My parents refused to let having kids stop them from having a good time. Ever since I can remember, my parents and their friends have celebrated the December holiday season by throwing massive parties and inviting all their friends. Those friends, naturally, brought their kids along, which meant that while all the adults laughed and drank at the dining table, the house would echo with the screams of children playing, fighting, and sobbing. Something bad always happened at Christmas – I’d get into a screaming match with a family friend, my brother would freak out at somebody hovering too close and step on their foot on purpose, and inevitably somebody would fall while running down the stairs and chip a tooth or concuss themselves.
The only thing that could ever bring us together in anything resembling cooperation was video games. No matter where we were, or whose house we were currently tearing through, a game would get us to make peace – at least temporarily. Sometimes it was Dance Dance Revolution on the PlayStation, though I have distinct memories of crying because I didn’t get a turn. A lot of times, it was Dance Central 2, which made a lot of other kids cry because I played it constantly and knew all the choreography by heart, therefore decimating my competition nonstop. Actually, now that I think about it, those video games were just cause for us to get even angrier at each other.
Super Mario RPG Shows That Not All Games Need To Be Massive
Not every game like this needs to be dozens of hours long.
But what’s clearest in my memory, and what I’m most nostalgic for, is Guitar Hero World Tour. I played the game on my own all the time, but it was never worth busting out the full kit unless there were enough people around to play, and several backup players for when people inevitably lost interest and went to do something else.
We’d play for hours, swapping instruments, moving in circles around the tiny basement as we went from guitar, to drums, to bass, to vocals. We’d experiment with holding the mic up in front of the guitarist to see how long they lasted before getting confused and frustrated. We’d put the guitar on the floor and play it like a weird piano. My parents would scream down the stairs to ask if we could please stop bellowing the lyrics to Tokio Hotel’s Monsoon at the top of our lungs, and we would wail “In the monsooooon!” right back. It was beautiful chaos. I can’t believe my parents put up with it, because thinking back now, I would have had to step out of the house to keep my sanity.
We haven’t had a new Guitar Hero game in a long time. The closest thing available on current-gen consoles is Rock Band 4, which came out in 2015 and needs a whole new set of instruments – it’s not like I still have the old ones, anyway, since most of them eventually got damaged by a variety of sugar-high children. I don’t actually want to buy Rock Band 4, I want a new Guitar Hero game (sans AI, please, Bobby Kotick!) so I can relive my childhood. I know that means I’ll likely end up yelling at my friends for missing too many notes in a row and making us lose a level, but that’s the kind of Christmas festivity I’m used to. I don’t have a lot of Christmas rituals left, and this is one I really want to get back.
If You See The Insomniac Leaks, Just Look Away
None of these leaks matter in the long run, so stop giving leakers clout