Christmas for me will always mean temperatures of 32°. That's Celsius, 90° in Fahrenheit, and only in the shade. Being in the southern hemisphere, the peak of South Africa's eight summer months starts in December. Which when I was a child meant ice creams, braais (BBQ), veld yellowed by the sun and, if you were a gamer, Chinese emporiums of bootleg games.

I lived in Johannesburg up until my teenage years in the mid-1990s; it was a fleeting and culturally eclectic time. Thanks to international trade embargoes plus an influx of political refugees and immigrants, some from Eastern Europe and Hong Kong escaping current and impending communism, our holiday season was unlike any other. South Africa was a happy melting pot of Italians, Germans, Greeks, Portuguese, Polish, Chinese and local ethnic groups, and each had an influence on the celebrations.

We also lacked many things you'd find in America or England. There was never any snow (except on Christmas cards), absolutely no carol singers because it was too dangerous to walk around at night, and as far as Santa down the chimney, no one had a fireplace. Though there was still the fat man in a red costume, albeit sweltering in the sun.

The international trade situation also made for an interesting time. All videogames that I saw, until I left, were either grey-market imports from America and Japan, or bootlegs from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. I've heard people talk about officially supported PAL products, but I never saw them. Chinese business communities in Jo'burg realized there was huge potential in bringing over and selling imported and counterfeit goods which were otherwise unavailable, or too expensive via official means. And these weren't the usual cheaply-made bootleg games you'd find, like those I bought off Russian smugglers in Eastern Europe at the turn of the millennium, with faulty menus and broken graphics. These were top-quality pirate cartridges from Asia, with little stickers around the edges explaining that your 30-day warranty would be void if tampered with. Counterfeit hardware meanwhile consisted of motherboards holding proper chipsets, unlike shoddy modern NOACs with their poor compatibility rates.

My first experience with games must have been around the early 1990s during December, when kids had the entire month off school and everyone wore shorts. We were visiting our friends, the Lai family from Hong Kong. The son, Kit, was around my age. His folks ran a general import store at North Gate shopping mall in Jo'burg, which is how our moms got to know each other. Our dads got along pretty well too, and so we'd often visit. This time though, Kit had a Famicom clone - a magical box under the TV with interchangeable games. I wanted one. I wanted one desperately, and with unparalleled fervor the nagging engine went into hyperdrive. It was nearly Christmas, and I'd been especially good, so my parents talked with the Lais about sourcing one.

There were other machines available, but these cost a lot more South African Rand than a Famicom clone. When they eventually filtered down to us through importers, I recall an American SNES was over R800, the Sega Genesis slightly less (there was some official PAL support, but it was negligible and the cool kids imported). Much later the Sega CD cost over a whopping R1,000. One Chinese store at North Gate even had what appeared to be PC-Engine Shuttle systems. To put all of these prices into context, my dad says a crate of his beers cost R27 and one Famicom game cost maybe around R100. At the time the exchange rate fluctuated from between R2.5 and R3 to the dollar.

With the decision that my brother and I would jointly get a Famicom, on condition of good behavior, my mom told us to think about what games we'd want. Now, newsagents stocked copies of EGM, Game Players and British mags, but they were often months out of date. So what you guys had in September, we were still using at the start of December to write Christmas lists. Some game stores sold mags which were four, six, even eight or more months out of date.

Christmas shopping in South Africa was also a bit different. While Jo'burg had chic designer boutiques that could match those of Paris and New York, it also had more exotic consumer outlets, like Bruma Lake on its outskirts. As a family we would visit Bruma Lake to buy gifts: African art for the East European relatives, and games for the kids. It was an enormous open-air market, flanked by dusty brick buildings, restaurants and toilets, and encompassing hundreds of stalls selling every conceivable item allowed by law. Thousands of people buying and selling and bustling against each other. You could walk for three hours and not have seen half of it. There were crocodile handbags and ivory carvings at a fraction of high-street prices, hawked by outdoor vendors who had traveled from as far away as the Cameroon. Sadly ignorant of this enchanting and soon-to-be-gone cultural bouillabaisse, my 10-year-old self made a beeline for the Asian traders' electronics stalls.

People are sometimes surprised by my fervent love of Japanese games. The fact is, South Africa warped my perception of games forever. When asked what I wanted for Christmas, I was presented with rows upon rows, hundreds, of multi-colored bootleg Famicom cartridges, very few of which were in English. And my folks always allowed me and my brother to choose, because parents aren't good at selecting games even at the best of times, let alone when they're in Japanese. The cover art and names listed in outdated American magazines seldom matched what was on those stalls, so choosing a good game was trial and error based on a piece of artwork no bigger than a pack of cigarettes. Sometimes the artwork differed even from the Japanese originals - possibly taken from a random anime by whoever was in charge of the Hong Kong factory that week. For example, my friends and I were amused that America only had Super Mario Bros 3, whereas one of us owned a cartridge labeled SMB 8. Years later I discovered it was actually a hack of Don Doko Don 2, which in fairness was worthy of the deception. Today I'm still unable to source some of the titles I'd seen on those stalls, each one promising untold adventures, and as a result of this mystique I now find impenetrable Japanese games not so much exotic, as familiar and comforting.

Seasonal TV adverts were also unusual, since if they were for games they would have been for bootlegs. I still hang on to an 18-year-old VHS tape used for recording cartoons, purely because it contains probably the last surviving record of a national TV advert which promotes piracy. It was for the Reggies Entertainment System, branded by the local equivalent of Toys-R-Us. (ED's note: I have since lost this tape, unfortunately, otherwise I'd put it on youtube

Spurred on by such reminders the weeks passed in an impatient haze, until eventually it was Christmas Eve and my parents invited the Lais to celebrate with us. Mrs Lai brought ice-cream cake on a bed of dry ice, while Mr Lai clutched a bag filled with mysterious wrapped items. One had to be the games machine! Now, being half Polish, I have a double celebration: the first being on the night of Christmas Eve after the first star has come out. We dined on barszcz, uszka, and 10 other dishes, followed by the opening of presents. The next day was another celebration, the South African way, with cold roast meats and salad, plus more gift giving. Of course, on Christmas Eve you first have to wait until after the meal, which isn't easy when you're a kid and already know what's under the tree.

Our dads sat outside drinking chilled beers, swatting away mosquitoes and talking rugby, while our moms prepared the big meal. I don't recall how Kit and I occupied ourselves, but eventually it was time to unwrap boxes. Mine and my brother's gift was indeed a Famicom clone, with a multi-cartridge each, and Kit got several games.

As our parents played mahjong (real mahjong - not the solitaire knock-off), we three played Ikki, B-Wings and Dead Fox. By the time we reached level two our parents wanted to watch the Christmas premiere, and so hijacked the TV to put M-Net on. That was South Africa's subscription film channel and the only way to watch anything decent.

Much later our Chinese friends brought out the climax for the evening: Mr Lai's mysterious bag. Inside were all manner of strangely shaped black-market fireworks, sourced from God-knows-where. They shot high and burned as hot as the night itself, producing the best damned explosions I've ever seen.