Nintendo Makes Video Games Now?
Here’s a great example of the different types of news you can find, on the exact same day.
XBox 360 on Life Support in Japan. An article that claims the Japanese love the DS more than any other video gaming system, console, handheld or otherwise.
Console Wars. XBox had a year’s worth of head start but the latest projections put total Wii and XBox sales at just about even. Playstation isn’t even a factor this time around.
So what exactly is my fascination with the Wii? Well, it’s not actually as much of a fascination with the Wii exclusively, but Nintendo in general. In 198-something, Nintendo came out with the first video game system that you could play in your house that didn’t involve three squares, one for your character, one for the bad guy, and one that was probably some type of glitch (read: Atari, God rest its soul.)
There were two controllers, two games and a gun right in the box. The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, Marble Madness, just to name a few, games that began entire generations of game types, let alone game franchises. A few years later Nintendo came out with the GameBoy, then Virtual Boy, Nintendo 64 was the first system to get serious about 3D universes (Even on PS1 when it seemed like a true 3D world it wasn’t, because you had no control over the camera, ie, Final Fantasy 7 is not a 3D game because you can only see what the game creators camera’s allow you to, weak.), and then a few rough years where not much happened until DS and Wii rocked onto the scene, adding whistling, tilting, swinging and all around general fun. Not every invention that Nintendo has come up with has succeeded, but it never stopped them from trying out new ideas.
This is a company based around innovation. Without the Nintendo there never would have been a PlayStation. Nintendo invented the video game controller and Sega, Sony and Microsoft didn’t do much of anything with it (double analog sticks was the most innovative addition) until the Wii came along with complete motion sensitivity and PS3 copied it by adding a minimal amount of the stuff.
The only thing that any generation of console has done to outshine the Wii (with regards to gaming) is provide superior graphics. All I can say to that is this: Legally Blonde has better picture quality than Taxi Driver, but if you could only watch one more movie for the rest of your life, which would you choose?
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