by Nelson
When I decided I’d write this article, I realized that Christmas has always been pretty good to me. I’m an only child. My birthday is a week before the 25th. My parents were very committed to making sure that birthdays didn’t blend with Christmas, and Santa Claus and I have always been close, personal friends – particularly after that time I consulted with his elves on how to make the Batman figures more movie accurate.
It was hard to narrow down which gifts I wanted to feature. The truth is that, if I were to try and cover all of the best gifts I got growing up, this piece would transform from article to novella. And, hey, I still manage to score pretty big around Christmastime thanks to the fact that my wife is an absolutely astounding woman.
Jokes aside, though, I’d be a selfish idiot if I didn’t acknowledge how ridiculously lucky I am. Not everyone has all of the fantastic holiday memories that I do, and there is far, far more to the season than all of the cool stuff I’ve gotten over the years.
Still though, Mr. Claus gave me permanent status on the Nice List, and here are some of the great things I’ve scored as a result.
For me, the entirety of 1992 revolved around Batman Returns. I was entirely consumed with The Caped Crusader’s Yuletide showdown with Penguin, Shreck, and Catwoman. I can’t even begin to recall all of the Kenner BatFigures with totally insane color variants I accumulated that year. But the morning I woke up to find the Batcave Command Center fully assembled and displayed under the tree was the morning I realized that Santa and Jesus were in cahoots to make Christmas the best thing in the entire world. To say that this thing was awesome would be to give it a great disservice. This single glorious set manages to include Wayne Manor – complete with secret Batcave grandfather clock entrance, the Batcave – complete with Batsuit vault and Batcomputer, and the villainous Penguin’s hideout – complete with a collapsible floor conveniently located over a vat of “sewage.” Initially, the Command Center was intended to be released with Kenner’s Batman ’89 line, but it wound up being canceled. It’s pretty obvious that the villain’s lair was designed to be Axis Chemicals instead of Arctic World, and most of the playset’s action features are based on stuff from the first movie. But none of these technicalities mattered at all to me. All I cared about was having a wondrous playset that allowed me play out some of the best and most exciting Bat Adventures ever.
G.I. Joe Rhino
When they were coming out, the G.I. Joe Hall of Fame Collection were some of my favorite toys on the market. In a short span, I accumulated nearly all of them. Because they were so much larger than their 3.75” counterparts, the thought of vehicles compatible with the figures never even crossed my mind. I had no idea that a jeep capable of carrying four Hall of Famers at a time – complete with a missile launcher that actually fired – even existed. So this particular Christmas surprise packed a hell of a one-two punch. On that day, I learned that the craftsmanship of Santa’s elven legions truly knows no bounds, and I had a brand new jeep for Cobra Commander and Destro to highjack. But The Man in the Red Suit didn’t stop with that. The Rhino was parked underneath our tree with G.I. Joe’s signature pilot, Ace, sitting in the driver’s seat. Why he decided to swap out his Skystriker for a jeep (or why he was still wearing his pilot’s helmet) never really crossed my mind. I had a big jeep that was capable of launching missiles astonishing distances. All was right with the world.
I got a Mac long before Macs were cool. In fact, they weren’t even Macs back then. They were Macintoshes, and you were far more likely to come across them in an elementary school computer lab instead of a home office. As a result, finding non-educational games to enjoy on the home computer was nearly impossible. I vividly remember going to stores, finding one cool looking title after the other, and repeatedly flipping the boxes over to find that they were only compatible with Windows. Before the Internet, a computer with Mario Teaches Typing as the sole piece of gaming software wasn’t all that fun. So, Santa’s best software development elves worked their magic, and I found Oregon Trail 2, The Yukon Trail, Sim City 2000, and a real gem of a game called Re-Elect JFK waiting for me on a glorious Christmas morning. Sure, the Trail series was trying to be educational, but I was having too much fun naming my characters Big Zeke, Mama Zeke, Middle Zeke, and Baby Zeke and cackling at the status updates (nothing funnier to a 5th grader than a game telling you that “Middle Zeke has the flu”) to learn anything about the pioneers and their treacherous journeys.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the original Nintendo Entertainment System, and I considered my Super NES to be an actual member of the family. But, at the end of the day, I spent more time on my Game Boy than anything else. It was portable, so it was perfect for car rides. Without the television factor, you could stay up all hours of the night playing. And, with stuff like the Super Mario Land series, it hardly ever felt like you were playing lite versions of the regular console games. Still, though, you couldn’t help but think about how cool it would be to pilot Mario’s one-man sub on something bigger than a 3×5 screen. It was only a matter of time before Nintendo capitalized on this with the Super Game Boy adapter cartridge. You put your Game Boy cart in the adapter; you put the adapter in your Super Nintendo, and, bam, you’ve got yourself a 1994 Switch. The only real issue with the Super Gameboy was that it was heavily marketed as being capable of colorizing the grey and black classics, but that was only kinda/sorta true. You could give the games different tints, or you could use an MS Paint-like feature to draw on the game screen. But my dreams of playing WWF King of the Ring in full color or being able to tell Scorpion and Sub-Zero apart were not to be. Nevertheless, the Super Game Boy allowed me to finally pilot that one-man sub on my TV screen, and there was certainly nothing wrong with that.
Let’s face it, Nintendo owned Christmas. I struggle to think of any Christmas morning without something from those wonderful Japanese wizards gently placed under the tree – at least until my mother’s “if you want games, buy them yourself” mandate that remained in place for years. Regardless, I’m not sure if Santa ever quite topped himself after he delivered the Nintendo 64 w/ Atomic Purple Controller accompanied by a copy of the best damn wrestling game ever made. Sure, THQ’s later offerings may have packed more polished graphics and expanded rosters, but they didn’t give you the chance to duke it out with Joe Bruiser, and, honestly, that’s a loss that I found incredibly tough to cope with. World Tour was just amazing. Realizing that, if you went into the options and turned Realism on, you could bust your opponents wide open and rip off Rey Mysterio Jr’s mask put things on a whole new level. Just thinking about it makes me want to fire up the ol’ 64 that I’ll keep forever and insist to be buried with and see how long I can hang in there with Big Joe in a Knockout match.
I’ve wrapped so many articles with the “I’m only scratching the surface” phrase, but, once again, it’s absolutely true. From stereos complete with Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness to Super Mario Brothers 3 to the battle wagon from the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves toy line…. this season has been good to me, and I sincerely hope that it’s good to you as well.
Doubtfire 