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The Official Atari Age Secret Santa 2021 thread


CaptainBreakout

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Hello friends! Santa SoulBlazer made my holiday happy indeed with some truly spectacular gifts! I’m very excited about the wonderful Final Fantasy shirt — now I have something to wear when I go out to shop! And the Vectrex multicart…the Star Wars set…and everything else…wow! So many thanks, Santa!

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I'm really glad that you liked the gifts David!  You were a bit hard to shop for. :) The 'what you wanted' list didn't really have any specifics, and I didn't see much in your posts either.  I finally decided a Sean Kelly Vectrex Multicart might be the best way to go since you did say wanting to spend more time with that system.

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7 hours ago, joeatari1 said:

Well, I held out until Christmas morning.  All I can say is WOW!  My Secret Santa really seemed to know me (and must have done some reading up on my other posts as well).  Thank you very much for such awesome and thoughtful gifts.

 

All the presents were wrapped in cool paper that said OH all over it.  I thought maybe my SS was from Ohio, but then I looked at the address label and it said Washington state, so that couldn't be it.  Anyway, great wrapping!

 

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Unwrapping the red ball produced tons of candy, some cool arcade tokens, and an Atari Age painted rock!  I wonder what all those letters and numbers are on the back of it??

 

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Holy Moley!  These are some super cool gifts!  I got a CIB General Chaos for the Genesis, Xybots for the Lynx (the last game I needed for a complete, original set), and an I lost on Jeopardy 45!  This is some awesome stuff!  

 

 

 

Just make sure you put that pretty rock in your pocket the next time you go to the AtariAge Store. And seriously??? that was the last Lynx game you needed? That's wild! I so happy you enjoyed the stuff!! I should have my pictures up shortly....spoiler, it's awesome!!

Edited by Chuck D. Head
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1 hour ago, Chuck D. Head said:

And seriously??? that was the last Lynx game you needed? That's wild!

Yes, it was actually the last game I needed.  I had one previously and traded it away (stupidly).  I figured they were so common that I wouldn't have any trouble getting one in the future, so I just never bothered to finish the set.  Thanks again!

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My Secret Santa is pretty awesome!!!!! Check it out:

 

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I already started on the jelly beans and they are de-lish! The shirt is great and I love the retro "ringed" sleeves. FYI, the Pez are all new to my collection; I had a few of the characters but all these are new designs. I love tin toys and robots, so the ornament is perfect. And what can I say about the games?!?! Just great to fill some spots in my collection, but especially stoked to play some Food Fight and I have never played Adventures of Tron.  Great job Santa, I can tell you did your research!!!

 

Thanks so much to ChicGamer and Capt Breakout for making this happen!!!

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I finally got to open the package, and it’s absolutely amazing. I got 3 jaguar titles, a modified controller, and some candy :). I still can’t believe it, I never thought I’d actually get a copy of Flappy McFur. I’m very grateful to however sent me this, Christmas couldn’t have been any better this year!

 

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Well, I should say that I've had a box under the tree for a little while. I was going to open it, I got swamped out between work and projects around the house, but just today I finally got time to open it...

 

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...wow. I'm absolutely in love with the contents! Never owned a VIC game that wasn't a cartridge or .WAV file, the shirt is slick, the beanie will come in serious use with winter finally hitting, the Frogger magnets are just cool, and the coloring book may just be my reason to buy some crayons again! Huge thanks to the sender, my honest apologies as it seems (if there was a note I've entirely missed it so) I don't have your username to credit you, and I'll definitely be getting my VIC 20 out to try that tape out when I have some free time!

It was a ton of fun on both sides, finding stuff to send was great fun and opening this box was just as awesome, so a huge thanks to the organizers for getting this together!

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4 minutes ago, ClassicGMR said:

I had @CyranoJ this year. Glad you liked it! :) Even happier it got to you well before Christmas!! ?

 

I really wanted to wrap everything but I didn't want to take a chance with customs holding it up and tearing into it.

All great here, was very appreciated and enjoyed! Good job, Santa!

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It's been REALLY fun!  I was actually really surprised by a couple of gifts for my kids and I from my cohort Santa, chicgamer!  I'll post some pics if I can get around to it in the next couple days.  We both agree that splitting up the works makes it really fun, and easier in a lot of ways (and we also don't know our own Santas, which is really cool). 

 

So yeah... this community is amazing. So proud to be part of it. Thanks to each and every one of you for being awesome. We had 100% santa fulfillment this year! Everyone came through on their commitments, so nice to see.

 

Happy New Year!!!

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On 12/26/2021 at 8:49 PM, BurritoBeans said:

Well, I should say that I've had a box under the tree for a little while. I was going to open it, I got swamped out between work and projects around the house, but just today I finally got time to open it...

 

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...wow. I'm absolutely in love with the contents! Never owned a VIC game that wasn't a cartridge or .WAV file, the shirt is slick, the beanie will come in serious use with winter finally hitting, the Frogger magnets are just cool, and the coloring book may just be my reason to buy some crayons again! Huge thanks to the sender, my honest apologies as it seems (if there was a note I've entirely missed it so) I don't have your username to credit you, and I'll definitely be getting my VIC 20 out to try that tape out when I have some free time!

It was a ton of fun on both sides, finding stuff to send was great fun and opening this box was just as awesome, so a huge thanks to the organizers for getting this together!

I'm the idiot who left the crayons out of the box. But I was smart enough to keep the magnets and the cassette away from each other with the bubblewrap and air-packs. I do this Secret Santa every year and only once (or maybe twice) did I remember to put a card inside.

 

Enjoy! :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

So, funny story.  This past Monday I sat down at my computer desk, opened my work laptop and... realized I couldn't remember my password.  And of course, this being Windows, the company can't just force a password reset and tell me the new credentials.  Nope.  For a password reset to work, I have to be on the corporate network, which means either physically at the office or logged into the company VPN.  So just connect to the VPN, right?  Nope, for that I have to be logged in, which means I need my password.  The company's IT support department had to be reminded of that last one, at which point they had no further advice for how a remote worker could log into his laptop.  So, back to Houston I went.

 

Which means...

 

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...I had time to play with my cat!

 

Oh yeah, it also means...

 

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...I could finally open my Secret Santa package!

 

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A lovely card and some nice noms from HoshiChiri started the festivities.  She wrote she wasn't sure what consoles I collect for.  Fortunately the answer is, all of them!  Well, most of them, anyway.  She also latched onto my comment about old movies.  In fact, as something of an "accidental" tribute to the AtariAger who ran our Secret Santa events for so long, I watched The Last Starfighter while opening my goodies!

 

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I even got a Christmas stocking!  Normally it's tradition to save our stockings for last, but I decided to dig into the stocking first because...

 

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...the wrapping was so beautiful, I really didn't want to disturb it!

 

(By now Rudy was either bored or annoyed that I kept moving, so my lap was freed which made for much easier picture-taking!)

 

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I loved Andes Candies as a kid.  I don't get them much nowadays, but I'll never turn them down, in candy-bar or any other form!  The buttons are awesome and will be an excellent addition to my convention lanyards. especially at the Houston Arcade Expo!  It seems somebody was paying attention when I kept showing off new additions to the vinyl collection.  I've been using the same record brush since I first moved to Houston, over 20 years ago, so it's the perfect time for a new one!  A D20 for those saving throws!  And... you know, I've never really tried hand lotions much, but once in a while when the humidity actually gets below 90% in Houston, my hands have started letting me know when they're drying out.  So now that I have a recommendation on what lotion to use, I'll have to give it a try!

 

So finally, and reluctantly, I stopped admiring the wrapping on the presents, and started tearing into it.  First up...

 

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A nice addition to my growing Famicom collection.  For those who don't speak Japanese, myself included, this is Ninja Hattori-kun: Ninja wa Shuugyou de Gozaru no Maki.  Got it? :)

 

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I've been collecting Game Boy games longer than Famicom games, but I didn't have either of these yet.  Thank you!

 

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Atari games!  It's probably expected I already had Berzerk, but I've also been collecting multiples of some games for what I call the "road Atari" collection that I can take to conventions and the like.  Challenge I did not yet have, and in fact this is my first Zellers/"2600 Compatible" cartridge!  Thank you again!

 

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Now Pac-Man can serve a perfectly percolated pick-me-up!  I love it!

 

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Okay, this one is truly special.  When I was six, maybe seven, I would see the Quiz Wiz commercial between Saturday morning cartoons and Battlestar Galactica reruns.  Every time I saw it, I wanted one, but never got it.  I wasn't completely deprived though, because once in a while we would visit one of my Mom's friends who had an older kid, older as in away at college.  For some reason the ladies trusted me to be alone in his room while they chatted, so I got to play with all his toys, including his Quiz Wiz!  I would sit on the floor next to his bed, trying to answer questions barely any seven-year-old would actually know.  Now, decades later, I finally get a Quiz Wiz of my very own!  As soon as I saw what was underneath the wrapping paper, there I was on that older kid's bedroom floor again, with the commercial playing in my head.  This tickled me pink.  Thank you very much for blowing the cobwebs out of my memory!

 

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And here's the old movie!  As fate would have it, I have a DVD copy of the Metropolis rerelease from the '80s, with Giorgio Moroder's music, but I hadn't pursued the latest restoration on Blu-ray or anywhere else.  This is easily the oldest movie in my collection now!

 

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There it all is, with Grig looking on in approval.  Thank you for everything, HoshiChiri.  This was an awesome package and I had a lot of fun opening, enjoying, and remembering!

 

Also...

 

On 12/28/2021 at 5:58 PM, chicgamer said:

I framed my Sonic poster, and all I can say is AWESOME! Thanks again, Santa!

You're welcome!  I'm very happy you liked everything.  You looked good in the Sonic hat! :)

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Love this write up!  Especially the Quiz Wiz part.  That's magic, right there.

 

Funny, I just wanted to comment that I think it's cool that, in the first AA Secret Santa I participated in, I gave my recipient a copy of Challenge for the 2600 too!  It was in the form of "My Way" -a style of game known as a Taiwan Cooper.

 

At least, I think it's the same game.  Game names don't get much more generic then "Challenge".  If it IS the same rom, it involves a Duck that has to cross a Road.  Maybe it's a chicken?  I don't know. In either case, the game cart art has NOTHING to do with the game itself.  It also has hilariously off-key music which can drive you dangerously close to madness.  The gameplay, although simple, is actually really compelling.  A great example of the "just one more" effect.

 

Anyway, that was cool seeing that.  I love the thought that goes into these packages.

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