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15 Games Every Kid Wanted for Christmas

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Top of the wishlist.

Nazarii Verbitskiy

Gaming - November 11th 2026, 02:00 GMT+1

Super Smash Bros Brawl — 15. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008)
Mario, Pikachu, Link, and Kirby were never supposed to share a screen, yet here they were, kicking each other off a floating stage. Super Smash Bros. Brawl turned sibling arguments into a genre of their own, with four controllers plugged in and nobody agreeing on the rules. Final Smashes made every match feel like a cartoon crossover nobody greenlit on purpose. Christmas morning with this one meant the console stayed on until someone's mom turned off the TV. | © Nintendo

Golden Eye 007 — 14. GoldenEye 007 (1997)
Four kids, one television, and a single N64 cartridge made for some of the ugliest friendships in gaming history. GoldenEye 007 ran split screen so small you could barely see your own character, which made camping by the spawn point with the RCP-90 feel like a legitimate strategy. Oddjob was either banned or the only character anyone wanted to play, no middle ground. It proved multiplayer didn't need the internet to ruin a friendship for an afternoon. | © Nintendo

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 — 13. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992)
Speed was the whole pitch with Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and Sega leaned into it without apology. Tails tagging along meant someone's little sibling finally had a reason to hold a controller too. The Chemical Plant Zone music still lives in a lot of heads rent free, decades later. Blast processing was mostly marketing nonsense, but the game underneath it actually moved like nothing else on the shelf. | © Sega

The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time — 12. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998)
A kid pulls a sword from a pedestal and the entire scope of the game changes overnight. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time aged Link up, darkened Hyrule, and handed players an instrument that doubled as a time machine. Navi yelling "Hey, Listen" became the most quoted annoyance of an entire generation. Few games have made growing up feel this literal, or this heavy. | © Nintendo

Nintendogs — 11. Nintendogs (2005)
Nobody actually got a dog that Christmas, so Nintendogs became the next best thing. The DS microphone let you call your puppy's name and watch it actually come running, which felt like magic in 2005. Feeding it, teaching tricks, entering competitions, it was a whole pet ownership simulator stuffed into a handheld. Plenty of kids loved their pixelated Labrador more than they'd like to admit now. | © Nintendo

Spyro the Dragon — 10. Spyro the Dragon (1998)
Purple, charming, and permanently annoyed at sheep, Spyro the Dragon turned flying into a reward for curiosity. Every level hid gems in corners you only found by gliding somewhere you probably weren't supposed to go. The charm came from how small everything felt, cozy worlds instead of sprawling ones. Burning a path through a village as a tiny dragon never stopped being funny. | © Sony Computer Entertainment

Crash Bandicoot — 9. Crash Bandicoot (1996)
Orange fur, spin attacks, and a string of boxes that never seemed to end, that was the whole afternoon with Crash Bandicoot. The game did not care about being fair, it just wanted you to try the same jump eleven times. Getting through a level without dying felt like winning a prize nobody else could see. PlayStation needed a mascot and got a slightly unhinged marsupial instead. | © Sony Computer Entertainment

Wii Sports — 8. Wii Sports (2006)
Nobody warned anyone's living room about Wii Sports. A grandmother could suddenly out-bowl a teenager, and tennis matches ended with someone's glasses knocked sideways. The remote did the swinging, but it was your whole arm doing the work, and eventually a lamp paid the price. It is still the only game that managed to make a boxing match out of two people standing perfectly still. | © Nintendo

Guitar Hero III — 7. Guitar Hero III (2007)
Plastic guitars took over bedrooms the second Guitar Hero III showed up under the tree. "Through the Fire and Flames" became the line that separated casual players from people who practiced in secret. Missing a note during a solo felt like letting down a crowd that did not exist. Nobody actually learned guitar, but everyone swore they were close. | © Activision

Cropped Mario Kart Wii — 6. Mario Kart Wii (2008)
Blue shells ruined more friendships than they should have, and Mario Kart Wii knew exactly what it was doing. Twelve racers on one track meant chaos was guaranteed before the first lap ended. Someone always claimed the wheel peripheral was rigged against them specifically. Four players, one couch, and a finish line nobody remembers crossing cleanly. | © Nintendo

The Sims 2 — 5. The Sims 2 (2004)
Killing off an entire family by deleting the pool ladder was a rite of passage. The Sims 2 let you build a house, fall in love, age up a baby overnight, and then ruin it all out of curiosity. Aspirations and wants gave people actual personalities instead of just moodlets. It turned boredom into a strange kind of godhood. | © Electronic Arts

Super Mario 64 — 4. Super Mario 64 (1996)
Jumping had never felt like that before. Super Mario 64 put Mario in an actual three-dimensional castle, and suddenly running, swimming, and long-jumping across Bob-omb Battlefield felt like a new sense had been unlocked. Stars hid behind paintings and inside secret caves, rewarding anyone willing to poke at every corner. Nintendo didn't just move Mario into 3D, they wrote the rulebook everyone else borrowed from for years. | © Nintendo

Minecraft — 3. Minecraft (2011)
A world made entirely of destructible blocks sounds simple until you've spent six hours digging a hole and forgotten why. Minecraft gave kids an empty world and zero instructions, which turned out to be exactly what they wanted. Some built castles, some built elaborate traps for friends, some just punched trees until nightfall brought zombies. There was no winning, just whatever you decided to make before bed. | © Mojang

Pokémon Red and Blue — 2. Pokémon Red & Blue (1996)
Trading Pokémon required two Game Boys, a link cable, and a friend patient enough to sit still for ten minutes. Pokémon Red & Blue split the world in half on purpose, since no single cartridge had every creature. Kids filled notebooks with stats and trade offers like tiny Wall Street brokers. Completing the Pokédex was never really the point, having a reason to trade with your friend was. | © Nintendo

Cropped Grand Theft Auto San Andreas — 1. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004)
San Andreas was never meant to end up under a ten-year-old's Christmas tree, and that's exactly why it did. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas handed players an entire state, complete with gyms, haircuts, girlfriends, and a soundtrack better than most radio stations. CJ could get fat, get ripped, or get arrested, and the game barely blinked either way. It felt like freedom because, for once, a game actually meant it. | © Rockstar Games

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Remember putting one game at the top of your Christmas list and checking under the tree before anyone else was awake? These were the games every kid begged for, and the ones that made December feel like magic. Here are 15 games every kid wanted for Christmas.

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Remember putting one game at the top of your Christmas list and checking under the tree before anyone else was awake? These were the games every kid begged for, and the ones that made December feel like magic. Here are 15 games every kid wanted for Christmas.