Happy Holidays! And Happy Gaming!

Reindeer Crossing Sign

Greetings!  Salutations! Well Met!

Before I do anything else beyond offering you my hearty and well-intended greetings I want to wish you all a very happy Christmas!

If Christmas is not your thing than make that a Very Happy Holiday Season!

Personally I cannot help it that Christmas is very much my "thing" though I am willing to allow that the Christmas I am experiencing - and that I have been experiencing for over 20 years - is decidedly not the one I grew up knowing and loving.  I have often said it to be unnatural...  This is true.

The Christmas of my childhood was filled with sunshine, an ocean of warm water, and the gathering of friends and family at my parents beach house on the Gold Cost, where dinner was traditionally a fry to which everyone is invited, from mates and neighbors to strangers off the street...

Most of the food that made up the dinner was obtained right out of the ocean, which is basically our back yard...  You would probably be surprised at the variety of edible stuff that my older brothers (with our help of course) were able to obtain off the coast with just a mask and snorkel a set of fins and a spear.

There is also a wide variety of foodstuff to be had in the large tidal pools that formed in our back yard (the beach) at every low tide.  You take all of that and mix in some veggies from the market, and fresh fruit from the plethora of trees that are the forest of our childhood Christmas holiday, and what you end up with is a feast!

The point is that in a right and proper world Christmas should arrive in the midst of Summer.  Santa Claus should be riding about in a Ute wearing Birdwell Beach Britches and a flower patterned shirt, and when he has to use the sleigh (and that only at night) it is pulled by six huge white boomers of course!

A proper Christmas Tree in its natural setting....

A Game Christmas 2014

 A lot of you have been asking via email if the annual Christmas game articles are on track, and do I need any volunteer reviewers this year.  The answer is yes, they are on track, and yes I did in fact need more than a few volunteer reviewers!

Happily the crew of Lab Rats this year was more than adequate to cover all the bases that needed covering and you can expect to see the results of this by mid-month!  Though we have covered all of the games that need covering, and we will not be needing additional Lab Rats this year, we still want to sincerely thank each and every one of you for volunteering to help out!

We really do appreciate it and when we say that we could not do this without you, we really mean it.  And on that subject, clearly we couldn't do this without our Game On community and readers - you are all awesome!   We're just sorry that we couldn't give more of you assignments! 

You lot are pretty special, let me tell you.

SO!  Christmas 2014 is turning out to be an exceptional year in terms of games, and not just in variety though there is that!  I cannot remember when such an interesting collection of games arrived all around Christmas last - but the really cool thing is, when we look at the post-Christmas release schedule it is almost as bright!

This is truly going to be a very special and awesome gamer season!

So all of you lot, have a very happy Christmas.  We hope you get all of the games and prezzies that you are looking to, and that your consoles and computers make it through the holidays happy and whirring along!

Cheers!

Chris