I make no secret of my age on this board, I was born in 1980, so I'm 26 years old. And whether you consider it sad or just ultra-geeky or can identify with me, I think I was born at the right time to see the evolution of video games. Though I'm sure you'll contend with my likely bias as it's mostly been from the Nintendo side of things. My question is...will I be a Nintendo fanboy all my life?
If you'd rather not read my WALL OF TEXT life story of growing up with Nintendo, skip down to the second-last paragraph.
---
My earliest memories are probably when I was two or three, and one of those is when my dad brought home a ColecoVision. The pack-in game was Donkey Kong, and soon we would get Donkey Kong Junior. We enjoyed many ColecoVision games in its day, but for some reason treasured Donkey Kong. Was there some kind of Nintendo magic? Or simply because it was the first?
Some of my early elementary school friends had other systems, so I also had a taste of Atari 2600 games. I'm sure many people who were born slightly before me or even about my age would say that I probably missed out on memories of Asteroids and Pitfall Harry and Kaboom! and whatnot. I had played them, even E.T. (and enjoyed it at the time! o_0) but for me, it was all about the ColecoVision instead, sorry to say. (When that broke, we got an Adam computer, which had a slot for ColecoVision games.) It wasn't until my friends got NESes that I actually became envious.
When I was still a young'un (elementary school age) a lot of my free time was being dragged around by my mom while she was shopping. So one day, when finishing another shopping day at Mill Woods Town Centre, fate had her make a tiny slip on the curb near the bus stop. It wasn't anything serious, or so it seemed at first, but because of the awkward way her foot landed, some bones in her foot fractured, and it soon swelled up and became extremely painful to walk on. She would have her foot in a cast and be unable to walk for weeks. Because she feared that she wouldn't be able to entertain me and my brother with her shopping (oh, no! *rolls eyes*) before the day was even over she asked my dad to buy what we'd long envied, the NES. We got the three-game set, with Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and World Class Track Meet, as well as the Zapper and Power Pad. Oh, glorious day!
It was probably 1988, and Super Mario Bros. 2 was the current rage. Frequent stops to Video Station let us rent so many games in the three years before the Super NES arrived, so my 8-bit memories are probably as full as anybody else's. I never did see The Wizard in theaters - but I do distinctly remember my first glimpse of Super Mario Bros. 3 - and it's strange to think that I knew already that it would be the best NES game ever before being aware of the hype.
We moved to a different neighbourhood in 1990, and so I had a different set of friends. One of my new best friends had a Master System, NES, Sega Genesis, and soon the Super NES. My junior high years, filled with the awkwardness of growing up, were thankfully accompanied and comforted with some of the best years in video games; the 16-bit era. I was clearly led by Nintendo from here on - I defended the Super NES against the Genesis and my Super NES selection was mostly first-party games, unlike the variety I had on the NES. At this point I finished nearly every game on a rental, though, but only Nintendo games seemed to me worth buying, especially now that me and my brother were buying our own games and not dependent on parents to do so.
The N64 came out partway through high school, and there are many a memory of GoldenEye matches. My friend with all the game systems, who almost had an aversion to blood even in junior high, finding it "unnecessary" and even off-putting, seemed to be growing up and accepted the violence of GoldenEye (what seemed to be much at the time, especially for him) probably the most of many of my friends. But one day he said something that I remember so distinctly: "Yoshi's Story is 'too kiddy!'". If he was growing up, shouldn't I be, too? Oh, the insecurity!
University began for me in 1998, the same year Pok?mon came out. I never had a Game Boy but that was the pusher that got me one. Or two, rather, a Game Boy Pocket and a Game Boy Color. Looking back on it I'm sure people looked at me as if I were childish - enjoying what kindergarteners would while in university, making no secret my attempts to catch 'em all. In the latter half of our university years, I remember the ridiculous arguments I had with my friends - they had given in to the PS2, they claimed the GameCube was garbage without even knowing what games were on it. Even the same friend I've referenced who always seemed to have all the current systems at any time said he was only going to MAYBE rent a GameCube just for Super Smash Bros. Melee. Because I was the first (and for a while) the only one with a GameCube and not a PS2, I seemed to have gained a reputation for being a Nintendo fanboy - what I don't like is that they probably think I'm blindingly so. I'll admit there is some successful marketing and life-shaping on Nintendo's part - but considering how many PS2 and especially Xbox games I've played on the PC, I'm prone to think their criticisms are more shallow than my own because you pretty much need a Nintendo console to play Nintendo games. At least I've played many games apart from the Nintendo ones.
And now here I am, with a decent job (though I'm still looking for what I really want to do with my life) on the advent of the Wii. The NES defined my elementary years, the Super NES for junior high, the N64 for high school, the GameCube for university (give or take a year or two), and now here I am in real life, ready for the Wii.
Assuming five-year spans for every console, will I find my soul mate before the end of Wii's life span? Will I marry her while anticipating the 6th or 7th Nintendo console? Will we have kids born around the time of the 8th or 9th console? Will my kid(s) form memories with the 10th console the same way I had with the first one, the NES? Will they grow up with the 11th, 12th, and 13th consoles? Will I retire by the launch of the 13th console, which if console life spans are consistent could come out when I'm 66? Assuming I live to the average age for Canadians of just about 81, I may die while wishing I could play the upcoming 16th Nintendo console. (They say people living today may easily live to 150 years or more thanks to medical advances, so if I'm lucky I might live to see the later 20somethings or even the 30th Nintendo console.)
---
And this is what I'm getting to - 15 or 16 generations of game consoles in my lifetime, or up to maybe even twice as many? That is...incomprehensible to me. When I'm loading up the Virtual Console feature on my 15th generation Nintendo console, if I forgot to keep playing Brain Age, senility may set in and I may have trouble remembering if a game I loved in my middle age was from the 7th, 8th, or 9th game console. If Nintendo continues to be innovative, each game system could be very distinct - but that's still a lot of consoles to sort through. Sure, I can remember the differences between nearly a dozen iterations of Game Boys, but when I'm a geezer will there be a hundred or more?
Do you think we'll all still be Nintendo fans all our lives, as all the consoles become a blur, eventually the current Nintendo people (including Miyamoto) are long dead, and companies that don't even exist now have their potential rises and falls as competitors?
