Getting your hands on the latest console is always difficult especially during the holiday season. The first trailer for HBO Max’s 8-Bit Christmas shows off an 80’s era quest to obtain a Nintendo gaming system. The trailer reveals that this is set in the ’80s when video games were a new, hot commodity that everyone wanted to experience for themselves.
8-Bit Christmas stars Neil Patrick Harris as Jack Doyle, who is telling his daughter a story about the gift he wanted more than anything else. The story goes back to the ’80s where a young Jack (Winslow Fegley) goes on a journey to obtain a Nintendo system. His parents, played by June Diane Raphael and Steve Zahn, believe that video games are unhealthy for children and refuse to have one in their house. Many parents in town have the same idea as Jack’s parents and now, Jack and his friends search to find one. Featured in the trailer, there will be a competition at school that promises the winner a Nintendo console.
In the 8-Bit Christmas trailer, one kid in the neighborhood already has a Nintendo console and we see kids offering up gifts to play the console. There are also scenes of the kids running through the mall and fighting at the top of a snowy hill. Things could get crazy as these kids have a desperation to get their hands on this console.
This film looks like a modern version of A Christmas Story and will serve as a look back to a time when video games weren’t as heavily available. The trailer still looks to have the Christmas spirit even if kids are fighting with each other over a gaming console. 8-Bit Christmas is directed by Michael Dowse with a screenplay by Kevin Jakubowski which is based on his book of the same name. It is rated PG for rude humor and some mild violence, language, and suggestive references.
8-Bit Christmas will be available exclusively on HBO Max on Nov. 24.