For Christmas, I asked Santa for a new iPod Touch (4th gen). As a 46 year old father of two teenagers and avid gamer since pong, my two gaming teens and Bejewelled loving wife, weren't surprised by my request. To make it all happen, this Santa, wanted to buy it so I could get any extras or discounts available. So it was no surprise what I was getting. But family rules were in place and my iPod was wrapped and put under the tree. I'm not sure what's worse; Not knowing what you get for Christmas, or knowing and not being able to enjoy it. But hey, this gave me 6 weeks to prepare for my new fun. I asked some of my business-toting-iPhoners about gaming, but they were no help. I came upon http://touchArcade.com. I started reading post, reviews and signed up for the forums. I was reading reviews and comments to find out what all my options were for gaming on the iPod Touch. Thanks to your reviews, top tens and recommendations, I started grabbing games and stock piling my iTunes. (December was a great month for free or cheap games. ) Christmas morning... The wrapping paper hadn't hit the floor by the time my new gaming device started syncing. ...(a little while later) ... "wow, look at these cool games". I'm sure that the fun I'm enjoying now, wouldn't have been possible if not for this site and its community. Thank You. Thank you for keeping the information flowing. Thank you for the active forums with limited trolling. Thank you for offering RSS of your stories (I'm up to the minute). And Thank You for supporting games the Iphone and iPod Touch. Way to go team. Keep up the great work. Mike
You're right - Touch Arcade rocks! Just the thing to feul the addiction. When I was a toddler, I was lucky enough to have Santa bring us an Atari 2600 - many years later I found out that Santa had been staying up late playing Space Invaders for several weeks before Christmas! This year, my daughter spent way too much time playing with the Dora Christmas game on my iPhone...
Sometimes I think the anticipation of getting these new toys is just as good as playing with them the unwrapping, firing it up for the first time, playing the first game, all part of the fun
Hey Mike, awesome story and really glad you enjoy TouchArcade so much So you totally reminded me of my own story about Christmas from when I was 10 years old. To this day this still stands as my favorite Christmas ever. Anyway, after being a huge NES fanatic, the SNES had just launched and I wanted one more than anything that year. We didn't have a lot of money growing up, my mom was single with two kids and worked multiple jobs just to keep us afloat. But somehow she knew how badly I wanted the SNES and came up with the couple hundred bucks for one. Problem is, my mom kind of sucks at surprises. She actually bought the system while I was with her at the store. When we got home, the SNES was to remain untouched in our spare bedroom until Christmas. Needless to say, I spent every waking moment in there staring at that box. I read every single word and stared at every single screenshot on that bad boy for months. It was straight up torture. Finally, Christmas eve rolled around. My mom actually took the time to wrap up my gift even though I already knew what it was. As was customary for us on Christmas, we weren't allowed to open our gifts until my mom had woken up on Christmas day. But she knew how much I had been waiting to get my hands on my new game system, so she told me it was ok to open it up on Christmas eve and that I could stay up as late as I wanted playing. I had no problem taking her up on this offer, and ripped that sucker open and played Super Mario World and Final Fight until the wee hours of the morning. It was one of the happiest times of my life (is that sad?) and stands out as one of my favorite memories of childhood. So yeah, the point of this long story is that sometimes knowing ahead of time can be pretty hard. But I think that whole experience really taught me a lot about being patient, and the rewards that come with it. I think I'd prefer to just be completely surprised, but even so nothing will ever top getting my Super Nintendo when I was 10. Heh, maybe stay out of the Lounge and you'll be alright
great stories Wow you guys all have fun fond memories. I was the type of child that stayed up late at night playing my gameboy. I remember having all these ideas of games and wishing I could make them. When I was growing up though reality hit and I didnt have enough money to go to school. For a while I gave up my dreams and just worked 9 to 5 jobs. One day I was just typing how to make a game. Then a tool popped up called game editor. I tried it out and began to pick it up slowly. My dream of making games was magically comming to me! Now Iam living my dream with games in the windows mobile marketplace and the iphone marketplace. Never give up on your dreams no matter how old you are!! Iam 32 years old and having the best time of my life!!
That's really a great story. It's great to hear that people are fulfilling dreams that they've always dreamed of doing.
