First, you need to ask yourself, “Where would gaming be without Nintendo?”

No, really, think about it for a moment…or two. - - - Okay, now that you have had time to mull it over, this is my take on any and all Nintendo progenies.

NES, Gameboy, N64, Wii: What do these all have in common? They are the first of there kind. They are collectively responsible for over half of all innovative advancements in gaming over the past quarter century.

The NES was released in 1985(NA) and revolutionized the gaming industry. It did, by the way, single handedly save North America from the “Video Game Crash of ’83.” Gone were the oversimplified graphics and game play of the Atari, no offense to the Atari, and in stepped “Super Mario Bros.” with “Duck Hunt.” Where was everyone else at this point; Sega, Sony, Microsoft? Sega Genesis didn’t hit North America shelves until 1989 and Sony’s Playstaion didn’t crawl onto the NA gaming scene until 1994! A SOLID THREE YEARS after Nintendo released their SECOND CONSOLE the Super Nintendo!!!

Game Boy fell into the sweaty palmed hands of North Americans in 1989. Bringing a rudimentary form of gaming, that had already been established, to a new mobile market. Now lets see here… when did our said named friends decided to get their, ah-hem, corrupt code in the bucket? Sega Game Gear lumbered onto the NA market in 1991 consuming 6 AA batteries every six hours and Playstation Portable… 16 YEARS! What were you doing Sony?!? Oh, that’s right, you had not even released an in home console yet, sorry. For you number guys and gals, try these on for size. Worldwide and up to date; the SGG has sold a measly 11 million; the PSP a respectable 50 million; finally the Nintendo Game Boy has racked in a grand total of 118.69 million. Oh, and for you Playstaion fan boys, who demand a fair fight, the Nintendo DS (Nintendo’s 4th hand held gaming system) which was released in 2004, 5 months before the PSP (Sony’s first), has sold 100 million.

Nintendo 64. Need I say more? I could go on and on about revolutionary 3D graphics/game play and how it only took Sony 4 years to answer back with the release of the PS2, but I am sure everyone reading this has heard it all before. So I will save you the torture of listening to a broken record routine.

Now for the grand finale. The whole reason I was inspired to write this specific blog entry was actually due to one of my fellow bloggers/friends (you know him as Obeng) entry. He recently stated that he believed the Nintendo Wii was the “longest freakin fad…ever.”

Now lets define what a ‘Fad’ is. Merriam-Webster says a fad is: a practice or interest followed for a time with exaggerated zeal. If we apply this in a general sense then console gaming itself is the longest running fad ever. But lets not concern ourselves with generalities, I am here to approach the specific claim that the Wii is a fad. As with past Nintendo creations, the Wii has opened the door to a new way of looking at gaming. First, Wii’s homepage, Nintendo gave you the first chance to customize what you wanted to see for different channels, whether it be applications or classic games. The Wii’s controllers allow you to manipulate characters in ways that we have been only trying to emulate ever since falling into that first pit as Mario. I think a word that better describes the Wii, or Nintendo in general, is “Trend”. Trend is: to show a tendency. The Wii has set the trend for gaming in more than one way. Starting with homepages or ‘Dashboard’ as Microsoft likes to call it. In fact Microsoft liked the Wii’s customization of personal Miis so much that they have included the ability to make an avatar on Xbox’s latest Dashboard update. The one trend that has been barely elaborated on, mainly talked about, is using a 3D accelerometer remote control for game play. The Darwin controller has been in talks to be the Xbox and PS3’s answer to the Wiimote. Sadly though there has been very little advancement in this field, so the odds of seeing this technology come into play for this generation’s consoles are very low.

I know the general tone of this entry seems like a Nintendo vs. the world rant, but that is really not what I intended. The Wii needs some improvement too, downloadable content for existing games, online game play and hard drive space to name a few. Point being, my main goal was to debate the fact that the Wii is not an undying fad but rather a trend setter, I believe I did a good job extrapolating on that topic. If you think differently, let me know and I will be more then happy to elaborate further on this topic.

So you may not see it now. But ask yourself this question 5, 10 or 25 years from now: “Where would gaming be without the Wii?”