Gift Guide for Gaming Royalty (Read: Rich Folk)

So you have everything, do you? King of the castle, are we? You look at the new games coming out and mentally check mark every one of them you have pre-ordered, which includes all of them. You have a collection of games rivaling your local library’s book stacks. You think you’re pretty special, and you are, your majesty! Your biggest problem? You have no idea what to put on your Christmas list.

You could sit back and let people enjoy your own gifts, but how would that be fair? You deserve gifts too. Just being rich doesn’t mean you don’t like people buying you things. That’s not about the money, it’s about the gesture.

Thus I have taken the liberty of providing you with a healthy list of things you may not have considered in your quest for the perfect gaming environment. Have a look and make sure the relatives know just how much you mean to them.

Your Throne

You’ll see many things out there labelled as a “gaming chair.” They’re often nothing more than child seats stamped with a logo, not worthy of a night of Wii Music, much less a ten hour play session of Call of Duty. They are often overpriced, uncomfortable, and not aesthetically pleasing to the decor of your living room. And you who have everything, why would you ever waste money (or someone else’s money) on anything but the best? Well to you, I present the best. Behold:

They call this the Deluxe X Rocker Recliner. It’s made of real leather, is black, and boasts double foam padding for those long sessions and your butt. It has a mug holder, armrest storage area, a 3 channel wireless audio system, an adjustable powered subwoofer, an amplifier, and stereo satellite speakers. It works wirelessly with all major platforms, including your portable systems, and can even be plugged into a television or iPod. Now, some will point you in the direction of the Ultimate Game Chair, which you’ve probably seen advertised in promotional giveaways and such, but don’t be fooled. For one, the split controllers it has on both arms are 98% useless to all modern games, and while the vibration function sounds good in theory, in practice it would only mess up your gaming prowess and in general be a nuisance. It also looks silly, where the Deluxe X finds a place in any living room setting. Either chair is going to run you about 400 dollars, but for a recliner that’s not actually a bad price at all (less than I paid for the one I sit in every night).

Your Tapestries

Every good gamer needs an atmosphere that reminds them that they game, that they love gaming, and that they love gaming swag. This can generally be done with a decent poster collection, framed up nice obviously so that you seem classy, but did you know there was another way? I’m sure you’ve seen the commercials with professional athletes jumping out of walls. Well they have giant gaming stickers to paste on your wall as well. And surprisingly, some of them are actually cool. Take for instance, this:

The beauty of this particular wall graphic is that not only does it look good, but people get it. Everyone has played Mario at some point in time. Non-gamers who enter your domain will find it cute and almost retro hip. Gamers will worship your taste and style. Conversely, if you care not for the opinions of non-gamers (and why should you), you can get as geeky as you like with sites like Game Graphics, which offer large decals from a variety of games like Halo, Fallout, and Metroid.

Your Court

Every king needs sycophants and worshippers to attend him (or for queens, to attend her), but unfortunately it’s difficult to convince your friends to come over and feed you grapes and even more difficult to con that hot waitress across the street to stand half-naked in your living room catering to your every whim. In lieu of these things, you can surround yourself with inanimate objects! And they can consist of the many characters you’ve fallen in love with over the years. Basically, we’re just looking at action figures here, though perhaps without the action. They can be called PVC figurines, statues, whatever. The point is, they’re physical representations of characters we’ve fallen in love with, and a determined shopper can find just about anyone. Here are a few of my favorites:

God Link The Original Emo Vampire

The Innkeeper’s Daughter That Woman Who Killed You

These are not cheap, will generally run you just under 100 bucks, and the majority of them have to be imported from Japan. You can find them at places like Play-Asia, game publisher sites, ebay, and even Amazon. It helps to go in with an idea of what you want first and just do specific searches on that figure. And do not be fooled by inferior figurines. If it’s inexpensive, chances are its cheap. The reason these are as pricey as they are is simply because they’re simply great looking statues.

Your Jester

Every king or queen needs a dancing fool. But if you can’t find someone to be that fool, you must take it upon yourself to become the fool! The best way to do that is to buy this ridiculously expensive machine. This is the DDRX Arcade, the latest giant box from Konami’s wildly popular series.

Sure, you can get these games for consoles, but you’re rich, right? Why dumb down what could be a glorious dancing experience every time you start up those flashing lights? You’re also guaranteed to be a party favorite, at least until your 300 pound friend Biff gets on after two fifths of Jack and body slams it into the basement.

DDR X has the largest song selection of any DDR game with over 350 songs, 60 new to this version and many others remixed all ups. The cabinet is strapped to a 37″ LCD monitor, features LED lighting effects and a booming sound system to enhance play.

The game is also e-Amusement ready, which means players can insert SD cards that will allow ranking and data collection if you’re online. You can also get software to make your own steps and put them straight on the machine. Of course, it will cost you 50 bucks a month, on top of the thousands of dollars the arcade itself runs. I honestly couldn’t find a price for it. But does it matter? If you got the scratch to afford this beast, price isn’t really an issue for you any more.

Your Kingdom

What would all these possessions amount to if you didn’t have a kingdom to rule? Laws and “morals” dictate that we can not enslave those around us into serfs and servants, but we can do whatever we like in video games. Thus I find it extremely important to have the very best of televisions because the closer my games look to real life, the more I’ll feel like this crown I wear actually means something!

So I present to you arguably the best HDTV money can buy.

It’s the Pioneer Elite Kuro PRO-151FD, it will cost you upwards of 5800 bucks, and the black is so black that you may just get sucked into it. Now, you can buy bigger televisions. You can buy more expensive televisions. But in terms of sheer picture quality, this is quite possibly the best in the entire world. Pioneer is known for pushing the envelope in that regard, and they seem to have pushed it right off the planet with this. It apparently boasts the best black and color levels ever (aside from OLED which as far as I know has not been built in respectable gaming sizes yet). I could sit here and throw a bunch of statistics at you, but would either one of us understand any of them? Probably not. Instead you can read a review at cnet that’ll give you the skinny if you’re actually interested. They reviewed the 50 inch, but I strongly suggest you go for the 60. It’s only money, right?