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September 23, 2005
Revorution.
So it's now been a full week since the Revolution controller unveiling. Opinions have run the gamut from "awesomest awesome thing from Awesomevania" to "batshit fucking insane" (Ars Technica: your home for insightful commentary). Despite being the hardcore Nintendo fanatic that I am, I understand both sides, and actually even relate to them as well.
Last Thursday night I was in my apartment, playing with my newly set-up bootleg wireless internet, trying to find the sweet spot in my living room for maximum bandwidth. When I finally got a decent signal, I hit up a couple RSS feeds that had updated since I left work. 4 Color Rebellion, my Nintendo site of choice, had a bunch of new headlines in it, which seemed odd being that it had only been a couple hours since I last checked it and it was a Thursday night. It took me a second to remember, but then I realized: "Ah crap, it's Friday morning in Japan... it's new Nintendo controller day!" This is not a weekly occurrence in Japan mind you, although it should be.
Sad as it may be, but the unveiling of a controller is all it takes to get me excited these days. For those of you who have better things to do than wait anxiously for new Nintendo hardware to be released, let me get you up to speed. Every five years or so a new generation of video game consoles come out. Assuming the original NES was the birth of Jesus (it was), the NES and Sega Master System were first generation, the Super NES and Sega Genesis were second generation, the N64 and PlayStation were third, and the GameCube, PS2 and XBox were fourth. (Obviously I'm simplifying here, there's a pantload of other systems along the way, but this is the quick version.) Which brings us to this coming November when the fifth generation of consoles begins when Microsoft vomits up the new XBox. Microsoft and Sony's cards long been on the table now, but up until last Thursday, Nintendo... being the cockteases that they are, had yet to show their full hand.
Nintendo's new system is called the Revolution, and people have been saying for some time that the revolutionary part of the system is gonna be the controller. Even I got in on it. Was it gonna be chock full of gyroscopes and touchpads? Maybe it was gonna suction cup to your brain and read your thoughts? Maybe it would burn your retinas with bright red LEDs? It's Nintendo man, they're crazy and Japanese, anything could happen.
Well, anything did happen, and I don't know if you've already seen pictures, but here it is, in all of it's batshit crazy glory:
So when I saw the shots of this on 4cr, I really thought Nintendo had actually finally gone insane. Like fucking crazy. Batshit crazy, even. The DS, okay, it's weird, but it's proven its worth by now. It only took a year. And truth be told, it wasn't even all that strange when it was unveiled. It was more that it came out of nowhere that it caught people off guard. This controller though, this controller had been speculated upon, theorized, hypothesized, conspirized... everything... for months. People were anticipating something new and strange, but no one was even close on this one. Hit up the 4cr Revolution Mockups page, there's over a hundred of the damn things, and even the closest one isn't even close.
"It's a goddamn DVD remote for fuck's sake!" I said to myself when I saw it. After reading a bit more, though, I was intrigued, but still a little skeptical. The 3D-gyro stuff could be cool, but how does it work? Given my booty internet connection, the only thing I could really look at was pictures and blog posts, no video of the keynote or promotional videos or anything like that. I went to bed that night thinking Nintendo was totally F'd in the A. It wasn't until Friday at work when I got a real net connection and saw the demo reel that Nintendo put together that I realized that while Nintendo may very well have gone crazy... if this was what insanity was like, I didn't want to be sane.
Give it a watch. You'll crap your pants. I've mirrored IGN's version of the video here because it's a pain in the ass to get to.
After watching the reel a couple times, I watched the keynote address from Tokyo Game Show with Nintendo's CEO. Even through a mediocre English translator ("controrrer") like some bizarre Asian version of Steve Jobs, Satoru Iwata creates this desire to have what he's having. "Yeah, that does look like fun."
Anyway, needless to say, I'm sold on the Revolution. Have I seen any games? No. Have I even seen a tech demo? Not so much. Have I held the controller? Nopers. Does it matter? 'Fraid not. The state of video games is in shambles now. Sure, this isn't exactly 1983, we're not in some sort of video game depression, but gaming in general is stale now. There's like five different genres, and companies keep recycling the same formula over and over again. (And you can't blame them, people keep buying the same damn thing over and over again... Madden, anyone?) Is Nintendo going to inject some new life into the industry? I hope so. Are we going to get Mario Fishing and Mario Light Saber Duels? Got me. (I'm there if we do.) Progress up until now has been judged by increased polygon counts and higher screen resolutions. Games have gotten bigger and louder and flasher. In turn, they've also gotten more expensive to make. But have they gotten more fun? I don't know man, I think it's all been downhill since Mega Man 2. Something ain't right about that. I think Nintendo is out to do something about that.
2006 can't come soon enough.
Posted by pat at September 23, 2005 02:20 PM
Comments
That is fucking insane. I would never want to be seen using a "remote control" like that, even if it does look like some sort of "iRemote". I'm sticking with old school Sega.
Posted by: megan at September 24, 2005 03:48 AM