In the spirit of the Holiday season, I am posing a question to my faithful readers: What was the greatest gift you ever received?

For our purposes, let’s just rule out gifts like “being with family” and other mushy stuff like that. I’m talking about actual presents that were given to you and brought you extreme joy. It doesn’t have to be a gift you got at Hanukkah or Christmas, it can be a birthday/anniversary/miscellaneous special occasion gift.

In trying to remember my best gift ever, I quickly come up with three contenders from my childhood:

• Nintendo Entertainment System, bundled with Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt
• Super Mario Bros. 3
• Super Nintendo Entertainment System, bundled with Super Mario World

Notice a theme?  Now I know I went pretty ballistic when I got the two Nintendo systems – maybe not to the Nintendo 64 kid level – but close. I remember having a pretty good feeling that I was getting both the Nintendo and Super Nintendo, but still being amazingly excited to rip them open and play them.

But I also remember that before I got those systems, I had played Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario World before, at other friends’ houses. So even though I was dying to play for myself and not have to share (pffft, sharing…), I was somewhat familiar with the games.

Not so with Super Mario Bros. 3. I’m not sure why, but I don’t think I had played that game before I got my own copy. Not that I didn’t want to – oh man, I wanted to get my hands on that game. I had been reading about it for months in Nintendo Power, and it looked SO cool. I would daydream in Hebrew School about what it would be like to fly – FLY! – as Raccoon Mario, to swim with the Frog Suit, and to throw hammers with the Hammer Brothers Suit (which is a totally underrated suit, by the way.) There was even an entire Fred Savage movie dedicated to showing off the game. And to top it all off, there was the single greatest video-game commercial of all time tempting me further:

Not a single frame of footage from the game, but I thought it was just the most amazing commercial in the world. Or on the world, as the case may be…

Anyway, I knew that my Dad was sending me the game, but I just couldn’t wait to have it. I remember vividly coming home one day, and seeing a package – about the right size – addressed to me on the stairs of our apartment building. I grabbed it, sprinted up the steps four at a time, ripped open the box, and I started playing immediately.

And even though I knew where the warp whistles were thanks to Nintendo Power and The Wizard, I still played through all eight worlds, loving every minute of it. I’ll never forget when I finally beat the game, only to have the Princess tell me, “Thank you. But our Princess is in another castle!… Just kidding! Ha ha ha! Bye bye” My heart sank for a split second there, only to then realize that I had been had by a video game. Seriously, games don’t punk you like that anymore…

Yeah, so SMB3 was my personal Red Ryder BB gun, and I didn’t even shoot my eye out… although the knuckles in my thumbs still crack several times a day.

And now, 20 years later, all I want for my birthday and Hanukkah are the newest video games, so I guess I’m terribly consistent if nothing else.

So what about YOU? What was your best gift ever?