what we've wanted all year. It's a beautiful time of year best spent with the ones you love and care about and having fun with them, and hey - the fun that comes from playing video games is why we're here to begin with!
So with all that in mind, we hope you come along with us and enjoy the memories of Christmases past, the truly momentous days that helped shape what kind of video game players we are (either in little ways or big ways) today. And, needless to say, we at Game-Positive hope that you all have a very merry Christmas, and a happy new year!
So with all that in mind, we hope you come along with us and enjoy the memories of Christmases past, the truly momentous days that helped shape what kind of video game players we are (either in little ways or big ways) today. And, needless to say, we at Game-Positive hope that you all have a very merry Christmas, and a happy new year!
Alayna's Memories
All my favorite memories of video game related things from Christmas are fairly recent (within the last four years). First of all, closest to my heart right now, was Christmas of 2012, the first year I had my 3DS. That year, I got up extra early, there were no lights on other than the light of the Christmas tree. I sat down, and as I waited for my family to wake up, I played New Super Mario Bros. 2 on my 3DS. I can't really explain it, but it was just such a magical experience. I enjoyed the feeling so much, that now it is a tradition of mine to get up very early and play New Super Mario Bros. 2 on Christmas, and I plan to do just that this Christmas as well! That same year was a good year for getting games, I got three of them, Rayman Origins for 3DS, Ridge Racer 3D, and Pokémon Black Version 2. I will forever hold fond memories of playing those new games that Christmas day, Rayman and Ridge Racer in particular. Rayman was especially good as it got me into the wonderful Rayman platforming games that I am a huge fan of to this day!
Last year's Christmas was also particularly memorable for me. Last year I got Ultimate NES Remix, which was a wonderful experience to play on Christmas morning, but even better than that, was the promise that a Wii Mini would be arriving in the mail in a few days, our first home console ever. I was overjoyed! Home consoles had always been too expensive for us, so I'd had to miss out on the entire console generations of the Nintendo 64, the Game Cube, and the Wii. So it was wonderful to be able to catch up on the Wii games I'd missed finally, and also, to finally have a way to play games with my little sister, as I'd always dreamed of and longed for doing. It was, again, one of those absolutely magical feelings. I will never forget those memories, either. And I hope to make more wonderful memories like this Christmas, too!
Marigold's Memories
I remember ten years ago I had been talking my parents' ears off asking for a PlayStation 2. I had played it at my grandparents' house before (in my uncle's room, the same room I had my first video game experience ever with Sonic the Hedgehog 2) and it became a fixation for me. I needed it. I wouldn't stop talking about it, I was relentless! I was sure I would only be happy if I got this new toy and had a video game system of my own to play at home. Then, on Christmas Day 2005, there was this big box that was for us kids to open, and even remembering it now and writing it is giving me goosebumps - that's how exciting it was! So we viciously shredded the wrapping paper and there. It. Was. The box for the PlayStation 2 slim (the model that was more compact and less of a giant mammoth of a machine). We eagerly opened the box and... nothing was in it... but then dad said it was up in their room all set up and everything! And it was like... wow! Yay! Awesome! We zoomed across the house, up the stairs, into their room, and found it right next to what I now remember as being a very tiny screen. So they would watch TV on the bigger screen above and us kids would be stuck to the tiny bottom screen, and that room was the fun room from then on until later when we'd get ourselves other video game systems in the house. I've had several wonderful video game memories thanks to that good old PS2 (that's in our new house now, two rooms away from me as I write this!), and I'll forever be grateful for how fortunate I was to get it.
It was the year 2008. Video games with high-definition in them were here and, as you should know by how I acted in the year above, I needed a piece of that next-generation action and I needed it like it was going to disappear forever if I didn't get it soon enough. I remember playing a demo of Ratchet and Clank (a franchise I grew up with on the PlayStation 2)'s then-newest entry - Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. And it was so incredible to me at the time, that, when I returned home to my sisters playing a game of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, I--being the immature little kid I was then--thought it looked like crap, then... though I still joined in 'cause a fun game was a fun game and I eventually learned to respect games regardless of their graphics, but that's beside the point! I needed an HD video game console, and, after much nagging from yours truly, he gave me two choices. PlayStation 3, or Xbox 360. I had grown up with PlayStation, I played the demo for Ratchet & Clank and it was amazing, so one would think I would've gone for that, right? Wrong! The Xbox 360 was a totally new and alien beast to me, and the Halo games looked too good to miss out on for any longer, so I told him to get me the Xbox 360. The new frontier for little Marigold K. I still remember the days leading up to Christmas - see, my old house let you close off the arches that connected each room, and the Xbox was getting set up in the computer room, so when that got closed off, it wasn't a lot of fun for me and the others, but in the end it was sooooo worth it! When we got it, we also got Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures in one of those two-disc combo packs with the video game for Kung Fu Panda that only dad ever played, and (this is the big one) Halo 3. The exact game I'd been desperately hoping for all year. And with it, dad and I went through the campaign mode together and made some of my most cherished video game memories together. If the gifts for Christmas this year do that for me (which I strongly believe they will), I'll be very, very, very happy.
So that's our fondest gaming memories from Christmas! Have you had any that were similar, or any that you hold especially fondly? Please share in the comments!