I know it’s a bit late, but in the process of writing another article I realized I never covered the gaming related items I got for, and even a little before, Christmas of 2016.

Although I covered some of my gaming buys after Black Friday there was one item I purchased on Black Friday that was gaming related I totally forgot to mention. Per a Black Friday book deal I found out about on Twitter via many other retro gamers, I was able to pick up Tim Lapetino’s Art of Atari, for 50% off on Amazon, which represented a significant savings. If you haven’t seen this book before it covers a lot of the arcade, Atari 2600, 5200 and 7800 artwork from Atari primarily focusing on the late 70’s and early 80’s. Lapetino, not only gives us great unobstructed views of much of this original artwork, but provides us with concept and alternative drawings, as well as some great interviews with the artist as far as what inspired them, and what circumstances they found themselves commissioned for the artwork.

As far as a residual deal I ended up finding a great one thanks in huge part to the retro gaming community that is Atari Age. Late in the afternoon of November 30th, many of the members on Atari Age both on Facebook and Twitter, began to put the word out that about the semi-elusive Atari Flashback 7, and Flashback Portable being found at Bed, Bath, & Beyond. By the end of the night not only did I pick up a Flashback Portable online for myself, but I helped other members find 20% off coupons for Bed, Bath, and Beyond as well as get the information out that shipping was free on these particular items. By the way the Flashback Portable is an awesome little machine and the ability for it to bring in additional games via an SD slot is a really nice feature.

My wife did a bang up job this year getting me some nice presents. One of the funnest things she picked up for me is the famous but elusive Pac-Man LED desk clock. This was something I had to get set up in my home office as soon as I could and it’s a really fun gaming item to have.

The other item she got me was the Atari Flashback 7 console. Now I know I mentioned I wasn’t into the Atari Flashbacks since I owned all the original equipment, but I wanted to get just one and the 7 seems like the best one to get since it has a lot of lost and homebrew titles on it. It has 101 games total which is the most one of these systems has ever had, plus it has wireless controllers. My wife did a really nice job this year, even helping me expand my record collection too.

Despite being over a month since Christmas I plan on hooking up the Atari Flashback 7, as well as my Pac-Man: Connect & Play as part of one of my 8-bit Friday features coming up.