There’s undoubtedly a PC gamer or two in your life and love ’em of hate ’em, come Christmas time they still enjoy receiving gifts as much as the next person. It’s the only instance that spending time with real flesh and blood people, and away from dungeon raiding in World of Warcraft or tea-bagging n00bs in Counter Strike, is awarded in such a Pavlovian nature. So why not make your Gamer’s treat a good one?
The following gifts will fit easy into their stocking come Christmas morn. The choices presents have one of two goals in mind, to either show your appreciation for their hobby of choice or laugh with/at them and scare them back into their dungeon/cave/parental basement. Let’s go.
Gamer Grub
This seems like a good gift to start off our guide with, as it’s the first thing that pops into my head when I think “ridiculous products marketed at gamers.” More on that later, as I still have to introduce you to the product known as Gamer Grub. The description from their web site is as follows.
Gamer Grub is a great tasting snack mix packed with select vitamins and neurotransmitters supporting fast cognitive performance. Gamer Grub is scientifically formulated to power your core gaming systems for maximum gaming performance.
So basically this is Cracker Jack for the 21st century. They even come in four flavours as pictured above. There’s Pizza cause gamers love pizza, PB&J for the pre-pubescent set, Wasabi for the otaku gamer, and chocolate. Chocolate is ok.
Ok so snack foods are a great stocking stuffer. I know every year I find interesting Christmas candies in my stocking, including mixed nuts and trail-mix. Where Gamer Grub tips the scale to the weird side is the way it’s marketed. They tout the delivery system of this snack, suggesting just pouring it into your craw instead of messing up your hands and dirtying up your keyboard in the process. Still I think this is good gift for the gamer with a sense of humour.
You can share a chuckle as they unwrap it, sharing double-entendre jokes about stimulating neurotransmitters. You may even have the opportunity for a Boxing Day follow-up, to see if it had any effect on the quick gaming sessions they jumped in to avoid the awkward unpleasantries that have come with family get-togethers since long before the video game was invented.
“The Gaming Revolution” T-Shirt
The revolution has indeed been virtualized. Gaming is a something that has taken hold in our modern society, with everyone claiming to be a gamer of some stripe. This didn’t happen over night though; it’s taken years and in some cases decades to come to this point. So why not celebrate the revolution with an appropriate t-shirt?
“The Gaming Revolution” T-Shirt pictured here showcases the silhouette of nearly every gaming controller that’s ever seen the light of day, and comes in the yellow and red colour scheme found in all great revolutions.
Witty and clever T-shirts as worn by gamers and geeks have reached a certain degree of irony, but that doesn’t make any less of a great gift. This shirt in particular has a certain fun factor, in that you can sit back with your friends and try to name the gaming system that each controller belongs to. What? You actually had plans for a Friday night? Uh hunh, sure.
This shirt comes from Threadless, whose wit and dry humour knows no end. ThinkGeek has some less subtle t-shirts, and the Penny Arcade Store is the gamer goto for dark and funny apparel. If you just a twisted wretch of a human being like me you can just jump straight to T-Shirt Hell to satisfy your sick jones, though that site does come with a strong NSFW warning.
Shower Shock Caffeinated Soap
Ah yes caffeine, the true opiate for the gaming masses. ThinkGeek has a whole category in their store dedicated to sale of every delivery system imaginable for this psychoactive stimulant drug, and one the more popular caffeinated products in their catalogue is Shower Shock Caffeinated Soap. Not only does it encourage bathing in the gamer and geek set alike, but it provides a further incentive in that it may just wake you up!
The product has been featured on some big name TV networks saying how much it works, that is until the CBC show Street Cents ruined everything by bringing science to the party. Their subjective testing noted that none of their staffers really felt any effect from the soap and the “sciencey” bits showed that there wasn’t even a trace of caffeine in their blood streams; something you definitely do get with coffee.
Their final verdict was a little harsh, as I would still say this is another gift to have a good laugh over. After-all, there’s no better way to say Merry Christmas then to say “take a shower you stinky bastard” with your gift of choice.
Nintendo Controller Chequebook Wallet
While we’re on a retro kick, we might as well look at one of the many products that have been made to look like the original Nintendo Entertainment System controller. I first came across this product when I did a Google search for gamer gifts in prep for this article. Though I had most of my picks…picked, I needed one more product to round off the list. This was that product; it seemed to call out to me from the virtual ether. Basically it’s a chequebook, shaped like an NES controller. There’s not much more that can be said about it.
At least you’d think there wasn’t much more that could be said about it, since in this article there’s plenty more that can be said about it. The Nintendo Controller Chequebook Wallet manages to bury the needle on the Retro Meter. It combines retro gaming with retro financial transactions into one big retro black hole. The product is wholly appropriate in that those who remember what the NES controller was actually like will be the only ones old enough (yes at age 27 I’ve managed to call myself old) to remember what the hell a cheque is.
Some people still use cheques to pay for infrequent charges like rent, but like the vinyl record their use has dropped in favour of a digital method of delivery. On the positive side writing a cheque will be slightly less mundane with this cheque book. Maybe you can write a cheque when you purchase this gift, though I doubt it.
Fun Xercise Bike
Now if the GP2X Wiz is the reasonable item to consider for your gamer, the Fun Xercise Bike is the little more crazy option. This device basically takes the dial on the concept behind the WiiFit balance board, and cranks it to 11. The result is an exercise bike that can interact with your Wii in many ways. How many ways is hard to determine, as information on this product is hard to come by.
The product home page has plenty of testimonials, and even some curious demo videos, but some backup to their many claims seem to be non-existent. Still the concept behind this…exercise bike should finally put to rest all those complaints about gamers not getting any exercise. At the very worst it could end like any other exercise bike, as a curiously shaped clothes hanger that sits in the corner of your bedroom.
GP2X Wiz MAME/Amiga/Console Emulator
This is where were cross a threshold in both price and appropriateness. Up until now I’ve been ragging on most of the products suggested; in fact it’s been the entire purpose of this article. That stops here with the GP2X Wiz MAME/Amiga/Console Emulator. This nifty little device supports a large number of game emulators, allowing you to easily get your retro game on with any number of antique systems. This system does fit into a stocking rather easily, but the price tag may not.
ThinkGeek has the GP2X Wiz listed for $179.99 USD. Still for that price you get to play your favourite Atari ST, Commodore 64, NES, SNES, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, NeoGeo, and Flash games on the go, and that only scratches the surface. Video playback is also supported. Eat your heart out PSP.
Now this product can quite possibly encourage piracy in your would-be recipient, and as we all know piracy supports terrorism. That’s something very much in the spirit of the holiday season.
Still, if you can swallow your petty moral issues, this little device will give your recipient plenty of hours of gaming fun. It may even teach them some necessary white-hat hardware hacking skills; something that’ll be needed in the coming decade from the looks of things.
Merry Christmas All You Gamer Misanthropes
Finding unique and interesting gifts when the intended recipient is involved in a hobby that you may not be familiar with can be daunting. Even if you are a gamer yourself, what you may find utterly hilarious might fall flat with your friends come Christmas morn. Hopefully this guide has been some help.
Many gamers have a good sense of humour when it comes to there chosen recreational activity. The gifts that end up being marketed to them can be so non-sensical or absurd that to not have a sense of humour would invite a horrible disposition. If they at least have a good sense of humour about it, then you’ll have a wonderful Christmas. If they are the kind who thinks gaming is serious business, I might just recommend getting them a gift card.
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Stocking Stuffers For the PC Gamer in Your Life – Photo Gallery
