Neal weaves a holiday tale of smashings, dark knights and pro skaters.
I got my GameCube on Christmas 2001. Along with it, I got Super Smash Bros. Melee, Batman Vengeance, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3. I played Tony Hawk all day with my brother, then spent the night playing Batman. I didn’t really touch Melee until the day after Christmas. Weird, huh? However, the story of how I got my GameCube goes back further than that. It involves my introduction to Planet GameCube, my flirtation with a PlayStation 2, my immature disgust with cel-shaded Zelda, and Luigi’s Mansion.
Circa summer 2001, I was generally playing more PlayStation than I was Nintendo 64. Sure, I enjoyed Paper Mario and the other meager helpings that Nintendo ushered out, but I was going through a huge RPG kick, and going through all the Final Fantasys and stuff on the PlayStation. After seeing the cel-shaded Zelda and being all bitter that it wasn’t realistic (I want to punch 2001 Neal in the face...), I vehemently asked my parents for a PlayStation 2 for Christmas. I wanted a new game system, and I thought the PS2 was it.
It wasn’t until a Toys “R” Us visit before the GameCube’s launch that I changed my tune. I stood around slack-jawed looking at a Luigi’s Mansion and Rogue Leader demo with a few other kids. One kid even totally peed his pants, though for probably completely other reasons than the GameCube demo. It was that demo that sold me on the system. I wanted to take control of Ghostbuster Luigi. I wanted to relive Star Wars. Ironically, I didn’t own either game until years after their launch.
Upon returning home after a car ride of “I don’t want a PS2. I want a GameCube,” I went online and looked for all the info I could about the GameCube. I found Planet GameCube and religiously went to the site until I joined staff in 2008. My pro-GameCube sentiments were confirmed when I played Super Monkey Ball at my friend’s house on launch day.
As it got closer to Christmas, I knew my parents bought me a GameCube. However, I was pretty sure they never understood the concept of a memory card. So being the forward-thinking 13 year old I was, I bought a memory card and wrapped it for “To Neal, From Neal.” There was no way I was getting screwed from saving games on Christmas.
On Christmas Day, I was crushed. I opened all my gifts, got an extra controller, the memory card I bought for myself, and three games, but no system. My parents were especially crafty that year, and made all three kids go on scavenger hunts for their big ticket item. I wound up crawling around my basement for the unmistakable system box. I still have the cheesy treasure map thing my Dad whipped up in Word packed away.
As an addendum, I found out a few years later the hell my parents went through to get the system. Apparently it got kind of hard to find closer to Christmas, and someone at my Dad’s office worked seasonally at a Walmart, so she held one back for them one day.