For all my “PC Gamerz R Teh RULEZ!1!11!!!1″ style posts on TSE, I have a confession to make. Deep within the caverns of my heart, I still have a burning affection for Nintendo. But not the Super Nintendo, GameCube, DS – none of that nonsense. I’m talking the hardcore, old school Nintendo Entertainment System. That shoddy hunk of plastic that caused many fits of rage with its random resets and crashing – the one that my brother and I used increasingly inventive substances and implements to “clean” – all for the hope of having 5 more uninterrupted minutes of Super Mario 3 or Fester’s Quest. I loved and loathed that thing in equal measure, and although my brother eventually graduated to a Playstation, I never quite took to it, preferring the comfortable familiarity of the pixelated frustration of Paperboy or flexing my poker prowess with Casino Kid. It wasn’t until we finally got a home computer in 1999 that I abandoned console gaming forever in favor of the PC.
It was like rediscovering my roots, man! After all, I was the dweeby kid who eschewed kindergarten recess in favor of playing Oregon Trail on the Apple IIe, even if I was constantly suffering a premature death.
For my second go-round with PC gaming, I started out on Adventure games (with the Gabriel Knight series still anchored atop my “Favorite Games of All Time” list), and eventually I graduated to RTS and RPG titles. And in the 10 years now that I’ve exclusively been a PC gamer, I’ve had nary an itch or an urge to try consoles again. And then, goddammit, the caressing whisper of Satoru Iwata got all up in my business and made me start jonesing for a Wii. (In reality, it was probably those incessant television commercials – but the idea of a small Asian man whispering sweet nothings about video games into my slumbering ears sounds way dirtier!)
So I batted my eyelashes at Spoony and asked if I could borrow his Wii, since I’ve heard from nearly all my friends who have one that the novelty factor wears off after a month or so, and $199 is a hefty price to pay for a fleeting amusement. Upon getting it home, some hijinks and hilarity ensued, during which I nearly knocked over my hulking 42″ projection TV, which is a bottom-heavy beast that requires a massive reconverging of the color tubes any time I dare to jostle it from its resting place. I hauled it about a foot from the wall, then commenced 5 minutes of volleying my gaze between the back of the set and the twisted and tangled back-end of my audio receiver. The latter is about 8 years old, and I’ve never quite grasped how to use it. (I once spent many static-filled minutes trying to get the thing to broadcast a radio signal, while Spoony played with his iPhone and watched me in amusement.) I have a fondness for it though, with its “Star Trek remote” that has a screen that displays far more information that anyone truly needs, and yet doesn’t seem to facilitate anything useful. Still, hooking up the Wii to this monstrosity was testing my patience and technology skills, which I like to think are respectable, but the mystified reflection in the television screen said otherwise.
So off to the bedroom I went, where I got everything turned on and plugged in within 10 minutes time. (Awwwwwwwwwww yeah.)
Survey says? Well, I don’t have much to go on just yet, save Wii Sports and the yet-to-be-played Punch Out, which ejaculated … Err, ejected once the console sprang to life. I’m diggin’ it though! My golfing prowess could use some finesse, but I SCHOOLED at tennis (thank you, Rafa Nadal!) and all those nights spent being silly and semi-buzzed in bowling alleys seem to be paying off. This, too, is probably the one time that I would definitely choose sports games over RPGs, although the idea of swinging the Wii remote in the heat of a sword-fighting battle does sound most triumphant!
We’ll see how long the infatuation lasts though. Can the Wii provide the same countless hours of entertainment as its great-great grandfather console? Will it cause me to jump in the same way that Friday the 13th did? Will I find the Warp Whistle? Will I have the fondness for the Wii remote that Lucas did for the Power Glove, because it’s “so bad”?
One thing’s for certain … When it comes to consoles, I am most certainly a Nintend’ho.
