A return coming!

Hey guys!
Just wanted to drop a heads up that I'll be returning to blogging soon. Just been busy with school and TWIG and the like.
Birdman returns soon!

Virtual console or why I'm 13 years old again

The biggest reason I got a Nintendo Wii last year was for the virtual console and its library of older titles that go all the way back to the earliest days of the NES. I'm an old school Nintendo player and have been since 1986 and the first game I ever got was Rad Racer and Lode Runner and I still have my original games somewhere too.

The Virtual console I see it is a time machine for myself to go back and revisit some of my best childhood memories of sitting with my best friends on a Saturday with a game rental and trying to beat the game in a sitting. Nintendo really knocked the ball out of the park with the Virtual console because it reaches further back then any of it's competition in alot of ways and really is capable of touching something important to gamer's....memories.

The collection of games on the virtual console is something of a surprise because ot touches off on so many that are considered classics and a few classics that have yet to be discovered by the general population that are the wii's new consumer base. The wii is still being bought by many new to the gamer mindset like your mom and Dad and even grand parents and I think it's great that we can expose them to something that is like a virtual looking glass into video game past...like the hubble telescope for video game nerds. I know that if I still lived at home I'd be playing Super Mario Brothers with my 80+ year old grandmother because its what we grew up together doing. I wonder how many others have similar experiences to mine and are able to share that with the younger generation.

The wii in some ways come as close as I can hope to re capturing the old memories of being able to enjoy what I would call an "innocent Saturday night" and that very thought seems lost on this generation with Grand Theft Auto and Modern Warfare's being easily available and online services replacing the sleep overs of old. The wii has that going for it and thats why I won't ever sell my Wii because it does remind me of a simple time in gaming.

Its no huge secret that I'm not a wii fan but I can appreciate what has been done with the console and the VC and especially with the release of titles like Super Mario Kart and Super Mario RPG and lastly the collection of Super Star Wars games. My childhood game collection at one point reached nearly 100 games for my NES and close to something like 40 for my SNES and I loved all the great times it gave me. I can remember staying up late playing Mortal Kombat or skipping school to beat Final Fantasy 3 and lastly mending a broken heart over Illusion of Gaia and the like. However some of the aforementioned games have yet to make their appearance of the VC as of yet but kinda doubt they will except for maybe Illusion of Gaia but I'm not going to complain as things have really opened up in the last little while with some real surprises coming out like Mario Kart and even Super smash brothers from the n64 era.

As the VC continues to grow so does my appreciation of what once was and where it lead me along the way. For all the crap I give the wii I have to remember what it gives me on days when I feel down in the dumps, it brings me memories of my best friend, my grandmother and why I got into this whole video game journalism thing.