I just wanted to share with you all how I got into playing video games, and maybe encourage you to share your own experiences.

Back in 2006, when I was about 4 years old, my older brother had a PS2 that he never really used all that much since he's not a big gamer, and he used to let me play on it sometimes. Eventually, he ended up just letting me have it, and incidentally, he hasn't gotten a new game system since then. After inheriting that PS2 and spending a lot more time playing all his old games, I fell in love with the idea of video gaming.

Then sometime in June 2007, right after my 5th birthday, my parents started giving me a small allowance to help me understand math and how to handle money. It was $5 per week every Friday, and for the first few weeks I was blowing it on junk food and toys at Walmart, as any 5 year old would.

Until one day, when I was at the mall with my family, and I noticed this little store called GameStop, which I'm sure many of you have heard of, and I had my $5 for that week in hand. I went in and checked it out, and sure enough it looked like a gamer's paradise: entire walls filled with games for just about every system imaginable: PS2, PS3, OG Xbox, Xbox 360, GameCube, Wii, Game Boy, DS, PSP, you name it. I decided to see what new game I could get for my PS2 with the $5 I had, and they had some which had dropped that far down in price, but none that looked all too interesting. Then the clerk told me that if I had any old games that I was tired of or didn't play anymore, I could bring them in, and I could pick out a couple new games to take home.

So I held onto that $5, and grabbed the 4 games I had at home (Madden 2004, Kelly Slater, Tony Hawk 3, and Gran Turismo 3) for the next time we went to the mall, which happened to be on the following Wednesday. With this trade-in credit plus my $5, I was able to get my hands on a copy of Kingdom Hearts, the first game I ever bought on my own.

I remember thinking this arrangement was awesome: I could get a game and play it, and then when I was ready to get a new game I could bring in my old ones to save some money. That's basically what I did for my first few years as a gamer. I kinda have to thank GameStop for helping push me more into gaming, and I find it kind of sad that they're drowning (even though they kinda did it to themselves, let's be honest).

During the first week of August 2007, I started kindergarten, and I met a girl in my class who incidentally lived on my block and had a GameCube. We became fast friends, and started going over to each other's houses and playing each other's games. She also received an allowance from her parents; I think it was the same as mine. And I basically let her in on the idea of trading her games in at GameStop to save money on new ones the way I had been doing. I decided to save up my allowance for about 2 months and trade in some games to get a GameCube of my own at GameStop, and then her parents got her a PS2 because she liked playing at my house.

With this we developed an arrangement: every 2 weeks, we would gather up whatever PS2 and GameCube games we didn't want to play anymore, have our parents or someone take us to the mall so we can go to GameStop, and pool all our games together for trade-in credit which we split evenly amongst ourselves. Then we would use our allowance money combined with the credit we had to get new games, with the notion that I'd always be able to play her games at her house or trade on of my games for hers, and vice versa.

This was a good system we had going, and we used it up until late 2010 or early 2011, when we were in 3rd grade. I got to play lots and lots of games, I was introduced to Mario, I especially liked Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros., Zelda, Jak and Daxter, Kingdom Hearts, Pokemon, the SpongeBob games, games based on movies like Disney and Spider-Man, it was a fun time. Sadly, I no longer have the vast majority of the games I played back then because of the how this system worked.

And that's what got me into gaming. I still have and play both of the systems I had back then to this day. It just brings me back to a simple time when playing games on the TV in my room with my friends was one of the only things I cared about. What's your story of how you were introduced to gaming?

I think there are some improvements that could be used for a new Nintendo system to come out in Spring 2023. If they follow these 3 additional steps, and keep the rest of what they're doing with the Switch now, they will own even more of the gaming world then they already do.

1. Keep the hybrid concept, but modify it. What I mean is basically have the core system be reminiscent of the GBA SP/DS/3DS clamshell design, but with a wireless transmitter built in, and also have an HDMI dongle similar to a FireStick that you connect to your TV and power via USB. Basically the system itself will be a full-fledged clamshell handheld system (with only one screen though), and all the dongle is for is to stream video and audio signals over to the TV via bluetooth or WiFi. There'd also need to be a switch on the system to switch from TV casting to the screen on the actual handheld. If you don't wanna have to cost more with an HDMI dongle you could simply include Chromecast/Fire TV/Roku/Apple TV support for this device.
2. Have hardware that's a little more capable of holding its own. A huge part of the appeal and reason for the success of the Switch is the fact that you can play major home console games portably. But if they don't shape up soon, they're gonna lose that advantage and be in the same boat as they were with the Wii U. They should aim for the halfway (or two-thirds way) point between the PS4 Pro/Xbox One X and the PS5/Xbox Series X in terms of horsepower and performance. It will be somewhat compromised to being a portable system at heart, but it should be on the level where they'll end up receiving all the major third-party games alongside the other platforms.
3. Make great games. Keep up the momentum they have right now with the Switch game library. Go over to major game studios with assless chaps on asking what you need to do to get all the blockbuster games that haven't come to the Switch yet like Grand Theft Auto, Madden NFL, Call of Duty, Watch Dogs, Tom Clancy, Yakuza, Borderlands, Star Wars, etc. Make sure to appease the ones who are already there and keep those games coming. Keep on making Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Pokemon, Super Smash Bros., Metroid, Pikmin, F-Zero, Pilotwings, Fire Emblem, Animal Crossing, Kid Icarus, Splatoon, Wario, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Excite, Star Fox, Xenoblade,and Earthbound, bring all of those series into the forefront.

It's a 13-inch Disney Princess TV. I know it's for girls, but I honestly think it looks more appealing than some generic silver or black CRT.

It's analog 480i only, has 2 composite AV ports, and can receive NTSC channels 2-69, as well as cable channels 1-125.

I'm debating whether I should pull the trigger on this, as it's cheaper than most CRTs I can find. I'd use this for the NES, Genesis, SNES, Saturn, PS1, N64, DC, PS2, Original Xbox, or GCN, as well as my VCR.

Every game I've played on this console so far has had some of the worst camera control I've ever seen. I use the C-stick just like I would use the right analog stick on any controller, and it either can't rotate a full 360 degrees, gets disoriented constantly, or the foreground constantly ends up blocking your view and you get killed. WTF?!!! I've never had this much of a problem on PS2 or Original Xbox, of which many of the games are the same as GameCube.

I was born in 2002. I got the Wii as a kid and played it a lot when it was an active game console. I remember it having a bunch of good games like Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Sonic games, Lego games, movie/cartoon games, etc.

Plus, it had backwards compatbility with GameCube titles, so I also got to play Super Smash Bros. Melee, Mario Kart: Double Dash, Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime 1 & 2, Resident Evil games, Sonic games, Mortal Kombat games, Tony Hawk games, Need for Speed games, Tom Clancy games, 007 games, SpongeBob games, movie/cartoon games, etc.

So why is it that the Wii gets so much negativity whenever someone mentions it today? I think the Wii U is far more deserving of this bashing because yeah, that thing was a piece of garbage. It had like maybe 1 game come out every 3-6 months at best, the games were all inferior to the PlayStation/Xbox versions, the controller was just a gimmick that no games took real advantage of, and all of its best games are on the Nintendo Switch anyway, so what the hell's even the point with that system?

Remember when the PS4 and Xbox One came out in 2013? Most of the major games that were coming out for them also had versions that came out on the PS3 and Xbox 360, including Grand Theft Auto V, Destiny, Alien: Isolation, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Advanced Warfare, & Black Ops III, Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes & The Phantom Pain, Tomb Raider, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Battlefield 4, and Rayman Legends, among others. Game developers started canceling PS3 & Xbox 360 versions of their major games beginning in 2015; Call of Duty: Black Ops III is the last one I can recall.

Do you think this will also happen when the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett come out in 2020? Will we still be lucky enough to get PS4 and Xbox One versions of major games for 2 years after the next generation has started? If so, would you actually be happy about that; why or why not? If not, what made that work before, and why won't it happen again this time around?

When I'm face to face with someone and we're both shooting at each other, he always knocks me out in 2 shots while I'm there with my assault rifle blasting the shit out of him. Or, I see someone running by from a distance and start aiming and shooting, which he runs past, and I can never see which path he takes looking at him from a distance so I run over to take a look and 2 seconds later someone snipes my ass from behind. Plus, a lot of times my aiming is one single pixel off which I'm never able to notice until it's too late. And trying to see people at a long distance is like trying to find Waldo, it's as if they blend into the map, and it's not like I have poor eyesight or anything. The only way I've ever gotten kills is coming up close to someone when they're not looking, and this is rare. My average score is in the 500-700 range, always the lowest or second-lowest on my team.

@ezekiel43:What good does it do me to have Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, Madden and GTA on my Nintendo? Those types of games suck, and Nintendo will continue to succeed with or without them.

But why CAP your success like that? Like it or not, those games are titles that move consoles and are seen as essentials to the gaming package by many. I'd also like to know what you think sucks about those types of games. I think they're pretty damn fun.

@hrt_rulz01: Nintendo has power in its DNA. In the early days of gaming, the Super Nintendo was more powerful than the Sega Genesis. Then after that, the Nintendo 64 was more powerful than the PlayStation and especially the Sega Saturn (except for the cartridges vs. CDs comparison). Then the GameCube's power was higher than the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 (though lower than the Xbox), even if certain games needed multiple discs due to the miniDVDs. Nintendo has the ability and know-how to make their consoles comparable to its contemporary competition.

Reality is, the Switch is only a band-aid to fix Nintendo's brand image for the 8th generation. The fact that its life cycle is scheduled to end soon after the 9th generation starts can be seen as proof of that. I think I can predict what Nintendo's plan was, and here it is. They screwed up with the Wii U by making it too underpowered to handle major multi-plats and having major Nintendo IP releases far too sparse. But they realized that the PS4/Xbox One era would've lasted until the end of the decade, so they decided to do as follows:

Make a console that is essentially the Wii U repackaged with full-on portable capabilities, and bring all of the Wii U's would-be system sellers over to it almost year earlier than they ever have. This way new customers who didn't have a Wii U would think that they're new games and Nintendo will be remembered for the Switch in the 8th generation, whereas the Wii U would be erased from history, basically.

Then when it comes time for the 9th generation, the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett will already be out for a couple of years before the Nintendo um... Gold comes out. Nintendo can't possibly like being the underpowered machine that can't get major multi-plats, so I think they wanna leapfrog their contemporary rivals by using the extra time they gave themselves (5-6 years per console as opposed to 7-8 years for PlayStation & Xbox, plus the extra year that was taken from the Wii U's life cycle) to make the Nintendo Gold the ultimate gaming package of the next generation. But that's just a theory, a game theory!

The Switch came out in 2017. Nintendo consoles have always historically been at the forefront for 5 years, or 6 years if it's a monster hit, as is the case with the NES & Wii. So we'll probably see Nintendo's next console somewhere between Holiday 2021 and Spring 2023 (prolly. SPRG/HLDY 2022) which brings Nintendo into the 9th generation shortly after the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett come out. This gives them the potential to create a game console that has power advantages over them, and if they aren't thinking about that... frick, they really should.

Of course, they should have next-gen Mario, Zelda, Mario Kart, Smash Bros., Metroid, and Pokemon within the first 2 years, but also please make an honest effort to get Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, Madden, GTA, and all those other major multi-plats so that no one will ever have to buy 2 consoles ever again!

What do you guys think the next generation of Nintendo has in store?