There’s a lot of holiday classics that we watch every year and one in particular that deals with getting that perfect Christmas present. If you are a child of the 80’s, you grew up with A Christmas story. You also grew up with such films as Christmas Vacation or Home Alone. And yes, Elf is the perfect Christmas movie, but we’ve never had a gamer’s Christmas Story. We’ve never had a movie that dealt with the struggle of gamers getting a brand-new console and what they had to go through to find one when every store seems to be sold out. Well, now we have that movie in 8-Bit Christmas and the setting couldn’t be more perfect. Set during the 1980s when kids were struggling to get a brand-new Nintendo Entertainment System, that’s right the original Nintendo. Even though it had come out in America about 1985, it still wasn’t a popular gaming system until about 1988 and that was the year when more systems were produced and more kids wanted it, which led to huge shortages in store during the holidays. I know this because I lived through it, and I was one of the lucky ones to get an original Nintendo that year thanks to a loving and scrappy mother who I’m still convinced had to fight other mothers at a Walmart to get me the perfect Christmas gift. So, I can honestly say that for a gamer, the new Christmas classic will be 8-Bit Christmas because it is about the struggle of 10 and 11 year olds, trying to get a Nintendo and living in a town where it seemed like only one kid had one. But there were shortages and of course there were evil parents who thought video games rotted children’s brains and would stop at nothing to deprive kids of a Nintendo Entertainment System. Yes, there were those kinds of parents who convinced the other parents that video games were bad. We don’t talk about that nowadays, but it was a real fear in the 80s, the equivalent of crazy Christians thinking that Dungeons & Dragons and fantasy role-play was of the devil. Yeah, it sounds like something like that would never happen, but you had to be there. Just like they say in the movie, “It was the 80’s, things got real!”
But yes, 8-bit Christmas Even if it’s not as good as other Christmas movies will be a Christmas Classic, I’m convinced of that because it’s a movie especially for gamers. The best way I can describe the movie is it’s a mixture of The Goonies, The Wizard, and A Christmas Story. I’m not even going to say it is as good as other Christmas movies, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s just a fun movie and if you’ve ever played video games or got a new console for Christmas, you will appreciate it especially if you’ve played video games since the Atari era. I’ve been there since the beginning and remember how cool it was to have an 8-bit gaming system. I think the movie is fantastic, I cannot wait to watch it again and it is brought to you by the same studio that made Elf so you know it’s a heartwarming tale and you will laugh. Of course, there’s the all-important Christmas message that family is more important than getting a new gaming console. Yes, that’s true, but also just as important is the adventures we had as kids when trying to get that new console or some other toy. We would plan a special ops type mission to get what our parents wouldn’t let us have by pooling our allowance together just so we could afford to buy something we would all have to share and then hiding it from our parents if we needed to. You know, something that the Goonies would do. I think as we get older. we forget that some of the best times we had in our lives is when we were kids and the adventures we had with our friends. To me that was the best part about this movie because, I feel like I would have done what they did if my mother hadn’t gotten me a Nintendo for Christmas. And the Steve Zahn character very much reminded me of my father who was very frugal to the point of being cheap and would not buy a new gaming system. That’s something I would have to earn money for.
But I do firmly believe this is the next great Christmas classic and maybe that’s just the nerd in me because I’m a gamer. 8-bit Christmas is funny and down-to-earth and captures all of those perfect moments of our childhood like playing video games with your friends. It also perfectly captures all the tropes of the 80s with crazy Christian parents who wanted to end the video game industry because they thought it was bad to the shortages stores had on toys like Cabbage Patch Kids and gaming consoles. And my favorite little metaphor was just how awful the Power Glove turned out to be, but it looked cool. When I finished watching the movie, I remembered the year I got a Nintendo, it was 1988 and me and my cousins spent the majority of Christmas that year in the extra bedroom at my grandparent’s house trying to beat Super Mario (NES) and of course this was before we knew any of the cheat codes and how you could warp to other levels.
Also, my mother was also smart enough to get a couple of extra games like Tecmo Bowl and Ice Hockey. My cousin and I who have been playing Madden since we were kids, first started “duking” it out on Tecmo Bowl. There’s a lot of movies that are more nostalgic then really being good. If I was a harsh critic of this movie, I probably only give it a 7, but the Nostalgia factor and reminding me of my childhood makes it an instinct Christmas classic for me. If you’re a nerd and you’re a gamer, I guarantee you’re going to watch this movie just like Elf or Christmas Vacation or A Christmas Story for the 50th time. 8-bit Christmas is a gamer’s Christmas Story just like Fanboys is for every hardcore Star Wars fan who had the idea that they should break into Skywalker Ranch in steel an early print of the Star Wars movie. 8-bit Christmas is the Christmas movie made for every child who grew up in the 80s and played video games. And this movie couldn’t have been more well-timed since gamers are dealing with shortages this holiday season on the new PlayStation 5 or the Xbox Series X a year later after they came out. So for the gamers who grew up in the 80’s, this is the Christmas movie you watch first before you watch any other Christmas movie…. like I said, it’s a gamer’s Christmas Story and we definitely need one among all the other Christmas movies we watch every year!
