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Was just having a natter with some of the guys at work which brought back a few memories. We were talking about stupid errors and it brought to mind the old Cannon Fodder format loading screen...
One memory leads to another and, it being Christmas season, it didn't take long before we were reminiscing a bit about Christmases from our youth, Amigas, Megadrives, Playstations, Saturns...
For my part there are two 'gaming Christmases' I remember particularly well.
The first...
My brother and I had received a Commodore Amiga 500 a year or two ago (maybe around 1990/1991?) and had spent plenty of time flicking through copies of
There used to be those adverts for mail order games companies, something like -
That year my brother and I had asked our parents for games for Christmas and we each got to choose two games (I think) and one more together. We poured over the pages, reviews, making our short lists and trying to decide which games we would finally choose.
Which ones did we most want? Which could we play together? How would some of those multi-game box sets feature in - better value, right?
I don't recall how long it took but we finally made our choices and it was our mum who placed the order over the maroon, spiral-corded phone hanging on the kitchen wall, with both my brother and I standing by. Then the waiting commenced! Chats with friends at school at games we'd be getting, excitement about how we'd play them, and just a great looking forward to Christmas morning.
Remember kids - no internet those days. You had to wait for the games to arrive in their gloriously designed, full-colour cardboard boxes!
I don't remember how the games made their way from the delivery of the postman to the under the Christmas tree, but they did. They probably arrived while we were at school, were wrapped, and that was that. Obviously we knew what the presents were, but still, there was something very good and exciting about it all.
So eventually the day came and it was an early start for my brother and me. I don't recall whether or not we were still bothering our poor parents in the wee hours of the morning. (I suspect so because it felt important to open the gifts in front of them and share that moment. After all, once those games were opened up the computer would be getting more of our attention than our family.) We sat there on the carpeted floor ripping off the wrapping paper and staring excitedly at the awesome box art staring back at us.
My brother had chosen Street Fighter II and .... something else. I had chosen Turrican II, and Robocod (James Pond 2), and then together we opted for the Fists of Fury box set:
It was awesome.
We couldn't wait to enter into the new worlds we had bought access to!
The first disk into the drive was Street Fighter 2. We had decided that was the best way to go since we could both play at the same time.That first experience of the Street Fighter intro screen:
We were pumped!
I discovered I was a Ryu guy, my brother a Ken guy, and so went our morning, our first ever 2D fighter eventually followed by side-scrolling beat em ups, some quality platforming action and that incredible music, intro and platform action of Turrican.
Little did we know paths to our gaming future would be being discovered, or formed, that morning. Happy, happy times!
Anyone else have any standout memories of a gaming Christmas?
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Originally Posted by peterb
