Long before digital storefronts and Black Friday flash sales, the holiday season meant flipping through thick toy catalogs, circling game consoles with a pen, and hoping that one magical box would appear under the tree. For many of us, these wish lists were more than just shopping guides. They were the beginning of our relationship with gaming.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, November was the moment when game companies unveiled their biggest surprises. Retailers filled catalogs with bright spreads of the newest consoles and must-have titles, and kids everywhere used those glossy pages to dream about the worlds they wanted to explore next.
The NES Era: Circling Dreams in Red Ink
In the mid-1980s, the Nintendo Entertainment System dominated holiday wish lists. Retailers knew it too. Sears, JCPenney, and Toys R Us catalogs prominently featured the NES with full-page spreads. Titles like The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros. 3, and Mega Man 2 were advertised with colorful screenshots that made them look larger than life.
There was something magical about seeing the gray NES box surrounded by controllers and cartridges. You could practically feel the excitement through the paper. For many families, November meant choosing that one game that would last all year, so every pick mattered.
The 16-Bit Showdown
By the early 1990s, the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo brought the console wars to the catalogs. Sega pushed edgy marketing with characters like Sonic, while Nintendo offered a colorful lineup with Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country. Both companies timed their biggest releases for November to capture the holiday rush.
These catalogs gave us our first look at new hardware revisions, such as the SNES redesign or special Genesis bundles. For many kids, this was the only preview they had until they saw the console in a store display or at a friend’s house.
The Rise of 3D and the N64 Frenzy
The mid-1990s brought a new level of excitement. Suddenly, catalogs were filled with the Nintendo 64, PlayStation, and Sega Saturn. The shift to 3D worlds created a sense of wonder unlike anything before. Screenshots of Super Mario 64, Tomb Raider, and Crash Bandicoot looked almost unreal on glossy catalog pages.
The N64 in particular became a holiday legend. Supply shortages made the system hard to find, and its iconic three-pronged controller became one of the most recognizable shapes in gaming. For many families, November meant hunting everywhere for a console that was nearly impossible to find.
The Power of the Wish List
What made those holiday wish lists special was not just the products. It was the anticipation. The act of circling a console or game, memorizing every detail in the catalog, and imagining what it would be like to play it created a deep emotional connection. These lists helped shape our early gaming tastes and introduced us to the franchises we still love today.
In many ways, the holiday shopping season was the engine that drove the retro gaming boom. With every November release, companies knew millions of kids were flipping through catalogs, making choices that would define their entire year of play.
Looking Back from Today
Today, the catalogs are gone, replaced by online ads and digital storefronts. But the nostalgia remains. For retro gamers, November still brings back memories of late nights with those wish books, carefully planning the perfect gaming list.
Whether you circled the Game Boy, the Sega Nomad, the N64, or that one cartridge you had been saving for all year, those moments are part of why retro gaming feels timeless.
The hardware changed. The wish lists changed. But the excitement of discovering the next great adventure has always stayed the same.