For pretty much everyone reading this, I’m going to assume that playing new video games on Christmas Day was a major part of their youth. Who can forget the anticipation, the waiting… And then the moment arrived. You tore open the wrapping paper. You had a shiny new game in your hands. If you were lucky, it was one that you wanted. One you had circled in the catalogue. One you had pointed out when shopping to your parents. If you were unlucky, it was some cheap game from someone like Midas Interactive.

Anyway, I think for the most part, those games we got for Christmas have a special place in our memories. Preserved as if in amber. Ready to be recalled and day dreamed about. So here are some of my memories:

Galaxions.

Yes, I’ve spelled that correctly. Galaxions was a blatant clone of Galaxians, and it was the first game I played on my Commodore 16 the christmas I got it. And you know what, I replayed it a while back and it was every bit as good as my memory had me believe it to be. A single screen arcade game with fairly simple graphics was perfect fodder for the humble C16. No tricky scrolling. No complex backgrounds. Just the blackness of space, and some colourful sprites attacking you from the top of the screen.

Ghosts & Goblins

A few years later, I finally had a ZX Spectrum (the much maligned +2A model manufactured by Amstrad). And despite getting the James Bond pack, complete with light gun, I was more interested in playing this. Yes, I was bloody rubbish at it, rarely getting much past the first level, but I had an absolute blast playing it. I’d played the arcade version on my summer holidays, so having the same game at home was incredible. Yes, the graphics looked only vaguely like the arcade version, and it sounded nothing like it, but it was the arcade game in MY HOME!

Dynamite Dux

I didn’t want this game. When my brother and I got our Master System, we were allowed to choose a game to go with it. I wanted Basketball Nightmare or Double Dragon, but my brother pouted and threatened a tantrum unless we got Dynamite Dux. So we did. And you know what? I actually really enjoyed it. Yes, its a bit slow, and a bit basic, but at the time? Stepping up from the Spectrum, this was a quantum leap forwards. Full colour graphics! No colour clash! Music! Sound effects! And with console games being so much more expensive (this was the period just before I began earning by having a newspaper round), this game got played to death, when i could pry the controller out of my brothers hands and stop him playing it.

World Of Illusion

This one in particular is burned into my memories. The year we got our Mega Drive, my mother had to work Christmas Day. So we got up at 5am (no mean feat for a teenager), and rapidly opened our presents, then set the Mega Drive up. And as this was a 2 player game, both my brother and I got straight into this. Our Mega Drive was a “standalone” unit, you see. All the Sonic 2 sets were sold out, so the store sold us the Mega Drive and this (we also got a copy of Another World). To this day, this is THE Sega/Disney platformer for me. I’m rubbish at platform games, but this one? Yeah, I can beat it.

And those are some important Christmas gaming memories for me. Thanks for reading.