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What game do you think of when you think "Christmas?"


kitsunebi

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It could be a game you got as a present, or it could just be a game you wish you'd gotten as a present.  Or it could be related in some other way, but the question is - what game or games do you strongly associate with Christmas memories?

For me, when I think of games and Christmas, I think of King's Quest V. 

The year was 1990.  Still stuck using my family's obsolete Tandy 1000SX, I remember being completely bowled over by the previews of King's Quest V in the Fall issue of Sierra's News Magazine:

large.5944d09f83ae7_SierraNewsMagazineVol_3No.3Fall1990.jpg

I was already a Sierra adventure game fanatic, but the VGA graphics in the new batch of games covered in this issue blew me away.  256 colors!  That was 240 more colors than I had ever seen coming from a game before.  I carried that magazine with me everywhere for months, reading and re-reading every article and trying every tactic I could think of to convince my parents that we needed a new computer.

Alas, all of my begging and pleading was for naught, and I received neither a computer nor King's Quest V for Christmas that year.  In fact, I didn't get a new computer until  two years later, and although the first game I got for it was King's Quest VI (on CD-ROM with full speech -wow), I never did get around to owning King's Quest V until years later when I bought the Roberta Williams Collection.  Nevertheless, when I think of games and Christmas, I can't help but think of King's Quest V.  Santa may not have paid me any attention, but I'd never wished harder or longer for a game in my life.

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Good topic! 

I have three distinct memories involving games at Christmas, but I don't remember as much context behind them as in your story (for my Birthday though, I have a couple stories).

Anyway, the earliest one I can remember is opening Dig Dug and Desert Falcon for the Atari 7800. I didn't have a Nintendo back then.

The second memory is playing Zelda: Link's Awakening at my aunt's place for Christmas. What an excellent Zelda game that was!

For the "final" memory, I was given Final Fantasy VI (III in the USA). I ended up playing that game for an entire year without buying another one. I had only briefly played Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy Legend III on GameBoy, so I was completely blown away by the intricate story and the accompanying music. It is still one of my top ten games ever.

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I think of two for different reasons. The first is Sonic & Knuckles because I got that game for Christmas in 1994, and even though I played it a lot from renting it, I still played that game a ton after getting it.

The second game is Ristar for the Genesis, and that's because of the music for the fifth level, Planet Freon. The music always had a wintery, Christmas feel to me. Every time I hear that music, it makes me think of Christmas. Incidentally, I bought that game in August 1996 on a weekend trip to Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, where I bought it for $19.99 at the local Meijer. If I had thought ahead I should have purchased two copies, and I should have never sold the one I did buy.

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2 hours ago, AlidarJarok said:

Getting my NES the Christmas of '89 and getting Super Castlevania 4 and Final Fight for my SNES in '91 stand out the most to me. Man I miss those days.

Yeah, I remember getting Final Fight with my SNES that year as well (along with Sim City, and...Pilotwings, I think.)  The pack-in Super Mario World was unquestionably the better game, but Final Fight's enormous character sprites impressed me so much at the time and made me feel I was really getting my 16-bits worth of graphical power.  Of course, nowadays I'd choose Mario World every time.

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7 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Yeah, I remember getting Final Fight with my SNES that year as well (along with Sim City, and...Pilotwings, I think.)  The pack-in Super Mario World was unquestionably the better game, but Final Fight's enormous character sprites impressed me so much at the time and made me feel I was really getting my 16-bits worth of graphical power.  Of course, nowadays I'd choose Mario World every time.

Same here, I love Super Mario World to this day. I know Final Fight for the SNES gets a lot of hate now days. But at the time it was the next best thing to the arcade.

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