Season's Gaming

A Clich

And don't be tempted into using an emulator. Waiting 10 minutes for a game to load from an audio cassette is a major part of reliving the experience (not dissimilar to the enduring wait for the computer in the first place), and a few games of "dead arm" or "slaps" while the loading screen of Green Beret taunts you from the 14-inch TV screen will be almost as nostalgic as the game itself.

It's the Thought that Counts
Each year offers you another chance to recreate that long lost feeling of seasonal satisfaction.

If your family's anything like mine (and I'm sure it is, with perhaps a few less alcoholics, if you're lucky), no one has any idea what to buy each other. Maybe your parents got tired of storing your childhood in their spare room and gave away that old computer or console, so asking them to take to eBay's virtual high street and track down another is a pretty decent way to put some of the excitement back into your cold, gray December.

Despite being something of a manufactured sentiment, a self-inflicted wait for your computer controlled youth to begin again on Christmas Day will be well worth it, and also offers you the opportunity to spend time researching and acquiring games (again, not emulated, but on their original media), and poring over old magazines to whip you up into the prerequisite, pre-Christmas frenzy.

Oh Baby, It's Cold Outside
Reliving the past is not the only way videogames can bring you closer to Christmas, of course. Modern titles offer something older games cannot: visual realism.

What with global warming, overpopulation and mass poverty bumming out the holiday season, it often simply doesn't feel like Christmas. The blazing hot winter sun, the decorations being on show for quarter of the year and people stressing out about overbearing family commitments at the beginning of November all conspire to make Christmas feel like any other month. But by carefully selecting your videogames to match the time of year, a certain "winter wonderland" essence can ring throughout your well decked virtual halls.

It may sound obvious, but throwing up some powder on the slopes of your favorite snowboarding title goes some way toward making up for the lack of real snow outside. Any variant on this theme (like snow mobiles or sleds) can be equally suitable, and should a few flakes of the real stuff actually start to fall, the effect is exponentially increased. Snowboarding games also serve to remind us - in our ever increasingly sensible adulthood - of the fun side of snow, and stems the downbeat grumbling about muddy sludge, wet feet and frozen car windshields.

This harsh side of winter is also well represented in games such as Max Payne; which eloquently waxes lyrical of the biting wintry sleet and is replete with satisfying, crisp, crunching sound effects of the snow underfoot. The game's morbid theme would undoubtedly help the statistically increased number of manic depressives who appear around Christmas to reminisce about a less cheerful seasonal experience. We cater to everyone, at The Escapist.