Happy New Year! Usually every year for Christmas, I get a new calendar for the coming year.  For the past few years, it’s been a video game related calendar and I’ve usually written about it here.  Well this year it’s the same way as I got an Animal Crossing calendar!  So I thought I’d share some pictures of it along with a few other things I got for Christmas.

Here is a closer view of the front of the calendar. It’s based on the artwork from New Leaf.  Notice that at the top, it says it comes with bonus stickers!  We’ll get to that in a bit.

On the back you can see which characters are on which month. I’m a little disappointed that my birthday month, September, has Lyle on it.  I was hoping it would have my favorite character, Blathers the Owl, instead.  I think that would make more sense for September, but at least he’s in November.  Also, wouldn’t it have been cool if the calendar also had the birthdays and holidays and events in the games as well?  Although if it did, the calendar would be so full you wouldn’t be able to put anything in yourself, so I guess that’s why they didn’t do that!

Remember when I said the calendar included bonus stickers, too! Well here they are.  It’s a pretty big sheet of them, almost as big as the calendar itself, as you can see in the picture.  So all in all it’s a pretty good calendar for Animal Crossing fans.  I guess it’s a good indication on how popular the series is if they were willing to make a calendar out of it!

Here are some pictures of some other Christmas presents that I got that are video game related. I got more things than this, and I’m very thankful for all the things I got, even if they aren’t pictured here.  But I just thought these in particular would make interesting pictures to show.

First is some Christmas ornaments based on Super Mario Maker, a new Wii U game. Each ornament has a picture of Mario on them from the styles of graphics you can make in the game.  Super Mario Maker is a pretty recent game, and so these ornaments must’ve been pretty new, too.  I’ve never seen them before!

In 2016 I’ll have been reviewing games for 20 years, and in that time I’ve made some pretty good long-term relationships with video game companies and the PR firms that work with them. Sometimes they’ve even sent me Christmas cards, which I’ve always loved.  Nowadays, most of them just email their Christmas cards, so it’s always nice to get one in the post mail.  This year, Ubisoft sent me a Christmas card in the mail, and it had a little gift with it: socks that have the Ubisoft logo on them!  So are they called Ubi-socks?  What fabric are they made of?  Assassin’s Tweed?  Rayman Rayon?  (sorry, bad joke)  Anyway, here’s what the socks look like.

And finally, I got a Mario Kart slot car racing set. They make a ton of Mario Kart themed toys, so I guess it’s pretty popular!  I like the fact that one of the slot cars in this set is Toad, my favorite Mario character.  When I was little I would usually get a cheapy slot car set for Christmas every year, so it was kind of funny to get one as an adult.  One time I asked for a Dukes of Hazzard slot car set for my birthday when I was little, and it was really disappointing when I got it because it had a ramp for the cars to jump over, like in the TV show.  Well how many times do you think the cars landed right back on the slots and kept going?  Never!  Maybe I’ll set up the Mario Kart one someday and review it.  Here’s the box.

And that’s all for now! One of the other things I got was a PS Vita.  Now I have to figure out what games to get for it.  Anyone have any suggestions?  Anyway, I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  –Cary

Tags: Misc