Christmas is almost here, everyone. It's my absolute favorite time of the year. It's also been a long time since I've written anything for my personal blog, and my buddy/enemy Luke suggested I write something about Christmas. I got to thinking about my childhood, about how I've always gotten excited for this time of year, and I started remembering a lot of my favorite gifts over the years, so I wanted to share some of them with you.
Before I say anything, just watch this commercial.
Did you see how jacked that dude is? How could a child of 7 possibly resist this thing? There's seven different weapons in one! Don't you understand what kind of value that is? In one box you get: knife, bigger knife,...round knife?, a machine gun, a machine gun knife, a machine gun with a bigger knife, and a machine gun with a...round knife? AWESOME!
Not only was there 7 weapons, but they all had super rad sound effects. The knife had two buttons on it, one button made a "slice" sound, and the other (I believe) made a "thrust" sound. But, when you plug that bad boy into the machine gun attachment, you feel like you're back in Vietnam!
When I was a child, the two cartoon series that I absolutely loved were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (duh), and The Real Ghostbusters. Don't be fooled, as there were actually two Ghostbsters cartoons back then. There was one just called Ghostbusters, which, inexplicably, had a gorilla as part of the crew. But then there was The Real Ghostbusters, which was the true cartoon based on the films. Naturally, there were tons of action figures based on the show, and I specifically remember Christmas 1991 where I received all kinds of them. I missed out on the original run of figures, I got in the game with the "Super Fright Features" line of toys.
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I also got a lot of the monsters. From the "Haunted Humans" line, I got this dude.
Then, from the "Monsters" line, I got all these mofos.
On top of all these, I also got the Ecto-1:
But the one that tops them all is the Ghostbusters HQ. In one of our family photo albums there is still a picture of me opening this. Just look at this thing.
Christmas '91 was a good year.
I've always had a thing for posters. I still have a lot of videogame posters, as well as some of the bigger flyers from my wrestling career that I keep up. I just like displaying my interests, I guess. When I was a kid, my number one love was sports, so I wanted posters of my favorite players. Being a Cincinnati Reds fan in the early 90s, naturally my favorite player was Barry Larkin (still probably my all-time favorite player behind Pete Rose), and my walls were naked without this bad boy:
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I didn't even know this was a movie reference at the time.
The other poster I really wanted was one that I saw of my favorite NBA player, Shaquille O'Neal. I always loved Shaq because I was the big kid on all my basketball teams growing up. I felt like I could relate to him, seeing as we're both tall, black, and think we can rap.
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Yeah, remember when Shaq played for the Orlando Magic? Of course you don't. No one remembers that.
I've always had a huge love for the Resident Evil series, even though these days it pretty much belongs in the toilet. I've written about it once...or twice...okay, three times. But back in 1999, it was my favorite series, because it always scared the crap out of me and kept me on the edge of my seat. Watch the commercial spot for it:
So awesome! It's not the best Resident Evil game, and in truth, was rushed to give fans something to play while the next real Resident Evil game was in development. The one thing that everybody agrees on, though, is that the titular character, Nemesis, is awesome. He chases you throughout the game, and it was always terrifying even when you knew he was coming.
The Nintendo 64 isn't the best videogame console ever. As a matter of fact, I consider it a letdown. I wasn't very savvy when it came to videogames back then, so I didn't know what games were good and which ones weren't. But I played one at a friend's house on his birthday the previous month, and we spent the entire evening playing one game: WCW/nWo Revenge. That was enough for me to ask for an N64 and a copy of my own for Christmas. It's still, in my opinion, the best wrestling game ever made. I was always more of a WWE/WWF fan than WCW, but I had actually already gotten rid of the console by the time the allegedly superior WrestleMania 2000 and WWF No Mercy were released.
Watch this intro and try not to think it's the best thing ever. Seriously, everybody should see this at least once in their lives.
I love that the first minute makes it look like you're playing a horror game, and that first-person view of receiving the spear from Goldberg is still pretty awesome. This game will never be topped.
CHRISTMAS!!!!!
Thanks for reading.
-Dustin
