What videogame gifts have you gotten from your significant other?

[Keatah]

What classic gaming/computing relating things has your significant other given to you as a gift or other occasion? I’ll start with this DOT flyer. It has significance because the game was (in a tiny way) instrumental in us getting together years ago.

 

[BassGuitari]

Over the years the wife's given me stuff like my Magicard repro, 5200 homebrews, misc. 2600 and Intellivision games, and my Odyssey 2 Voice for Christmases, birthdays, and graduations. And when she was in college she knew the people that ran a local game shop (now closed, sadly) and they'd hook her up with random 2600 stuff that would come in, much of which she passed on to me.

She also surprised me once with an Apple IIe rig she got at an estate sale while I was out one afternoon. Did a double take when I got home.

[Yoss]

My wife used to buy me the occasional 2600 game she might find in an antique store. That was easier before I already had most of the common games. Of course upon unwrapping the cartridges there were always the inevitable questions of where did you find these? And, were there any more?

 

A few years back at Christmas she got me the set of Atari pint glasses they sold at Target.

 

She's usually not that crazy about hitting up the fleamarkets with me and her attitude toward my gaming stuff is more along the lines of resignation than support. That's why I was surprised when she readily agreed to go with me one Saturday and didn't even say anything silly like "Are you sure you need that?" when I bought a nice Intellivision system with a batch of games. In fact, I was kind of on the fence about it and she actually told me I should buy it. Later that evening she told me we were going to have our first baby. It was a planned pregnancy so it wasn't completely out of the blue and of course we were super excited. It turns out she was being extra agreeable because she wanted to give me a day of carefree fun before everything shifted into baby mode. Not exactly a gift but this thread made me think of it. (And as weird as it is, I now associate the Intellivision with finding out I was going to be a father.)

Edited August 3, 2015 by Yoss

[Rhomaios]

My wife knew to tell her parents to get my Sturmwind when it came out. I think that's it. But there's really no point. I don't buy her shoes, she doesn't buy me games. Why potentially get each other the wrong thing?

[Keatah]

@yoss: Now you you have something to tell the kid 20 years from now. Make a journal about it.

[Rick Dangerous]

Both my Wii and Wii U were purchased for me by ex-girlfriends.

[+thegoldenband]

Some of these blur the line between "gift" and "things she found at a yard sale, knew I'd want & for which I may have reimbursed her", but the list of things my wife's gotten me includes:

 

Dreamcast + 2 games

Vectrex + game

Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (GameCube)

Seaman (DC)

Gangster Alley (VCS)

Virtual Boy + 6 CIB games

 

And the motherlode of them all:

 

About $500-1000 worth of gaming stuff across multiple systems, bought in a single lot for $20 at a church sale

 

She's a keeper!

[Opry99er]

Wife bought me Morrowind for my original XBox.

 

Then she became a widow for a few weeks...

 

That was the last game gift she ever gave me.

 

Oh, unless you count last week when she gave me "permission" to dip into our hammer-locked savings account to buy a stand up Sega Turbo Outrun cab... That was pretty wicked.

 

Gotta go pick it up in HER van though.

[VIRTUALboy]

Atari Flashback 4. WORST ATARI EVER!!!!! you have to put it on your lap to play, as the controllers are horrible.

[Oldschool80skid]

Wii on Valentine's Day 2009 along with Wii Play for the extra controller.

 

Atarimax Coleco flashcart for 4 year wedding anniversary.

 

Atarimax 5200 flashcart for Xmas 2014

 

Genesis mega drive flashcart for Valentine's day 2015

[mikey.shake]

So, so many.

 

Off the top of my head? Just recently there's the Sears Heavy Sixer she scoured Craigslist for... the carts she'll root for and buy behind my back when we're digging through dusty bins in the back of gaming stores... the Harmony Cart and Everdrive N8 combo she got me for my birthday... even the "Megamaniacs" patch that's now on the living room wall. A couple weeks ago, she bought me a copy of "Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu" (which is great, but it's not a $10 game...), and just yesterday she bought us a replacement SNES after our original one bit the big one.

 

She's the best.

[omegadot]

Games aren't something I often get personally as gifts, at least not historically. Although in high school I did get the Zelda collection for GCN with the Nintendo Power subscription as a gift. I also got Metroid Prime 2. My wife did get us the Wii U the year it came out, as well as Rock Smith. All of which I enjoyed a lot. The above covers a period of like 12 years, though.

[Eltigro]

When I was married, my wife gave me several gaming gifts.

 

She got me my Jaguar and games on ebay. I remember opening the big cardboard box with the crappy packaging. Stuff just seemed to be thrown in there randomly with a little bit of newspaper wadded up here and there. Everything worked okay but still need to get a proper AC adapter, the one it came with works, but I'm afraid to use it much because of the voltage differences.

 

She got me my XBox new. I remember guessing what it was before opening the wrapping paper (I had a knack for this) and it pissed her off. The box had a hole in the bottom so that the serial number on the bottom of the unit could be scanned at the register. I felt the box through the wrapping paper, found the hole, and knew what it was. (IIRC, that is. I know I did that for some gift, think it was the XBox.)

 

There were various games she got me, too. But usually if a game system purchase was made, I was in on it. She didn't trust herself to get the "right" one or whatever.

 

My current girlfriend hasn't bought me anything game related. She's not as into gaming as my ex-wife was.

[HoshiChiri]

My fiancé got me my intellivision... sort of. He'd been telling me for years his parents had one "somewhere" in the attic space above the garage, but no one had found it in ages. When it finally turned up, I jumped on the chance to fiddle with it. They didn't find any games or the video cable, but they did have an NES RF adapter around- I plugged it in with that and turned it on. The static changed, I decided that was enough to warrant going out immediately and buying the first game I could find in my local game store (which was a CIB Astrosmash). Turned out it worked perfectly, so I took it home for a good cleaning (it was awfully dusty) and picked up a new F-plug cable and a RF/F-plug adapter for it. When I told him it was ready to go back, he said his parents hadn't even noticed it was gone, so I might as well not mention I have it. They still haven't said anything (although quite frankly, I doubt they'd care.) They did bring me about a dozen or so games they found later, and the voice module. Nothing boxed or in especially good shape, but all working- and who'd ever complain about free games?

 

He also bought me my Nintendo DS for Christmas- back when they released those limited Nintendogs bundle, he managed to get the last pink one in our county. Of all the nerdy girls I knew online at the time who asked for one, I was the only one who got it. I actually had a couple offers for it over the next spring, until the DS lite was announced. (He'd also made it a point to tell me not to "go crazy" for Christmas, so I wouldn't out-gift him that year.)

 

His crowing achievement though, was my Xbox 360. It was also a Christmas present, but wasn't content to just give it to me- he said I'd 'love and hate him' for this one. He got ahold of a 4 foot tall, 3 foot around box full of bubble wrap. He then opened the 360 and wrapped everything individually (including the batteries for the controller). He spread these throughout the box, then put the actual 360 box on top (wrapped, with a couple of rocks in it for weight.) It took an HOUR to get through all that bubble wrap and find everything. Well, almost- he'd kept the power cable aside as my birthday present, but decided not to make me wait the two weeks to have that. On top of that, he did all this knowing I'd been focusing on saving up for a PS4, and therefore had no shelf space for a 360 or games I knew I wanted for it. It took a week of system shuffling to make room for it, and another week to get a game list together. Once I had it set up right, I loved it- but he was right, I was kinda mad at him for springing it on me so suddenly!

[Reaperman]

I'm pretty sure my wife is afraid to get me a video game. I have so many already, and she probably doesn't want to mess it up. A lot of the more expensive games that I don't have also tend not to be very good--which doesn't help matters. I wouldn't dare buy her any camera gear (her hobby) either.

 

She came through with a hot tip on a local vectrex once, though. She didn't buy it, but we jumped in the car pretty much as soon as she told me.

[omegadot]

I'm pretty sure my wife is afraid to get me a video game. I have so many already, and she probably doesn't want to mess it up. A lot of the more expensive games that I don't have also tend not to be very good--which doesn't help matters. I wouldn't dare buy her any camera gear (her hobby) either.

 

She came through with a hot tip on a local vectrex once, though. She didn't buy it, but we jumped in the car pretty much as soon as she told me.

 

That's pretty much how my wife is, I think. With gifts I just tell her to get me useful things then she and the kids usually make me something. The truth is I'd be pretty happy with any old thing gaming related from her but I don't want her stressing over it so I just more or less support it's removal as an option.

[+cvga]

My wife isn't really into gaming but she bought me a Turbo Express back when it was new and we were dating. She also bought me a Super Nintendo when it was new. Although she doesn't purchase much now, she has a great job and never complains about the packages that seem to arrive every few days with something new I've purchased here or on eBay. She's the best!

[mikey.shake]

I already posted, I know... but this seemed worth mentioning in "above and beyond"...

 

Today, my wife texted me to let me know she was on her way home from work (not uncommon). I hear the door to the building open and close about 10 minutes later, but no Mrs Shake after a few minutes. Then I realize I hear a slow noise. A rhythm. "Thump... thump... thump..." Almost menacing. After about 15 seconds, I realize it's someone trudging up the narrow, teetering staircase in our very old building. I open the apartment door to find she's just made it to the top, and lugged a 20" Trinitron up to our third(+) floor. They were getting rid of it at work and she knew that was the size and model I'd been keeping my eye out for. Color's great and it's a nice unexpected treat, but it's more that she (a lil' thing) bothered to hoist that thing up the dang stairs. The TV itself is great and all, but carrying a CRT up all those stairs in 2015? Now THAT'S a gift.

[Eltigro]

My birthday was earlier this month, and my girlfriend (who knows zero about video games) bought me a little handheld pac-man game. I hadn't seen one like it before, but I have since found a couple of them on ebay and such. Anyway, thought the design of it was kind of interesting in that the LCD is on a pop up and backlit by ambient light, then reflected in a mirror... kind of hard to explain, so I took pics... Probably not worth much, especially since the LCD seems to be missing some segments making it pretty much impossible to play because you can't see where all the maze walls and dots are...

 

[Skippy B. Coyote]

For our two year wedding anniversary a few months ago the misses pitched in 50% of the cost and we ordered this custom Centipede themed bartop multicade for our retro gaming center.

 

 

 

 

She also knows that I'm an absolute fanatic for light gun games and picked me up a mint condition copy of Operation Wolf for the NES a couple weeks ago.

Edited October 13, 2015 by Jin

[czarlie]

Retro Gift Box from my bae in NM. - Ole' Apple stuff her dad kept - r.i.p.

 

All Retro Ultima Games & such - Look near mint & shmancy - Sweet!

 

Should I keep for bragging rights sake or throw down and capitalize?

 

eBay, Blog, Craigslist or None - Which?

 

 

JZ

 

[+save2600]

Received a Pac-Man Collectibles book one year. And a mint 4-switch 2600 from Best another.

[thadsilverfox]

I have gotten absolutely zero stuff from anyone. My whole collection has been thrift store and garage/yard sale finds.

[HoshiChiri]

I have gotten absolutely zero stuff from anyone. My whole collection has been thrift store and garage/yard sale finds.

 

That's honestly really impressive- having just finished getting my full list into vgcollect, I've honestly been stunned to see how little of what I own I actually purchased while actively collecting. Something like 90% of my pre-PlayStation stuff is gifts, giveaways, and holdovers from childhood. (the newer runs 25-50% not-purchased, depending on system.) I cannot fathom what it would have taken to get what I have if I had to actually hunt all of it down.

[thadsilverfox]

 

That's honestly really impressive- having just finished getting my full list into vgcollect, I've honestly been stunned to see how little of what I own I actually purchased while actively collecting. Something like 90% of my pre-PlayStation stuff is gifts, giveaways, and holdovers from childhood. (the newer runs 25-50% not-purchased, depending on system.) I cannot fathom what it would have taken to get what I have if I had to actually hunt all of it down.

 

I just started collecting in roughly February and started with zero consoles and games. I have accumulated about 14 consoles w/ games and numerous handhelds w/ games. I keep the games around that I like and sell off the ones I don't like. The consoles are mainly used for testing games I find out in the wild to make sure they work before selling them.