Question Of The Week [October 22nd 2025]

Late night gaming sessions are usually my most preferred way of playing video games, the late nights, dark environment and no distractions lead to hours upon hours of uninterrupted playtime. However, I find myself having to grab something during those long play sessions, especially during a cut scene of insane length. There are other times when it’s almost a communal ritual, like the LAN parties of old. So, what snacks are the go-to for gaming?

I’m a big guy, and I like snacks, but a lot of the more common snacking options aren’t very good for gaming. The stereotype of basement dwelling nerds having Cheeto dust covered fingers is common, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. No self respecting gamer would eat Cheetos while gaming with a controller. Our controllers are sacred and getting the nuclear orange dust all over our precious controllers would be sacrilege. And that goes for any type of finger food really, so as much as I love a bag of chips, they just don’t pair well with gaming.

When my wife and I first got married, the Nintendo Switch came out just a couple months after. We spent many nights playing The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, we would make late night runs down the mountain to Del Taco or the grocery store to pick up some candy. The Chu-Chu Jelly enemies resembled the candy DOTS, and we ended up having a whole inside joke about them. But when it comes to my favorite combo of snacks for gaming, I always find myself chasing the memory of the Summer of 2002 when Medal Of Honor Frontline came out and my friend and I shared ownership of a PS2. I had my summer job and I would stop off at the Blockbuster next door to my work and not only rent a new game every few days, but would grab some snacks and drive over to my friends house as we played our PS2.

The snack combo that I got was the minty dark chocolates called “Junior Mints” as my mom would always have a small box around when I was younger. My mom loved them, so I grew to always crave them too. And I would pair the box of dark chocolatey goodness with a new at the time, Vanilla Coke. I’ve always been a diet coke drinker, again, thanks to growing up with my mom’s affinity for it, but also because I’ve never liked regular Coke. It always tasted too sugary to me. However, the Vanilla infused regular coke was the only variation, and it tasted amazing! The vanilla flavoring subdued the overwhelming sugariness of the regular Coke.

So a box of Junior Mints and Vanilla Coke is the gold standard of what I look for in a late night  gaming snack. I very rarely do have the chance to snag a Vanilla Coke, but one sip of it will instantly transport me back to driving around in my first car, renting PS2 games at blockbuster, smelling of Pasta from my first job and hunkering down in a freezing cold air conditioned room to play some video games with some Junior Mints and a bottle of Vanilla Coke.