Feature | Favourite Nintendo Gaming Christmas Memories Page 1

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Ho, ho, ho! MERRY CHRISTMAS to one and all! The team really hopes that you are all having a fantastic day, and we decided to share with everyone our favourite Christmas memories. Me? Well, this is obviously my favourite gaming memory - putting together this article and the accompanying Glass to the Wall episode that can be heard in the article below...

Enjoy the team's memories!
- Adam.

Glass to the Wall Ep.37 - Christmas Day Special by Cubed3 on Mixcloud

JORGE

A lot of Christmas memories revolve around gaming for me, from the very first console - the SEGA Mega Drive - gifted by my aunt and uncle as a youngster, to unwrapping Super Mario 3D Land on the Nintendo 3DS last year. The most significant and cheeky memory would have to spawn from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the original release on the Nintendo 64. At the time I'd read countless magazines on just how essential this particular title was and Santa was promptly notified of its importance many months before.

One night, two weeks before the big day, my parents had nipped off to a dinner party and I'd known just which box underneath the glistening Christmas tree to have a sneak peek into. Unfortunately, I couldn't resist and carefully burrowed into the box, slammed the cartridge into the hungry Nintendo 64 and battled through the Deku Tree's innards. The parents returned and were blissfully unaware that the adventure had already unfolded!

[b]JAVIER

Christmas 1988; a huge box wrapped in metallic gold paper, a blood red bow around it. It was a thing of beauty, lovingly wrapped (by mum). I was in the hallway closet, digging through my hidden presents. Yes, I had discovered that Santa wasn't real. I also had discovered the childish pastime of peeking into presents before Christmas. Peeling back a corner… I saw it. It was an NES.

I had spent dozens of hours sitting with friends, watching them play Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and more. Now, finally, I had one of my own. Far from relieving the tension, knowing only made it worse. Every day until Christmas was a rising fever that could only be saved by ripping open that incredible gold wrapping. When I finally did? It was the best Christmas ever.

RUDY

Aaah Christmas... It's a bit hard for me to talk about because it's only been in recent years that Christmas has started to become really prominent as a day that you get presents on in my country of Belgium. Over here, we celebrate Saint Nicholas on 6th December, and typically as a kid, I would get presents on that day and NOT on Christmas. So video game related memories are more aplenty with Saint Nicholas for me.

Christmas and video game related memories, for me, are more to do with the actual content of games. I remember some video game content being themed after Christmas elements and among them the snow and Christmas themed race tracks of Diddy Kong Racing spring to mind. The Freezeezy Peak level in Banjo Kazooie is also a stage that I think I must have played during that time of the year and really put me in the mood for the festivities. Do you also remember that when entering a certain filename when creating a new file in Donkey Kong Country 3 would turn the music of all bonus stages into Christmas carols, and change the shape of certain items to little coloured present boxes? Now that was cool! Oh, and I remember Santa being present in Secret of Mana as well as a character that you had to free from being possessed by a demon or something. Even his reindeer Rudolf was in it, as I recall!

Christmas inside the video games themselves has always been a favourite theme of mine, it always worked to great effect!

SHANE

When you're younger and always tempted to use pocket money on sweets, then birthdays and Christmases tend to become 'games days' in a sense. Though I've long since lost count of how many consoles I've gotten through Christmas gifts (Dreamcast, N64, Game Boy Advance) there is one memory that sticks out in my head when I only got one game as opposed to many. Shamefully, it was also caught on videotape too, so I couldn't forget even if I wanted to!

That game was Banjo-Kazooie, and let me tell you, seeing that tape back now is both a heartwarming and cringe worthy moment wrapped into one. I literally freaked out upon opening it after wanting it for so long and pretty much dismissed everything else I had gotten. Thinking about it now, the Mr. Bean movie has held up a little bit more over time I'd say! Christmas is now far more of a family gathering and Christmas lunch affair for me since I can buy games whenever I want, but I'll never forget those days and how happy they made me.

AARON

For me, Christmas was always a time of the year for a new console or a bunch of video games. Growing up, I didn't normally get games throughout the year, but come the holiday season, I was able to pick out which games I wanted in a Gamestation store in York, where everything seemed to be cheaper and have a much wider range to choose from than anywhere else close to me back home. York wasn't just a lovely holiday destination for me as a child - it was where the games were! Being young and without the accessibility of the Internet and able to afford gaming magazines all the time, it was often left to my dad to pick out games to buy for me and my brother, and to this day, I don't know how he knew to choose such fantastic games! Receiving the likes of Final Fantasy VII, Shenmue and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time as presents, and playing them to find out they were some of the most incredible games that have ultimately made me who I am today, I have to say that I owe a lot to my father for picking out such phenomenal titles. When I think about gaming-related Christmas memories, I will always remember the effect games like these had on me growing up.
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JOSH

Christmas is a toughie for me to draw solid memories from, as being so darn close to my birthday means it's not easy to tie memories of gaming gifts to one or the other! However, I will likely never forget the feeling my brother and I had unwrapping our first N64 back in the late 90s. The first home gaming console we owned that didn't belong to our parents! We were pretty young, but there's no doubt in my mind that it was quite a Super Mario 64-filled Christmas season for us!

Even with all the birthday confusion, modern gaming with its real-time clocks and DLC means that something tedious to many players like DLC can still make some memorable gaming times by having specific events activate at Christmas. I still remember trying to find Jingle in Animal Crossing on the GameCube, or more recently, having Alex Kidd unlocked as a Christmas goody on my Wii U copy of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, even without being near an Internet connection! Who knows? Maybe with the increasing amount of time-based goodies, DLC and Easter Eggs in modern games, Christmas gaming will become an even more memorable thing than it was in the past.

JACOB

'Twas the Christmas of 2001, and the console wars had just begun to start in earnest. Having just recently watched the new South Park episodes parodying both Black Friday and the impending holiday battle between Xbox One and PS4, I'm reminded of similar arguments I had with friends back in the day. "We should all get the PS2," one would say. "No," another would respond, "the Xbox has Halo!"

There was never any question for me though; it was going to be a GameCube, the little purple lunchbox that could. Why? Well, because of Mario and Zelda and Donkey Kong, darn it! I dreamed of a holiday filled with Luigi's Mansion and Super Smash Bros.

When Christmas morning came, my siblings and I crept down the stairs with that special eagerness unique to Christmas. When I saw the GameCube box in the corner, I promptly fell down the remaining stairs as I ran to it. I seem to remember cutting myself opening the box. No matter, occasionally blood is shed in the quest for gaming nirvana. After a good few minutes of delirium that I sincerely hope is not captured on some VHS tape in the family attic, the box lay irreparably violated and the GameCube hooked to the family TV. I, too, then spent the rest of that Christmas day hooked to the TV, in awe of the Gothic beauty of Luigi's Mansion. It's unbelievable to me that this Christmas will mark a dozen years since that morning. Maybe I'll have to break out my copy of Luigi's Mansion to mark the occasion.

LIAM

Nintendo has had quite an impact on Christmas in my household, from the SNES to the Wii U and everything in-between. Perhaps the most memorable for me, though, was the Christmas when I received a Nintendo 64, along with the game that has grown to become one of my all-time favourites, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. That and Lylat Wars were the main two games that influenced my decision to choose video games as one of my hobbies. After playing these games, I looked for earlier titles in their respective series and played through them, enjoying each one I played. It also got me excited for future instalments in the Zelda and Star Fox franchises, sadly though the latter has not seen many entries since the glorious N64 entry. Come on Nintendo! Bring out an all-new Star Fox game for the Wii U!
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SUSAN

Nothing beats the Christmas when my brother and I received a shiny new N64 with Lylat Wars - we had been renting the console for some time, lapping up whatever time we had on birthdays and so on, so the magic was here to stay! We had to be wrestled from the TV for Christmas dinner - our parents and aunts/uncles all having a go on the multiplayer modes of Mario Kart 64 and Lylat Wars; a beautiful family experience. The graphics looked totally spectacular at the time and it really felt like gaming of the future! It's one of those consoles that never age - I still play it now - and Christmas was the first time we had with it permanently.
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STUART

In 1999 life was good. I wasn't one to be very social at school, and most of the time I was sitting in my bedroom, playing my Nintendo 64. However, on the Christmas of that year, things would change, and that change would come in the form of Pokémon Red. Now, Pokémon was already a big thing in the UK thanks to the cartoon and various toys, but the game really captured everyone's imagination, especially mine. Therefore, on Christmas day, I stuck the Red cartridge into my Game Boy Pocket, heard the theme music with Nidorino vs. Gengar and instantly loved the game. I named my player Ash - like almost everyone else did back then - and played the game until the batteries ran out, in-between watching Ernest Saves Christmas and having dinner, of course. I even let my sister have a go, with her catching quite a few Caterpie in the Viridian Forest. It was pure fun and I don't remember any Christmas in terms of gaming that was any more so.
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SIRLINK

My favourite Christmas gaming memory isn't just a specific event that I fondly remember; it's much more than that. It marks the start of a long journey through all the games of my favourite franchise, The Legend of Zelda. Around a decade ago, I received the elusive collector's edition for the Nintendo Gamecube for Christmas. My only previous experience with the series was watching a friend play a tiny bit of Majora's Mask, which was enough to convince me that I simply had to play Zelda as well. Playing the beloved classic Ocarina of Time was nowhere near as ground-breaking as it was for fans that experienced it during the Nintendo 64 era but it and Majora's Mask fascinated me so much that I made it a goal for myself to hunt down and fully complete every game that I've missed while getting incredibly excited about the mere thought of upcoming Zelda games. Discovering the franchise also further increased my interest in video games in general, so it's a particularly special occasion for me and I'm really glad I didn't receive random clothing in its place! *laughs*
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What are your favourite Christmas gaming memories? Did you meet Mario whilst wandering around shopping? Was there are snowy outline of Andross on the ground outside your house? Did you get a Princess Peach Christmas card? Did someone try to mug you using the Master Sword? Whatever happened, even the really outlandish stuff, be sure to let us know!

Have a fantastic Christmas Day and festive time with your family and loved ones.