The recent passing of my father at the not so middle age of 91 has been as heartbreaking as one could imagine. When I think of all the things he was to me as a dad, I still get choked up. He was not really a teacher, other than leading by example, and what an example of his generation he was.
His work ethic was tied to a reward ethic, and while his career as a press room foreman at a printing company was good enough to raise four kids, we were not really rich. At Christmas each year he received a very nice bonus check, and he spent much of it being generous to his kids.
As I type this and still tear up a few months after his funeral, I remember that those gifts continued into adulthood, and even though he may have not known what I was playing, he usually hit a home run when he guessed.
1975
Dad got us a Pong clone for Christmas and being a nine year old nerd-in-waiting, I promptly kicked everyone's ass at it and we all got bored with it in a few days. I tried to get into it later but it only had a single player handball game for solo play. The real star for me that Christmas was the bigass Space:1999 Eagle Ship with action figures. It was awesome.
Status: Lost
1978
This Christmas centered around 2-XL, a toy robot that was really just a fancy 8-Track player with an unbelievably innovative design that allowed it to seem like interacting with an actual robot. The tapes had quizzes and questions covering all sorts of topics. It was an educational toy that was a lot of fun, and I received several additional tapes that Christmas.
Now that I reflect on it, it was technically my first programmable electronic device, and since it also played 8-tracks, my first audio equipment that wasn't a hand-me-down from an older sibling. My first album purchase followed shortly after Christmas, and yes it was the soundtrack to Grease, because it was and still is awesome.
Status: Lost
1979
My older brother had the Mattel Football handheld that kicked off (pun intended) the handheld electronic gaming explosion in the late 1970s. It was cool as hell and fun, but I had my sights set on another game that came out before Christmas from a little company called Coleco.
The Coleco Amaze-A-Tron handheld was a randomly generated maze game that took place on a 5x5 grid of small touchscreen squares. The LED numeric display told the players where to put the plastic piece that represented START and the one for FINISH, and two players took turns racing through the maze. It was even fun solo and had eight variations total.
Finally, a game that never got boring. It's a masterpiece in design that still works to this day, although I did snag a backup on Ebay to replace the box and a missing plastic player piece.
Status: Still have it. Got an extra one off Ebay for replacement box, game piece, and battery cover.
Also that year, Mom and Dad surprised me with a second electronic gift that was not on my radar. The T.E.A.M.M.A.T.E. Game Computer, an LED toy computer with a 4x4 red LED grid display and a numeric keypad to program it was one of those toys meant to be educational and with me, it succeeded.
By entering simple commands, the player could program small mini games and light displays. There was not a lot to work with here, and there was no way to save things you entered, but the device (technically a dedicated console like those Pong-only machines) and its stellar manual covered the basics of how computers work so well (ROM, RAM, Input, Output, etc) that I used the device in my 8th grade science fair project and got a Superior blue ribbon.
Status: Lost
Finally that year, there were more 2-XL tapes and an actual game for it called Tri-Lex, which was a fun break from the quizzical nature of the other tapes.
Status: Lost
1980
While this was the year when Atari changed the industry by bringing home Space Invaders for the VCS, I still was not on board for getting a console. I had seen and played a little on my neighbor's Atari but was not impressed with Combat for long. I wanted Space Invaders as a handheld and Entex had that covered, and luckily so did Dad.
It's a very oversimplified and pared down LED version of Space Invaders but was fun to play and truthfully, still is.
Status: Still have it. Picked up an extra one somewhere for parts.
1981
By the fall of 1981 the Space Invaders clones and the overall explosion of arcade games had me hooked, and I desperately wanted that Atari VCS, but not for Space Invaders. Atari had paved the way for the arcade-to-console pipeline and with Asteroids it was clear that if I wanted to play the now cool as hell arcade games at home, I needed an Atari VCS and made that quite clear to Dad, as I trusted him and Mom with what I knew then would be my most life-changing gift ever.
So they got my an Odyssey 2 with Alien-Invaders Plus and while grateful as always (it was expensive), I was crestfallen at first as their Space Invaders clone was pretty bad. Telling my friends, 3 of which got Ataris that year and one whose Dad already had one, that I was now stuck with the Odyssey 2, was a shameful experience.
Since the gang would stay overnight in my basement, with someone bringing an Atari and all bringing games, it wasn't long before they were amazed at subsequent Odyssey 2 games like KC Munchkin and UFO being better than the Atari games. We also got our shit together once long enough to play the awesome Quest for the Rings.
In the end, Dad's brand loyalty to Magnavox or whatever lead him to get me the Odyssey 2 taught me that any console could have incredible games and to be humble and take what life gives you and enjoy it.
Status: Still have all.
Also that year they got me (from what I understood at the time) the first videogame watch in the Nelsonic Space Attacker Watch. The thing was an engineering marvel and a design masterpiece, with two layers of LCD working in conjunction, a full calendar, game demo mode, a small light, and other bells and whistles.
I was too young and stupid to take care of it however, and it was lost to the ages.
Status: Lost
1982
This Christmas Odyssey 2 was getting something the Atari VCS wasn't - a voice synthesis add-on called The Voice. By now I was in full support of Odyssey 2 development and there were great games coming out with the unit that took advantage of not only its speech but its other improved sound features.
Dad rounded up The Voice, Type & Tell, and Attack of the Timelord that year, and it was a good haul.
Status: Still have all.
1983
Dad's generosity extended past Christmas at times, and in the summer of 1983 I convinced him to get me a Commodore VIC 20 Computer and Datasette Drive. I swear, I was soooo close to convincing him to get me the Commodore 64 instead, but that machine was too pricey in 1983 for his tastes. I got a few games before Christmas and on that holiest of mornings my software library for it grew with Gorf, Jupiter Lander, and Omega Race being added to my collection. The real prize, however, was the 16K Memory Expander cartridge they got me, a necessary addition that paved the way for Crush, Crumble, & Chomp a few weeks later.
Status: Ebayed
1985
By this year I was grown up but living at home while working and attending classes at the Mansfield OSU branch. The working part allowed me to finally catch myself up to the state of the art and I acquired a Commodore 64 and disk drive shortly thereafter.
Dad was taken back when he saw that I had gotten the disk drive myself as well, saying he had inended to get me that for Christmas. And that was the handoff, we both knew. From this point on I was able to fund my own game purchases, and most certainly would at my own discretion.
Nonetheless, he and Mom got me Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative, a terrible Star Trek text adventure that I barely ever got into. It was very weird, but I was grateful and it set a precedent of them buying me random games throughout my adult life with no knowlege of what I had and what I was interested in.
Status: Ebayed
1989
By this year I had long since moved back to Columbus with my Commodore 64 in tow and had started my new city life, balanced between work, college, and partying my ass off. I lived with my mess of a college girlfriend who hated my love of games, but had allowed my to add an NES to my collection, purchased with my tax refund.
I'm not sure if I had told Dad about owning one, but that Christmas they surprised me again with a copy of To The Earth, a terrible NES light gun game. Once again I was grateful, but baffled.
Status: Ebayed
1992
The fall of 1992 brought a great wave of Super Nintendo games for me, and the world, so I was in absolute awe when the folks got me Super Castlevania IV. This game was already in my sights of course but they took a chance that I did not have it and hit a home run with this gift.
Status: Ebayed. Reacquired on the SNES Mini console.
2004
Mom passed in 2003 and at that point gifts were no longer expected anyway between all us grown up kids and Dad, but we usually got small things. Thus I was absolutely floored when Dad gifted me with a completely unexpected XBox console.
I was mostly playing MMORPGS like Ultima Online and City of Heroes in those days, and the only console of that generation I had acquired was the Nintendo Gamecube. I'd been living away from home for almost 2 decades at this point so I have no inkling that Dad had made anything other than an impulse buy with that one.
Maybe he wanted to gift his then tragically still messed up and single son one last big gift, and he really outdid himself with this generous final offering. The fact that the XBox's market share compared to the Playstation 2 mirrored the Odyssey 2 to the Atari VCS was not lost on me. I think it came with Halo, and I developed a small library for the system over the next few years.
Status: Traded In.
2017
Dad got me a real nice pen in a case from a local jeweler. I know, it's not a videogame gift, but it means a lot to me in several ways. It's a reminder of the old school world he lived in, and in which I was raised. Also, it sits on my desk at work, which for the past year and a half has been at home, a reminder of his work ethic and how his hard work and attention to detail progressed his career.
2021
Dad passed in early July, but with the easing of restrictions we got to gather the family for Fathers Day at the assisted living facility he was in. He lit up to see us all there, marveled at his great grandson who towered over us all, having graduated high school and signed up to join the Marines.
Dad's last gift then was to hold on for one last gathering of the family. Over those last few months of visits, he held varying levels of lucidity, but always recognized us when we entered his room.
After settling his affairs (managed by my much smarter sister), I was sent a small inheritance a few weeks later of just over $500. At first I just deposited it and did not think of spending it on anything for myself. But my supportive wife reminded me weeks later that I was entitled to do just that with Dad's inheritance.
So I recovered one of these on Ebay last week:
Thanks, Dad, one last time. I’ll take better care of this one.
