You say you want a revolution

Wednesday, May 18, 2005 » gaming image thought

So apparently last night some Sony fanboy broke into my house and started typing on muh Weblug. He made some interesting points, but I'm going to wait until we can at least get a little more gameplay shots out of the PS3... Wait, did you SEE the Killzone demo?? Sign me up!

Anyway, today at E3 Nintendo finally revealed its very mysterious Revolution console. Ever since Nintendo started promising that this would revolutionize videogames, the rumors have been flying: gyroscopic controllers, 3D projection, touch screens, Wi-Fi connectivity, take your pick. I was half-expecting the thing to have little moons orbiting it. I have a feeling that Nintendo is keeping the console's most radical features under wraps for later, but the stuff they've talked about so far is extremely promising. Sure, there was some mention of an Xbox Live-type online service, including a Smash Bros. sequel, which sounds great. (With all the characters and weapons flying around on the screen during a typical match, you probably won't even notice any lag-induced frameskipping.)

The most shocking thing about the system's online capabilities, though, was the announcement that Nintendo's entire past library of games, all the way back to the NES, would be made available for download. Just imagine: No more having to blow the dust out of your ancient cartridges or scouring eBay for that last existing copy. Just download the thing from an iTunes-ian online store. (That's just speculation, of; they've mentioned nothing about pricing or how the download service will actually work.) Nintendo knows decades of classic characters and games is its greatest asset, and something Sony and Microsoft will never have. Even if the prospect of having hundreds of old titles available for download turns out to be little more than a novelty feature, it is indeed a revolution in game delivery and the medium itself.

As if that's not enough, Nintendo has effortlessly beat out both Sony and Microsoft in the form-factor war. Look at that thing. Who wouldn't want a shiny, black monolith next to their TV? You can't go wrong with blue and glowy, either.

On a more peripheral note, there's yet another Gameboy: the Gameboy Micro. I was mistakenly calling it the Gameboy Mini for a while, but Micro really is appropriate: It is tiny. Maybe too tiny, in fact. I was actually really excited to read that it would have an actual backlit screen, since, after trying a few GBA games on the DS's backlit screen, it is a difficult and truly saddening ordeal to go back to my beloved, frontlit GBA SP. Bring on the tiny backlight, I thought, even knowing that it would be just another attempt at making the SP obsolete. However, take a look at the dimensions: 4" by 2" by .7"? The thing is SMALL. You can sort of get an idea of the scale if you take a look at the Micro blingin' it with the' California quarter above. (It's actually just a tiny bit smaller than life-size on my monitor.) The screen is maybe 1/2-2/3 the size of a regular GBA screen. If the PSP has taught us one thing, isn't it that big screens are not only possible on a handheld, but also very, very desirable?

Of course, it would be quite a coup if they could pull this off at $50 or less. Come on, Nintendo, I dare you.