A few decades ago the masses believed video games were a waste of time for lackadaisical youths to pacify themselves while ignoring their responsibilities as both kids and young adults. As more and more people started understanding the benefits of gaming so too did the perception of what a video game is and, most importantly, the benefits gaming can bestow on a person’s life changed.
Hi, my name is James Bullock and I am a gamer who has spent the better part of his existence testing the laws of physics, exploring the vastness of a world ruined, and been a champion inside various arenas courtesy of digitized worlds both driven by reality and created through pure unbelievable ingenuity unlike anything seen by human eyes. And as a gamer I’ve discovered something else video games provide: life lessons. Today I look at getting video game-based presents during the holiday season.
Always Be Appreciative
To this day I don’t know what convinced me that I needed a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Was it a random commercial or magazine ad? Did my parents say something about the video game console and it caught my ear? Did I see someone playing the system during a family get together? No matter the reason, the main present for me on Christmas 1989 was a NES. Thankfully, my parents were blessed enough to pick up the “Action Bundle” that featured the system, two controllers, the “Zapper” light gun and a game cartridge featuring not one, but two games (“Super Mario Bros.” & “Duck Hunt”). This is where my video game hobby began and thrived for four years as I tested my hand at everything from creating dirt bike tracks (“Excitebike”) to dying repeatedly as mutated creatures (“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” & “Battletoads”) to simply stomping mushrooms with eyes (the “Super Mario Bros.” series).
By 1992, the Nintendo Entertainment System was practically dead in the water thanks to the company moving onto its next venture, the “Super Nintendo Entertainment System”. New games were released rarely; and most of those games were terrible at best. Thankfully for the uninformed gamer in me, a weekend at my aunt Cicero’s house would open my eyes to the “future”. I sat with Cicero’s future stepson, Reginald (Reggie or “Boo” as we all affectionately call him) and watched as a hedgehog wearing red shoes and rocking a Japanese anime style hairdo sped through this digital, colorful world before me.
Over a year would pass until Christmas 1993 and the day I became the owner of a Sega Genesis. But the Genesis package I received for Christmas didn’t come with “Sonic The Hedgehog” as I had hoped. Instead it featured its sequel, “Sonic The Hedgehog 2”. I was in for a brand new experience that would eventually go beyond just “Sonic” games and reinforced my passion for this electronic wonder. There was another partial disappointment as “Mortal Kombat” was the most important game I wanted that year to build my Genesis library. Unfortunately they were sold out of copies at the time and I was left Kombat-less. My dad would pick up a rental copy that I had the chance to enjoy for a couple of days, but it just left me wanting more even though I was thankful to have a chance to experience the digitized gore that looks incredibly tame by today’s standards.
There would be more moments of misses when it came to video game presents as the years progressed including my copy of “The King of Fighters ’95” on the Playstation having stability issues, not getting “Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance” on the PS2 & having to go out the day after Christmas to buy it with the money my grandma gifted me, and being forced to choose between “Devil May Cry” and “Gran Turismo 3” (I chose the latter, but I bought “DMC” that next summer).
Though things may not pan out as you would hope when it comes to getting presents during the holidays, be understanding and, most importantly, appreciative of people going out of their way to hopefully provide a memorable & joyful day… unless you’re that kid whose parents put socks in an empty Xbox box – those parents are terrible people who deserve lumps of coal for the rest of their lives.
