Vintage Video Game Ads Make Us Pine For Christmases Past

There are lots of things that make the holidays special, like presents, treats and family togetherness.

But for many older millennials and some Gen-Xers, Christmas when you were a kid meant one thing: the chance to collect more video games.

Children of the '80s and '90s have fond memories of waking up early on Christmas morning and tearing open the wrapping paper on new games like "Ninja Gaiden," "Contra" and "Super Mario Bros. 3."

Hype once built up for these games thanks in part to catalogues from stores such as Sears and JCPenney, and while those kinds of ads may not have the influence they used to, the old ones have plenty of nostalgic value.

U.S. resident Alan Swegan has uploaded decades worth of holiday catalogues to a Flickr account known as Wishbook.

Having grown up in an area outside Las Vegas where there was no Walmart, the only way he could build anticipation for toys on Christmas was by looking at department store catalogues, The Toronto Star reported.

Those books, spanning every decade from the '40s to the '90s, contain pages and pages of toys — and no shortage of video game ads that had us excited when we were younger.

Here are some of the best vintage video game ads we found on Swegan's account. So please, join us in pining for Christmases past!