While I hate Christmas now, as a child I obviously felt very differently, and quite enjoyed the time: after all, as a kid you get all kinds of neat stuff, and in my case two years that really stand out and happen to be having their respective anniversaries this year are 1993, when I got a Sega Genesis, and 2003, when I got my PlayStation 2 — yes, the one sitting like 3 feet away from me.
Christmas of 1993 was a pretty awesome one. I remember getting a K’nex set which was pretty badass and quite new at the time along with a new bike and, best of all the aforementioned Sega Genesis. I had wanted one for a while since, like seemingly every person who it would turn out is even remotely neurodivergent, I was massively into Sonic the Hedgehog, despite not even having the system to play it on! I recall having a friend who was a bit younger than me who had a Genesis and Sonic, and I’d play it quite a bit over there, so I did have experience with it at least. I’m sure I talked about it enough to plant that seed that a new game console is what I would really like. Add in that the system was getting pretty, shall we say, cost effective, at the time, that helped.
Opening up that system, a Model 2 with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was magical. Oddly, I don’t actually remember opening it, but I know I was beyond excited. Add in some other games like Quackshot and Toxic Crusaders, among others, and I was set for a hell of a time. Oh, the absolute joy of experiencing not just Sonic in my own room but Sonic the Hedgehog 2, in all its glory, was just badass.
Needless to say, while the Genesis isn’t my favorite gaming system ever, it does hold an incredible place in my heart for being “what I had as a kid” since by then the NES had grown quite long in the tooth (for that time period, anyway.)
Move ahead to 2003. This is just post high school, and my life was, as it always is, a mess. I had recently actually had quite a bit of stuff, including my then beloved PlayStation, stolen. That’s right, I was without anything beyond my SNES and NES — the Genesis had, sadly, died by that point and repair wasn’t a known option then — from the Summer until Christmas day 2003. That’s the day I opened up a blue box of absolute joy: the PlayStation 2.
Oh yeah, it was fucking badass, especially getting games like Final Fantasy X and Grand Theft Auto III. While my PlayStation game collection was gone, at least when I would buy replacements I could play them on this, as well as all the new and then-current PlayStation 2 software!
Also, it was a fucking DVD player. Hell yeah, finally DVD in my room!
I absolutely loved, and still do love that system. My particular console looks like it’s been through hell, since it has (along with me) but it still works a treat. It’s been upgraded with the standard 40 gig HDD, for what that’s worth, but otherwise is a perfectly typical PS2 from 2003 — the kind that came with the network adapter thus making installing the hard drive trivial — and it will always be a device which brought me incredible joy during some incredibly dark times.
Oddly, I don’t have anything of note to mention from 2013, but I do find it interesting that two other gaming Christmas’s that are among my favorites happened to be 20 and 30 years ago.
That being said, hope everyone had a good holiday today. Now get all the ho-hum holiday shit out of my sight.