I wanted to post that already one year ago, but somehow never had the time.

Well, it was exactly 31 years ago (30 years ago if I would have posted this at Christmas 2012) when I got my very first video game console, the Philips Videopac G7000, for Christmas on 24th December 1982. It was my biggest wish that year, and the most expensive Christmas present I ever begged for. And I was more than happy when I really saw that big parcel under the Christmas tree. The G7000 came with Videopac 2, containing the three games Pairs, Space Rendezvous and Logic.

We had only two TV channels back then, and they were not HD like today, they were blurry, they were grainy, at least that’s how I remember them. Now imagine that crystal clear picture from the G7000 on our TV screen. And it didn’t come over the air from some television transmitter, it came from my G7000 in our living room. And we couldn’t just watch the programme, we could interact, we could move the space ships on the screen, we could type in the letters in Memory to turn over the tiles and the numbers in Logic to find the right code. My cousin and I played Videopac until midnight that Christmas eve. It was a magic time that just had begun. The Videopac opened a gate to a new world. A world of exploration and fight in space, a world of monsters in deep and dark dungeons, a world of thousand other dangers, wonders and excitements.

Christmas 1982 started everything for me. I got addicted and still I am. Not to video games in general, but to retro games as we call them today. Anytime I would prefer a video game from the early or mid 1980s to a modern video game.

Merry Christmas to you all!

A few years ago I won a boxed copy of Telesys‘ Coconuts on ebay.com. When opening the box I found not only the expected cart and manual inside, but also a small piece of coloured paper. It was a christmas present tag, „to Grandpa from Shannon“ written on it. I was really affected. Could it be that the game was indeed a christmas present, not from a grandpa for his granddaughter, but vice versa? Of course the present tag could have belonged to an other present and somehow found its way into the game’s box, but still the thought of an early 1980s Christmas with this game as a present for some unknown video games fan brings happiness into a retro gamer’s heart :)

Today I stumbled upon the photos on my harddisk and thought it would be a good time to share it with you guys. Happy Christmas time to you all!