E3 2006: Nintendo's Waiting Game

Ain't that the truth. Congratulations must go to Nintendo for making something worth buying, as they always have. For example:
Between my group of about 10 23ish year old friends, we have a total of 1 XBOX 360, 1 PS2, 2or3 XBOXes, and 4or5 N64s (plus various nes, snes, master system, mega drives, and my atari 520st).
We go around to each other's houses to play games, and inevitably, it's the N64 that wins out for multiplayer "inclusive" games. Occasionally we play some game on the xbox that i can't remember the title of, basically it's a tag-team Mortal Kombat. The graphics are good, we can get 4 people playing on it, but it's just button-mashing, and soon everyone gets sick of it. Ditto with the FPS i also can't remember the name of. The controls are so hard to get used to, and everyone gets disheatened easily.
Thank god for the N64. Between Perfect Dark, Mario Kart, and Diddy Kong Racing, we can play until dawn, and nobody gets bored, after all these years there's still fights for controllers (with the xobx, sometimes we can't give away controllers, so everyone walks away and the gaming ends). and there's nothing more fun than drunken mario kart on "vs".

The graphics of the N64 may not stand up on today's standards, but who cares? it's the fun aspect. it's the inclusiveness. it's the gameplay. And the Wii will surely have kickass graphics compared to the N64, there's no need to trade gameplay for something that may look better if you can afford a $5000 tv. heck, my tv's so old it doesn't even have A/V line in, i have to modulate my N64 to RF using my VCR to play it. And i'm not the only one. I'd hazard a guess that at least 50% of console gamers have a tv more than 5 years old, so no amount of good graphics can make up for less gameplay.

Thank you, Nintendo, for listening for the vast majority of the market who would rather have a good time with friends than sit alone and look at pretty pictures. Putting the "We" back into games? if they pull this off, they're going to beat the other two combined, hands down.


[ps, a quick strawpoll among friends said that 20% of them would buy a Wii, but that rises to 50% if there's going to be some kind of Star Wars Light Sabre game available. Take note Nintendo, you've got a good thing going, now keep going.]

Let's hope that the long lines at E3 are not a sign of the holiday season supplies to come...

But seriously, I do think that Nintendo, with less than three or so weeks, has managed to put what has been called the "worst console name ever" way into the past. I think that's a good metric of the attention on them. It looks like "the big N" will also truly deliver.

I think that Nintendo may be on to something here in "branching out." It seems that they may actually attract a bunch of people who went exclusively to PC gaming. After all, PC enthusiasts know that all of those "graphical orgasm" titles the Xbox 360 and PS3 promise can be topped on the PC; Of those out, I'd point to Oblivion as a prime example; I've got an aging X800XT, and the game runs smoothly, set well beyond what the Xbox 360 has it set to. I've considered wearing a bib while playing.

It's effectively the whole approach to making games for those consoles that has driven a lot of previous console fans to the PC. However, if Nintendo can offer something unique, and for a modest entry price, they may actually be able to pull several million "new" console gamers right out of thin air.