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The best gifts for gamers either make playing better or let a favorite game spill into the rest of the house: a controller that won’t drift, a lamp from a series they grew up with, a cookbook from a world they’ve spent a few hundred hours in. Here’s something at every budget.
Patch note v7.2: asked for “nothing” this year. Updated wishlist attached.
Under $25
Protocol’s pick: The Official Stardew Valley Cookbook. More than 50 recipes from Pelican Town, written with the game’s creator, so the farmer in your life can finally make the dishes they’ve been cooking for years. Practical, and a correct use of a kitchen.
Lag’s pick: Paladone Super Mario Question Block Light. An officially licensed question block that lights up. Every gamer has hit one of these about ten thousand times. Now there’s one on the shelf.
Under $50
Protocol’s pick: The Elder Scrolls: The Official Cookbook. Recipes from across Tamriel, sweetrolls included. A gift that says “I know where your free time goes” and also feeds you.
Lag’s pick: 8BitDo Ultimate 2C Wireless Controller. A wireless controller for PC and Android with Hall effect sticks, which use magnets instead of parts that rub together, so they hold up against stick drift. It’s cheap enough to be a second controller and good enough to be the main one.
The splurge
LEGO Game Boy (72046). A buildable, full-size Game Boy for the shelf. Lag wants to build it. Protocol wants it displayed. It is a model, not a working console, which Protocol felt needed to be said.
House Log
LAG: I made a wishlist.
PROTOCOL: I have reviewed it. It contains one item.
LAG: “Games.”
PROTOCOL: That is a category.
Be right there. Probably.