When my friend Chris and I made a stout recently at his place in Rochester, NY, he learned of my closet addiction to video games - first-person shooters, in particular - when he had to pry the Sony PS2 controller from my hands so I'd eat some pizza. I haven't owned an actual gaming console in about, oh... let's just say it was a ColecoVision and leave it at that. But now I'm thinking about getting one, but not a PS3 to step up my addiction to blowing up virtual stuff in new and exciting ways.
What I'm referring to, of course, is the Nintendo Wii (pronounced "we"), a quietly revolutionary gaming console where the controllers are wireless (no more tethering to a couch!) and sensitive to your full range of motion. It sounds like a small point, but this is actually a mindblowing advance when put into practice. A strip placed atop the television the Wii is connected to interacts wirelessly with each Wii controller, and the effect is one of liberation. Can you imagine what the nerdier Gen-X'ers would be like if they were more ACTIVE while playing video games? I mean, to not just "toggle a knob to the left" to swing a bat in a baseball game, but actually "stand up, take a stance, and swing the bat (controller)" to see that motion reflected in the virtual game on the screen?
The Nintendo brand is legendary, due to moral convictions and the unwavering commitment of their fourth president Satoru Iwata, for not allowing development of any violent or warlike games on its platform. This has held them back in the otherwise thriving industry, where violent (and often sexually explicit) games like Grand Theft Auto, and the consoles it runs on, rule the marketplace. Nintendo would prefer an advancement of the more innocent Super Mario Brothers aesthetic instead, and has, as a direct result of those convictions and some serious R&D cash, changed the face of modern gaming. And you can buy a Wii for less than PS3 or similar. A LOT less.
So why isn't it being promoted as a super way to get some exercise and shift your paradigm in a positive direction? Probably because, as other commentators have pointed out, we live in a litigeous society and some of these hardcore gamers haven't exerted muscles as big as their shoulders in a decade or two.
So I'm a fan, and I want one, and I might just get my way. If I can find a way to play baseball as a first-person shooter. (Hey, I told you I'm an addict.)
Thu, 12/28/2006 - 22:37
And I was excited when the home-version of Ms. Pacman started recently showing up in Target. I'm also from the Atari age and haven't really had much to do with home video games since then, but what you are talking with sounds quite compelling!