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Wonderful Ways Games Bring Families Together During the Holidays

Nothing else quite brings a family together and tears it apart at the same time.

By Jay VergaraPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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I completely understand it's still November, but I don't care. Let's talk about the holidays real quick. When it comes to the holidays, there are at least a few things you can count on.

  • First, any and all attempts at maintaining your diet are null and void.
  • Secondly, Christmas carols start promptly after Thanksgiving.
  • Lastly, being forced into a single building with the rest of your family is vastly improved if you have video games on hand.

At least, that's always been my experience. There are a lot of ways that games can bring a family together (at least the younger generation). In some ways, getting new games on the holidays is way more fun with your family around.

You Get to Share in the Excitement Together

Let me tell you about the Christmas of 2000 (yeah, that was 17 years ago. We're all old now). The Playstation 2 had just come out and I was lucky enough to be able to get one for Christmas. The second I unwrapped that thing, my cousins and I stormed to the next room with the bigger TV and plugged that sucker in.

It was a team effort. Some tore up the plastic bags to grab the wires, others figured out where the connectors would go, and the youngest struggled with the airtight wrapping on the game I was given. That game was Onimusha, and the minute we popped that thing in, we were floored. The graphics, for the time, were absolutely mind-blowing and we couldn't believe it. It was like the game was a pre-rendered cutscene, but all the time.

We couldn't get enough of it and we took turns playing the game. By taking turns, I mean one person played until they were dead-armed into giving up the controller. Despite what I feel was probably permanent nerve damage to my arm, I can't imagine that experience being any better than it was with my family. Playing new games alone is cool and all, but having your family there with you to enjoy (and sometimes backseat game) is something else entirely.

The Games Feel More Exciting

Look, I enjoy playing games online just as much as the next person. There's something to be said about being able to play with gamers from all walks of life and from nearly every spot on the globe. However, you have to admit that there's something immensely satisfying about seeing the look of confusion on your sibling or cousin's face when you crush them at something.

For my family, the go to competitive games were Street Fighter and Tekken. I'll be honest, I'm not much of a fighting game fanatic. My eldest cousin had the skills to pay the bills, though, and he would mop the floor with us. This was especially true in Tekken, when he used King and his stupid lock combos. But no one is unbeatable.

The Christmas I managed to beat him was one of the most magical Christmases of my childhood. The room got raucous with me yelling in excitement and him spouting an expletive at his utter defeat. That tiny living room was absolutely electric. Up until the part where my mom walked in and yelled at us for yelling. Still a solid win, though.

It Gives You a Chance to Connect

Outside of the holidays, everyone is doing their own thing, and once or twice a year we all come together. The one thing that my family somehow always agreed on was gaming. Even as our other interests diverged, we still gravitated towards the console when we were all crammed in the same house together. The N64 with its four controller ports and Goldeneye was all we needed to burn through Christmas Eve and Day as kids.

Those were moments we made together, and we all remember them well. Now that we're the old farts, it's our nieces and nephews that gather around the console doing the exact same thing. The only difference is that we sometimes join them, or just watch them play, but with genuine interest.

Life gets busier and asks more of you the older you get, but the holidays gives us all a chance to slow down. Some of us have married (and even have kids) but we grew up gaming with each other and we maintain that to this day. Games give us a chance to just be kids again for a minute while teaching the actual kids how to properly pull off an infinite combo in Marvel.

Take a look at this classic.

I remember feeling like that, and I'm willing to bet money you do, too. Everyone in my age group in the family felt like that when someone got an awesome console or new game for the holidays. It didn't matter who actually got the present because we were all going to get a chance to play.

That was the cool part of coming together for the holidays and just one of the wonderful ways games brought us together. It kept us hyped and the grown ups got to bugger off and do their own thing. It was our time and we made the best of it, and that feeling's passed on to our nieces and nephews, sons and daughters. When I stop to think about it, it's actually pretty amazing what a simple console can do.

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About the Creator

Jay Vergara

I'm a SoCal based photographer and freelance writer with a love for everything nerdy.

Follow me on Instagram at Mediumblast and Twitter on @medivmblast

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