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‘A penguin is for Christmas but a console is for life!’

- GAME launches first-ever free “gift rap” service with a message to Monty –

·         GAME trials personalised gift rapping service

·         Festive-themed raps from the Christmas Rapper available to all on the GAME website

·         First rap released today addresses a penguin’s ‘unethical’ desire for a ‘mail order bride’

What to buy a lonely pet penguin for Christmas? That’s a question addressed head-on as GAME, the UK’s leading video games retailer, launches the first-ever free gift rapping service for customers.

Rather than old-fashioned paper and sticky tape, a series of lyrical gift raps are being offered to customers making in-store and online purchases this year, totally free of charge.

GAME is trialling the service in-store for the first time by offering visitors to their Westfield Stratford store personalised gift raps on Tuesday 16^th December, from 10am-1pm.

In addition to this, Gamers and gifters with the GAME App simply have to visit the GAME website:www.game.co.uk/giftraps and hold their phone to a correlating image to benefit from one of four exclusive gift raps on their phone.

Over the four raps, the GAME Christmas Rapper* delivers a series of spoken-word monologues that bust the sentimental baubles of the festive period from an obsessive gamer’s perspective.

In a first exclusive teaser video, a ‘Message to Monty’ concerns Christmas Rapper’s relationship with his depressed pet penguin. His lyrics reveals the difficulties in communication, concerns over its short-life span in the British climate, irritation at having to bleach its pee stains and, ultimately, his gift solution to cheer the penguin up:

So I concocted a plan and this I'll share with you,

To console his tortured soul I bought him a console or two!

He opened them both and gasped with the heaviest breath,

I'm not gonna lie, at first he was less than impressed,

He confessed that what he desired and expected to get,

Was a mail order penguin bride...don't think he's assessed his ethics just yet!

The moral of the tale and this he learned over time,

A mail order penguin is for Christmas but a console is for life!

The other online raps paint a picture of a familiar picture of overcooked turkey, tipsy Nans in paper hats, Queens Speeches and interminable board games – which all conspire to frustrate the Christmas Rapper who simply wants to escape with the likes of FIFA 15, Skylanders and Destiny.

In ‘I Want a PS4!’ and ‘I Want an X Box One!’ the raps look at the pain of wanting a console so badly and the frustration of not being able to play on them until after the rituals of the family Christmas are over.

The final two Christmas raps include a gansta-rap style interpretation of the classic poem Twas the Night Before Christmas and In The Dugout in My Bedroom in homage to those who all those football video gamers who’d rather lead Accrington Stanley to the Champions League than partake in family festivities:

Mum shouts through the door ‘Did you open your card?’

But I’m playing away with Eden Hazard

Stephen Lynn, GAME said: “This Christmas Day there will be millions of Brits, young and old, who will be doing cold turkey in paper hats until they can finally escape to their new consoles and video games. And while the Christmas Rapper is a caricature of our collective passion for gaming he would be a far better playmate than an emotionally unstable penguin.”

“Lots of big retailers charge customers extra just to add some shiny paper and a bow on a purchase. The free gift rap service uses the latest technology, is a first for any retailer and our present to anyone who visits the GAME website or our Stratford store over the festive season.”