Christmas, 1988. My brothers and I rush out to the old Christmas tree looking for a certain box. We already knew what was in it. You see, a few days prior, while our parents were out of the house, we began rummaging through their closet looking for presents (a holiday tradition that went back as far as I could remember and continued for years) trying to see what the next toy we were going to get was going to be. There was the usual Toys R Us bags with random items. RC cars, board games, Legos, etc. But this year was different. In one of the bags, stashed way in the back, was the holy grail of toys—A Nintendo Entertainment System. The one with ROB. My brother and I shrieked at each other and started jumping up and down. Christmas morning could not come fast enough. I remember those days were like torture. 4 days home with nothing to do knowing what awaited us is a lot for a 6 year old to bear.

As we looked all around, there was nothing shaped like it in sight. Confused, we began to open different presents. Don’t get me wrong, the gifts were great, I mean, anything is better than nothing, right? But that one item was oddly missing. A little while later, everything was opened. We were told to bring our stuff to our bedroom, and we obliged. A few hours later we were hanging around the living room, when our mom came in. “Looks like Santa accidentally put this here!” she said as she pulled out a wrapped box from behind the couch. My brothers and I gasped. We tore the paper open and looked at our greatest present. Oh how the box shined in the twinkling Christmas lights. That moment my love affair with Nintendo began.

Fast forward a few years. Many NES games came and went. Zelda, Donkey Kong, all the Mario Bros. games, and of course my favorite NES game of them all – Bubble Bobble. But, it was starting to become stale. Magazines started showing the greatest thing I had ever laid eyes on—the Super NES. Christmas of ’91 was such a draw for me. My brother and I began asking for the SNES months before Christmas. Surely we’d get it, we thought. But we were wrong. Christmas came and went without a SNES in sight. I was bummed, sure, but I remembered all the fun I’d been having with my NES, or “regular Nintendo” as we had taken to calling it. Suddenly the lack of a Super Nintendo didn’t bother me as much. I just continued to put away the hours on the NES. By Christmas of ’92, I didn’t even care about getting the SNES. I was having too much fun already. Super Nintendo would always be a draw, of course, but I told myself it wasn’t a big deal if we didn’t get it. That year, yet again, we rummaged through the parents closet. Again, no SNES in sight. “I guess we’re not getting it,” I told my brother. I guessed wrong.

I’ll never forget the reaction my brother had Christmas morning. As we looked through our presents, my brother saw one box that was bigger than the rest, way on the other side of the tree. I wasn’t even looking at him as he pulled it out. I was in my own world. I didn’t see the look on his face as he tore open the wrapping paper, but I remember those words. I can still hear them in my head today.

“Whoa baby! Super Nintendo!”

I rushed over to where he sat on the ground, his face shining. We actually ripped the box apart to get at the sweet sweet console inside. Our older brother, who had long since grown out of Nintendo, hooked it up for us. We spent the next 6 hours playing Super Mario World. We beat it the first day.

To me, if NES was like a piece of candy, SNES was like having unlimited access to a candy store. The sound was better, the colors were brighter, the fun was, well, funner. “Regular Nintendo” had gotten my attention, but Super Nintendo had me hooked for life.

Years later, my brothers all have grown out of gaming. Sure, my younger brother will play a game of Mario Kart or Zombies Ate My Neighbors once in a while, but that’s about it. As for me, I have been a fan of games since that winter of ’88. Well, not so much a fan of games, but a fan of Nintendo.

Playstation came, same with Playstation 2. The games were fun, sure, but they weren’t anything like the times I had with Nintendo. I bought a Nintendo 64, as well as a Gamecube. I wanted again to feel what I felt that Christmas of 1988, and felt even stronger that Christmas of ’92. But it wasn’t quite the same. Sure, I packed more hours than I can count into Zelda: Ocarina of Time, but the feeling of intense joy just weren’t there. The same with Gamecube. Was my love of Nintendo fading? Hardly. I still play Super Nintendo, and the DS is one of the greatest things I have ever laid eyes on. It was the consoles. The consoles didn’t hold the same draw to me. But that is soon to change.

It’s been just over a year since Nintendo revealed the Wii controller and once again took over my life. I have never been this excited about a gaming system. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited for anything, ever. Every day I check the myriad of gaming sites on the net looking for that next little tidbit of information. Every screenshot released, every video, my eyes devour them, and leave me craving more. Every ounce of information makes me giddy, and makes the wait that much harder. It may be $250, the controllers may b e $60, but when it comes to the fun we will all have, what does it matter? This entire past year has felt like those 4 days before Christmas in 1988. And I still have another 9 weeks to go. But I will be waiting with cash in hand come midnight of November 18th. Torture, thy name is waiting. Joy, thy name is Nintendo.