Nostalgia Weekly, December 26, 2024

P OV: it's Christmas 2006, and the most wanted gifts are a Wii, Nintendo DS, the iDog, and the latest iPod Nano. Slightly too young for the iPod, you settle on the Nintendo DS (pink, please!) and the Wii, complete with Wii Sports, a video game rivaling the most rowdy workout sessions for your little five-year old heart.

You wake up on Christmas morning to find your Christmas tree filled with Derrion Jeans, Apple Bottoms (no fur, sorry), a budget MP3 player (cause iPods are slightly too big for your kindergarten hands), numerous Bratz Dolls (you thought that Sasha and Yasmin were the best), plug-to-play tv games, and gasp! A pink Nintendo DS complete with its own carrier bag! You squeal and gasp and shriek at the site of the small handheld deivce, nevermind forgetting where you first saw it in the first place. Was it a trip to Toys R Us? A commercial while watching reruns of My Life as a Teeange Robot? No, those came out late at night on Nicktoons. Maybe it was while watching Drake and Josh after school. You wonder ...

Nevermind that, you open your last present for the day. An American Idol dance mat . Flattered, it wouldn't be until a few weeks you'd have a kiddie crush on Sanjaya, the true winner of season six. But until then, you'd dance anyway to the mat connected to your big box Bratz tv. Booting up your pink Nintendo DS, you're happy that you get to play the newest Hannah Montana game, although you are confused x10 on how to get to the next level, twice. But there it comes. Out of the corner of your eye, you see another gift that wasn't under the Christmas tree a mere second ago. Walking to it, you imagine what it could be. Every store in the tri-state area sold out of the Wii weeks ago, and online resellers sold units for triple the price.

But somewhere along the way, a little eBay fairy allowed your dream to come true. Definitely not your average Christmas, having to bid on eBAY for a once-in-a-lifetime release. As you ripped the wrapping paper, you knew that this was not a typical Christmas, but a Christmas you'd look back on in nineteen years and wonder "how did freak did this happen?"

Christmas 2006 is super nostalgic to me for these reasons. I was five years old, and I was super obssessed with the Wii to the point where it was the only gift that I wanted that year. And I was so so young, so it's kinda funny how looking back, I didn't even make my first gaming profile because I was just learning to read and would have made something that looked similar to a drawing I made in my kindergarten class. My Mii was made for me, and she looked super cute. S0, 2006 was my first year as having a digital footprint on the internet. I don't even remember my tag name, but I think it was part of my name and some random numbers, ya know, for anonymity. The Mii, er, Wii channel was pretty primitive - I don't even remember being able to message people, thankfully, but we could have practiced more internet safety by using a more discrete pen name.

I remember playing Wii Sports a lot , and of course in 5 year old fashion, I typically lost when I played bowling (gaming imitating art -- i still need bumpers >-< ) or golf. Boxing, surprisingly, I had many KOs and thought that it was so fun. But the game I loved the most was tennis, especially doubles. Me and my little pink triangle dress and pigtails would spend hours playing (and losing) since a 5 year old has little hand-eye coordination. Or maybe it was just clumsy me

Another favorite was Bratz: The Movie, although I got stuck numerous times and never finished the game. The graphics were very PS2 quality and Wii controls were quite buggy, but it still was a fun game filled with mini trivias and whatnot. I can't remember the other games I played, other than a racing game that came compelte with a wheel I never used, but the Wii will always have a special place in my heart.