Wii for me!

We are now in seventh generation. The seventh generation of the console game industry, that is.

My first game console came in the second generation when we got the Atari 2600 at home. I don’t remember if it was for Tracy or me or both of us. When it was opened on Christmas (I was still sleeping), my mom played the first game of Pac-Man on it. She scored a 9, and I think that was all three lives. She was holding the controller upside down. Remember that old black stick with the orange button in the upper left corner. How simple. My favorite game was Super Breakout, using the “paddles.”

Tojo and I received the NES, part of the third generation, for Christmas one year. We found the system hidden in our parents bedroom way before Christmas. Of course, mom and dad found out that we found out. They developed a story about how mom was hiding it for her co-worker’s children, so Tojo and I were still surprised when we opened it Christmas Eve! We were the only ones in the neighborhood with the Power Pad. The Power Pad was the a big rubber mat you layed on the floor. It had 12 sensors in it (buttons, basically) and you would run in place for the World Class Track Meet game that was bundled on the same cartridge as Mario and Duck Hunt. Other games used it a little too, but we never bought any of those. My favorite game for the NES was a WWII submarine game, but the name escpaes me.

I have stayed away from the console wars for almost 20 years now. Although, I did criticize Tojo when he purchased Sega Genesis that uses a cartridge when he could have bought a Playstation that uses the ever cool (and now standard) CD. His argument to me was the load time was too long with the Playstation and it’s CD media.

Now the Game Console Industry is in it’s seventh generation, and there are only three systems: Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. I wasn’t interested in any of the offerings, until, that is, I saw the first released video of the new Nintendo controller, and I have been hooked ever since. While Nintendo and it’s Wii (pronounced “we”) are not challenging the power hungry Sony and Microsoft, they are hoping to get a new crowd interested. They are also hoping to get back the “old-school” gamers, and that is me. I hope Nintendo’s plan works, and from what I have seen at the recently ended E3, it is going to.

You can check out their newest promotional “Commercial” and other cool Wii stuff at this link: wii.nintendo.com