It's almost that time of year again: E3 is coming up, and in just under two weeks it'll be here, and I'll be following every bit of it on Gamespot. It's always fun to see what the Big Three are up to, to see what games I can look forward to playing over the course of the year. I mean, let's face it. if you're a gamer, you like E3. I don't think I need to put any evidence behind that statement, it's kind of a given. We like E3. Period. Case closed. Anyways, with all these companies waiting to unveil their secret plans for the coming year, the ones I'm always the most interested to hear are those of Nintendo. Which is I guess the point of this blog. A while ago, Nintendo wasn't doing too hot. I haven't done my homework or anything, but that was like what, early 2000's? They had their aptly named Gamecube, and they were losing the race. The Gamecube might've been next to indestructible, but apparently that didn't mean much. Sony and Microsoft, with their superior hard/software, were leaving Nintendo behind. At least in the console war. I'm pretty sure at that point the handheld sector was pretty much owned by Nintendo and it's Gameboy family. Maybe the PSP was out then, I don't know. So yeah, Nintendo was trailing behind. Then Microsoft busted out it's new toy, the Xbox 360. Sony and Nintendo changed their diapers. Microsoft giggled to itself. It took a year for them to respond, but Sony and Nintendo joined the next-gen party, albeit fashionably late. Sony's PS3 was pretty beast. We all know about it. It's 600$-700$ price range didn't make Sony too many friends, but it had all the bells and whistles to go with the cost. On the other end of the spectrum, the 200$ Wii caught people by surprise. First, it was cheap. Relatively. Second, it was called the Wii. The potential to fail right there was humongous. Plus, in action, it didn't look a whole lot better than the Gamecube. So what's the deal? The motion technology. Or rather, it's implementation. Not only did Nintendo invent a working control scheme based on motion sensing remotes, they pretty much invented the casual gamer. It was, of course, a massive risk. If the casual market didn't buy into it, then they were pretty much sunk. But buy into it they did. That, teamed up with the DS (another stroke of genius, but I won't go there) has put Nintendo at the top, where they still are today. Now even Sony and Microsoft are rushing to get their new motion tech out of R&D and into our homes. It might work. It did for Nintendo. Nowadays the Wii is regarded by lot of people as a home for shovelware, derivative minigame compilations. And I won't lie, a lot of it is. But I don't need to read a review to know that Super Mario Galaxy 2 is awesome, or that the next Zelda will be good. Nintendo makes good games. They know what's fun, and they put it in their games. And really, what more are we looking for? Now, that wasn't as straight forward as I had hoped it'd be, but I guess the point is that Nintendo has balls. Sorry to put it so crudely, but really, it fits best. Nintendo looked Sony and Microsoft right in the eye and said, "Gamers don't want graphics. They want fun". And they gave us fun. They took a massive risk, but they did. And in an industry as competitive as that of gaming, you have to take risks if you want to come out on top. You have to. Now Nintendo may have been here pretty much from gaming's roots, but they aren't slowing down. They still have the imagination, the innovation (two screen handheld. really?) and the understanding of what we, as gamers, want, as they did back in the 8-bit era. And if you have all those things, then you've got it made. Closing this off, I'd just like to say that I'm no Nintendo fanboy. I'm a gamer. If I like it, I'll play it. But I will give credit where credit is due. The purpose of this...blog(?) isn't to spark colossal arguments about which console is better or the DS really is innovative. It's just my thoughts that I'm collecting and putting 'em down on paper. So to speak. Hope you enjoyed it. I would've put pictures if I knew how :( alec_mcg