THE TWELVE YEARS OF CHRISTMAS: YEAR ELEVEN

1983
No, that photo wasn't taken in a local video arcade, that was actually in my living room.
You must have been fooled by the Arcade Style graphics of Donkey Kong Junior. My folks, bless them, decided to feed my video game obsession once again with a ColecoVision. The controller was rubbish, but the games seemed light years beyond my old fashioned Atari, which was in fact obsolete with ColecoVision's special adaptor that allowed you to play Atari games (which I never actually got). Donkey Kong came with the system, so I had the whole ape family. In the coming months I managed to score Space Fury, Smurf, Dragonfire, Q-Bert and so on. Of all my old consoles ColecoVision is the only one that no longer works which is pretty upsetting because I could really go for a round of Cabbage Patch Kid right this second.
(Also note in photo: Jabba the Hut pajamas, mail away exclusive "M Network" Tron joystick for Atari, and the Little Tikes kitchenette which was secretly as exciting as the Coleco was.)