I did enjoy growing up with Disney comics. They were these elaborate comic strip books with Mickey Mouse, Scrooge McDuck, and others. Apparently, I hear that Miyamoto enjoys them as well which is why he calls his Mario characters a ‘troupe of actors’. It might be why I so enjoy Mario games.
Before you say, “Disney comics? That sounds so kiddie,” take a look at how Donald Duck discovered a molecule. Like Calvin and Hobbes, the comic book could be wickedly smart as well as thought provoking.
I am a huge fan of Robotech (and its comics as well). I also think Transformers are cool (the Generation 1 kind as well as well as Beast Wars. Beast Wars shocked me in how intelligently it was written. I loved Dinobot quoting Shakespeare.)
As for the Wii U, it is just too expensive. The cheapest you can buy it for is $360 which is a Wii U and one game. That is too much. Also, there is too much uncertainty. What happened to the Virtual Console? Will it exist at all? Will there be accounts? What is going on? By the time Nintendo answers it, it will be years from now and Nintendo will shift their focus onto 3DS’s successor.
The Virtual Console was a huge factor in me buying the Wii. One reason why I hate new consoles is because they blow up your game library. The Wii got a very warm reception in part because it offered backwards compatibility to the Gamecube and offered games from the NES, SNES, N64 as well as Genesis and Turbo-graphx 16. The Wii U is telling me, “You see those Gamecube games that are in your library? OBSOLETE! Hahahahaha! Oh and all those Virtual Console games you got? OBSOLETE! Bahahahah!”
With the Wii, my game library looked like this:
-Gamecube games
-Wii games
-Virtual Console games
With the Wii U, my game library looks like this:
-Wii games
-Virtual Console games
-Wii U games (of which I own ZERO).
Already, the Wii U is attacking my game library, and I do not appreciate it. My gamecube games have been effectively destroyed (unless I use old hardware which may break and may not have a replacement available). What appears to be the pattern is that the Wii U Successor will be:
-Wii U games
-Wii U successor games (of which everyone owns ZERO when the console comes out).
So the console beyond the Wii U will be destroying my Wii game library and whatever left on my Virtual Console.
This sucks. I’d rather not buy such a console at all. I do not like my game library being attacked like this.
The great solution is account based games that can be played on any Nintendo platform. This way, assuming I buy everything digital on this platform, my game library in the year 2050 will be:
-NES
-SNES
-N64
-Genesis
-Turbographx 16
-Gameboy
-GameGear
-Lynx
-Gamecube
-Wii
-Wii U
-Gameboy Color
-Gameboy Advance
-DS
-3DS
-PSP
-Vita
-Saturn
-Dreamcast
-Jaguar
-Atari Era systems
-PlayStation 1
-PlayStation 2
-PlayStation 3
-PlayStation 4
-Xbox
-Xbox 360
-Xbox 720
-Xbox 4
-Wii V
-Apple Box
-Wii W
-Wii X
-Wii Y
-Wii Z
-The Wii Wii
-The Wii Wii U Hoo
And with 2050’s release of Wii Yay Wii console, the tenth incarnation of the legendary Wii console line, my game library would include all of what I purchased in the past.
When I buy books, I don’t lose old books because I bought new ones. Why should it be the same with video games?
One thing I like about GoG is that it is proving that even if people have access to decades worth of games, they still buy brand new games. However, it forces new games to compete with old games. If they can’t compete with decade old games, then the developers shouldn’t even be in the game business to begin with.
How Nintendo approaches the digital platform will be its most important decision for the company since the release of the Famicom. They cannot get it wrong. The bottom is falling out for the old formats. Whatever console company gets this right may be guaranteed console dominance for decades.