Alright I'm going through my Google Reader, it's been a few days, I haven't bathed in two days and I had pizza for breakfast. I meant to get in the shower a while ago, but I had almost 400 articles to go through. A lot of them I don't really care about (there is a lot of news about smartphones and tablets), but what has really kept me glued to my screen this morning, other than a penchant for laziness and a lifelong disdain for bathing, is all of the Nintendo news that keeps cropping up!
Perhaps it all feels especially relevant to me because I'm frothing at the mouth to finally have my 3DS. It came out last month and I won't have mine until sometime in June. This is because of a certain geographical placement that I've found myself in and the added expense of shipping something not only trans-continental, but trans-Atlantic. I have mixed feelings about my situation. I am in Ireland, after all, and I guess that's pretty neat.
Now, the only thing that I'm really missing is more news about Paper Mario 3DS. I love Paper Mario. It is a brilliant entry in the Mario universe. When I saw in the announcements last year that there'd be a Paper Mario for the 3DS I think I may have cried. However, I've read little to nothing regarding it since then. A handful of screenshots have been released, and there was a very small video I think from the Tokyo Game Show last fall, but I'd sure love a release date and a bit more concrete information.
With this information in mind, it's really not so bad that I don't have my 3DS yet. There aren't any games at present that I even want to play. The launch lineup was very lackluster, in my opinion. The first game I want is Ocarina of Time, and that comes out on the 19th of June, which is just about when I'll get my hands on my system. I suppose some things are just fate, simply meant to be, and the stars align in my favor from time to time.
From there I don't even know the release dates of the big hitters that I want to get my hands on, like Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, Super Mario and Kid Icarus. That is something that I miss about working at GameStop; having access to constant release dates and information was certainly handy. Oh Nintendo, I do love you so.
Over the past few weeks my eyes kept skipping over rumors of Project Cafe from Nintendo. Now, I really hate getting excited about something that turns out to be fake or just pure speculation, and for some reason the thought of Nintendo releasing some form of Wii2 in 2012 just seemed... too soon. So I withheld any sort of mental involvement or interest or excitement until I found an article that proved concrete. Well, that happened today when I came across an article that had a confirmation from Nintendo that they're projected to release their next console sometime in 2012 and it'll be shown at E3 in June. Good on you Nintendo. I hope it's good!
Oh, this article got me all hot and bothered as well; I would absolutely take a 3DS remake of A Link to the Past. Nintendo really caters to me, I am all for remakes. I know a lot of people hate them, or feel like they're cheap or the companies are just milking for profits. Maybe that's true, but they appeal to me in a big way. I fell into a, I think, not uncommon bracket for gamers. I have very recently achieved the ripe age of 25, and as such I straddled the golden age of video games. I was alive and well cognizant of life around me, and I certainly played video games, but I did not play the video games. There are a lot of reasons for this too, the biggest factor being that even though my mom could afford the console itself, she couldn't afford many games for it. For every system that my sister and I owned, we had one to three games for it. That's it. Generally the pack-in (too bad that never happens anymore) and one other obviously big title.
I commend my mom on how well she did with such limited knowledge of gaming. Plus, it was just her and we had no outside input recommending good games for two little girls to play. She knew Mario was popular, there are pictures of us receiving a Nintendo when I was 5 or 6, and we excitedly unwrap the NES with Mario/Duck Hunt, Mario 3, Barbie and The Little Mermaid. Now, you may knock those last two, but they were actually fairly interesting and damn difficult. We never managed to beat Barbie, but we saw the ending of The Little Mermaid on more than one occasion.
But back to my original point. The titles that I listed were the only titles that we owned. At some point we acquired Marble Madness, but you see what I mean. We didn't have Zelda, we didn't have Kid Icarus, we didn't have A Boy and His Blob, or countless other amazing games that have blossomed over the past 20 years into long-standing and well loved franchises. This trend continued with the Sega, we only owned Sonic and Toejam & Earl (an amazing title that we owned simply because it was the least expensive game my mom could find, kudos to her though because my sister and I love it).
It was only once I graduated high school and got a job at GameStop that I started to own many games for any one system. As such, the glorious rereleases allow me to experience phenomenal games for the first time, just like everyone else did 20 or so years ago. Plus, they usher in the golden age of gaming for everyone that was born after the games were originally released. Not everyone has access to the original consoles, not everyone has an older sibling/aunt/parent to learn from or to borrow from. I completely welcome and encourage the releases. It gives everyone a fair chance to love and learn.
OK that tiny thought on remakes blossomed into something much larger than I anticipated. I apologize.
-MJ
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