It was Christmas Eve, 1991, and some high-school friends of mine all got together during Winter break for midnight mass. After church, one person in the group who worked as a manager at Little Caesars invited about 10 of us all back to his store at the local strip mall, cranked up the ovens and we all pigged out on pizzas and Crazy Bread while hiding in the back so the patrolling cops didn’t think it was a bunch of punks looting the place.

Normally, that would be the highlight of anyone’s Christmas story. But then my two closest friends, Tim and Jerome, came back to my parents house with me to loot my place, as we tore open the wrapped Sega Genesis games, obviously given away by those memorable clamshell plastic cases. One of those games was an arcade favorite of ours, Pit Fighter.

Now, I have a problem of falling asleep doing basically anything, at any hour of the day. So combining church, 2AM, and a stomach full of Caesars is certain doom. I think I survived a few bouts of the game before handing over the controller, and Tim and Jerome unabashedly mooched off of my gift, round after round, until I slowly drifted off for a long Winter’s nap…

I woke up in the morning on the living room floor, TV and Genesis powered off, and no Tim and Jerome to be found. They ended up playing to their hearts content while I succumbed to those visions of sugarplums. As good as friends could be, they considerately turned everything off and cleaned up before they left.

But the best part? Jerome in a particularly heated Pit Fighter match, said to me, “man, I don’t know how games can ever look better than this…”