I’m an avid gamer and I’ve been playing games for as long I have memories. One of my first memories is playing Super Mario on the NES. That fine piece of hardware was a huge hit. Nintendo sold a stunning 61.91 million units worldwide. As I grew older I still played Nintendo games but my focus started to shift to Sega. I became a huge arcade fan and visited the local arcades (rip) weekly to test my fighting games skills. The Megadrive had a better sound chip than the Super Nintendo/Famicon and promoting Sonic at the school yard felt more satisfying then defending the Italian plumber. After the unfortunate demise of Sega with the Dreamcast I was already playing the PlayStation. All my friends switched to Sony and Microsoft and I jumped the bandwagon. Nintendo grew old on me although I still had tons of fun when playing on my N64 or Cube. But my competitive spirit drew me to hardcore games that I now consider to be mainstream games. Gears of War, Battlefield, Call of Duty, etc.. Until last week when I bought myself a Wii U with some Nintendo games. It brought something back… sheer fun!
You could see this blog as a story on how I rediscovered how much fun videogames can be. It all started with the great Pokemon Go hype. I downloaded the game just for kicks because I could remember the fun I had collecting all the pocket monsters on my Gameboy. But after giving the game a serious try I could not ignore the joy I experienced with this simple game. Controls are simple, graphics are nothing special but it still struck. It made me think about the fact that I lost the urge to come back to games like Call of Duty, Destiny, Overwatch, Resident Evil, NBA2K and even my beloved Street Fighter.
I consider myself to be a gentle and easy going human being. I try to be a pacifist and compassion is something I try to give every day. But all that can change when I pick up a controller. When I lose, I curse. When I lose I can punch a pillow and back in the days I used to throw or break controllers. Not that it made me a better player afterwards, but it just felt good for a second (or two). Then the shame kicks in. Sonic never used to get me angry. Neither did Mario. Only Quackshot made me feel terrible for two whole years but that’s just because I couldn’t read English yet and I had no idea what to do in a Egyptian pyramid. Thinking about it made me realize that the stuff that’s giving me stress is my kd ratio, achievements, trophies, points captured and wins. Another point of stress is how people refuse to play as a team where you have to function as a team in order to win.
I consider myself to be lucky. I’m old enough to tell tale about the videogame evolution. I’ve seen the industry change. E-sports are bigger than ever and videogames are all about letting other people know how good you are. Some streamers can pay the rent by simple playing games and are celebrities within their own sub culture. I grew up playing multiplayer games in split screen and we didn’t look on each other’s part of the screen (most of the time). We had fun on the couch without thousands of people looking over our shoulders. It was fun. So much fun that we actually had the police at our door in the middle of night because the neighbors kept complaining about our enthusiast screams. Don’t misunderstand be… I’m not a conservative and don’t want to rant about ‘everything was better back in the days’. Games look far better than they used to. Players can share, record and play against people across the planet. And bugs can be fixed with a simple update. The couch became the world and I’ve found out that it’s not working for me. I like a physical copy of my game and I hate the fact that publishers don’t make decent booklets anymore.
So.. back to my revelation. Pokemon Go was actually fun and maybe I should try some more Nintendo stuff? I started to recollect fond memories of times I played Nintendo Games and I couldn’t get enough. I don’t know about you but for me Nintendo died when they released the Wii. That console had so much crap in its library that I didn’t even want to play with it. It’s was the first console I ever skipped. Nintendo send me their Wii Event invite and it gave me the opportunity to play on the console months before release but I was all but impressed. While looking for reasons to backstab Nintendo I somehow convinced myself to think Nintendo was to childish for the likes of me. But Pokemon was fun and I made my decision – I would buy a Nintendo Wii U. While doing my research what games to purchase I stumbled upon amazing ratings on every Nintendo flagship. I left the videogame store (support your local videogame store!) with Super Mario World 3D, New Super Mario Bros U, Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze, Mario Kart 8 and Zelda Twilight Princess HD. On top of that I found out that I missed not one but two amazing Mario games named Super Mario Galaxy.
After a rather long process of fine-tuning the settings and an dreadful software update the introduction of Super Mario World 3D Illuminated the room. Four hours later the smile on my face was still there. What an incredible smart and fun game to play. The music is spot on and the textures are incredible. But what stood out was my smile. Searching for all the stars in de levels made my day. Finding secrets even more so. A couple of days later Mario Kart 8 was on the menu with some friends. The same friends who were there on the night the police spoiled our fun. We selected 150cc and Mushroom Cup was our first target. In the second corner on Mario Kart Stadium we were already shouting and laughing while firing red shields and throwing bananas. We had fun all night long without touching the internet settings of the console. None of the other players owned an Wii U but one day later two decided to buy one.
It’s not that playing games on the PlayStation or Xbox cannot be fun but nobody does it better that Nintendo. It took me a time to get my own head out of my ass but the world looks (and smells) a lot better with Nintendo in it.