As I’m sure is the case with most gamers, my favorite Christmas presents over the years have always been video games. In fact, certain Christmases are virtually defined in my mind by the games I received that year. While this year’s festivities are still fresh in mind, I thought I’d run down a few of the greatest gaming Christmases I’ve had.

1996
Games received:


I was late to the Playstation party, so in ’96 I was still rocking the Super Nintendo. While Final Fight II and Super Star Wars are mediocre games that I have fond nostalgic memories of, Zombies Ate My Neighbors remains one of my very favorites from the 16-bit era. It’s impeccably designed, and the ‘50s B-movie vibe is flawlessly executed in the game’s visuals and music (it’s easily one of the top soundtracks from the SNES). It’s also the first game that introduced me to the joys of co-op gaming – and the sheer hatred that arises when your “partner” steals the weedwhacker.

1997
Games received:


Man, this was a great year. There were about two weeks after Christmas before school started again, and in 1997 every free second of those two weeks went into these magnificent games. FFVII was and still is one of my favorite RPGs of all time, but Oddworld really knocked me on my ass. I’d asked for it solely on the strength of its brilliant “The Odds are against you” ad campaign, but didn’t really know what to expect in terms of gameplay. Seeing the opening cinematic for the first time blew my mind, and when it ended and Abe was under your control immediately I fell in love.

1998
Games received:


Okay, in hindsight Vigilante 8 isn’t that great. It runs slow, its visuals were overly ambitious for what the PS1 could handle, and the ‘70s style is a little grating. Still, after years of playing Twisted Metal’s cartoony take on car combat, the realistic physics and incredible level of destructability in environments rocked. And while today Pokemon is an inescapable staple of gaming, 11 years ago it was a little bundle of awesome, direct from Japan, that only America’s coolest kids knew about. Or, at least, that’s how it felt at the time to a 14 year old Pokemon fan. The Poke-fever in me died somewhere around the second half of Pokemon Silver, but Blue was the only one I truly loved.

1999
Games received:


We were far from rich growing up, so when Christmas rolled around I knew to expect precisely one big, expensive gift – like a new game. When making my ’99 wish list, I put three new games at the top, any one of which would have made me freak out with joy. Christmas morning, when I opened game after game and ended up with all three, I just about crapped my pants. Talk about an embarrassment of riches – it took the better part of an hour for me to figure out which one I wanted to play first.

2002
Games received:


This year Christmas started in late October, when I took the funds I’d slowly saved over the summer to EB Games in the mall to purchase a little game called Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. It’s probably no surprise that I was still playing it when Dec. 25 rolled around and I unwrapped three games that are still personal favorites to this day – a violent samurai epic, an unbelievably fun stealth/FPS/RPG hybrid, and the scariest game of all time. Gift cards were then used to acquire a farming simulator and a slow-motion noir. My new games were as great as they were diverse, and thus I was entertained for nearly the whole of 2003.

2003
Games received:


Things can change a lot in a year. By Christmas season 2003, I’d moved out of my parents’ house and into an apartment with my girlfriend, and I was gainfully employed by the very EB I’d bought GTA at the year before. This was the year I learned the painful truth about game store employees’ at Christmas; namely, that nobody wants to buy you a game as a gift if you could have used your discount to buy it cheaper yourself. But a new co-worker and all-around great guy took it upon himself to spread the word about a game he loved, and bestowed upon me a copy of Beyond Good and Evil. Thanks, Keith.

2009
Games received:


Games as Christmas gifts were few and far between in the last few years, which made this present all the more awesome. I know it’s been getting really mixed reviews across the gaming world, but I have fallen in love with Climax’s pacifist take on nightmarish horror. The fact that every time Silent Hill shifts to a dead ice world it brings back haunting memories of last February makes the game even scarier.

So that’s my Christmas gaming memories, folks. What about it, any of you have gaming-related holiday stories to share?