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I got an iPad a few weeks ago.

Since then I’ve nabbed a ton of games for it, from the terrible free ones like McDonald’s Happy Meal Builder (seriously, try it) to the top-notch like Plants vs. Zombies HD. The accessibility of games and the dangerously cheap cost of them had me all but convinced that this was the way casual gaming would be from here on out. I thought “Well, this is it. Gaming as a whole sure isn’t dead, but it may very well be slipping out of its casual hayday.”

Then, to my great luck, I got a review code for Art of Balance Touch! on the 3DS eShop. A simple game upon first glance, but given a few minutes with it and I realized something rather pleasant: Games are still better on dedicated gaming platforms than phones and tablets. They just are.


It seems like the longer I watch this industry progress, the further from me it moves. It is slowly severing its connections with innovation, artistic expression, or even just plain fun. We see fewer games like ‘Flower’ and more games like ‘Call of Duty’. Fewer games like ‘Zelda’ and more games like ‘Darksiders’. Fewer games like ‘Mario Kart’ and more games like ‘Forza’. The longer I look at it, the worse it seems to get. Profits go up, but my enjoyment goes down.

I never really understood why I felt this way- at least not in any tangible, communicable sense- but finally I figured it out. It’s all because of testosterone. It’s all because of that weird, obscure concept of “manliness” as though it is something that even exists, much less is important.


I really hate having to write these types of articles. I love Nintendo and it pains me to have to talk so badly of them. But seriously. Come on. The other press conferences this year were as follows:

Microsoft: Bombed.
Sony: Eh.
EA: Terrible.
Ubisoft: Average.

This wasn’t a tough scenario. Nintendo should have been ready to blow this one out of the park. It was a fastball straight down the middle. It was a perfect storm of awesome that had the potential to send chills down the spines of every gamer watching. Instead of going for the home run though, they apparently decided to fake getting hit by the pitch and hobbled along to first base, managing to barely keep the game going, and build little if any hype for the next at-bat.



This is my obligatory “Here’s what’s going on at E3 just so you know” post.

So, just one day into the pre-E3 shows and we’ve already seen the effects of last year’s presentation by Nintendo. I don’t know if it’s just my imagination, but it seems like as time goes on, more and more people are waiting for Nintendo’s “OK” before they start trying out new things, as though they’re using the big N as a guinea pig for them to invest in new ideas. This year it was probably the most prevalent, save for perhaps the year we saw Move and Kinect revealed.


I know you wanted to say it when you saw the image.

I know you took a look at those rounded grips and those smooth analog sticks and the first thing that came to mind was “Great, Nintendo’s copying Microsoft”

But don’t. Don’t go there. Don’t you judge Nintendo for this. I know you want to, but don’t.


MEGA-COOL!

This past week I got a relatively random e-mail asking me if I wanted a free copy of the latest issue of Nintendo Power, which contained exclusive Kid Icarus: Uprising AR cards. I figured “Why the hell not?” and gave them my address, only to get the magazine a few days later and sit around baffled as to how I was going to turn this into an article. Some people would say “Think about this before you give them your address, Austin!”, but I’m more of a ‘Get free stuff now, figure out the article later’ kind of guy.

So I e-mailed the guy last night and asked if there was anything in particular he wanted me to showcase, and he said not to worry about it and just write whatever I want. So here I am, writing whatever I want and realizing how much I like magazines. I’m not currently subscribed to any, and there aren’t really any out there I want to be subscribed to all that much, but just the idea of a magazine is cool. A physical booklet filled with information about something you know and love? Something you can carry with you anywhere and have something to read when you’re stuck waiting for a train or lounging about during break time at work? I think that’s so great. I really do. But with the internet, can those types of things really survive?

I say yes, but they need to start approaching it differently.


So the title of this sounds like I could be making some sort of crack at how great Skyward Sword is and how it “stole” 80 hours of my life. I’m not. I’m finally, legitimately upset at Nintendo because of how they handled the development of the Wii and its basic hardware structure. It took 5 years, but one small issue on top of another small issue on top of another has finally taken it’s toll, and I’m ready to say it: The Wii is an outdated piece of crap with fantastic games. Unfortunately, despite the fantastic games, the first part has now become inexcusable.


Cracked.com. You guys read it, I read it; everybody in the world reads it, from Los Angeles to San Diego to San Francisco. Nobody can escape its grip of procrastination assistance, made possible by its staff members who sit around and write things that we all find interesting so we can impress our soon-to-be ex-girlfriends with the information we “read online somewhere.”

It’s natural that we enjoy lists, because they’re really ADD- and for those of us who need to bring traffic to our sites, they’re an indispensable tool. Take for example this interview. I could definitely write this interview down in such a way that would be honest and forthright, but that wouldn’t get me as many hits because nobody cares about good bloggism; they care about lists. So here’s an interview, presented as a list, of things I made up to put in a list so I could format this interview as a list.

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#10: Who I Was Interviewing

The folks I had the pleasure of talking to over the last week were none other than senior Cracked geniuses/writers/editors Soren Bowie and Michale Swaim, both of whom worked on a recent video feature for the site’s “After Hours” series where a cast of characters get together and argue about things that the Internet cares about. This week’s topic was “Is Mario a douchebag?”, and while that’s clearly related to everything we care about on NintendoEverything, I’m honestly not quite sure why I was approached to do an interview. Pretty sure they aren’t going to do another Nintendo-related video anytime soon, and they certainly don’t need more publicity than Cracked gives them already, but whatever. I’m down for an interview if they are.

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“You know what the SNES needs? A mouse!”

I started another inflammatory article earlier today about game reviews, but part of the way through I decided to stop because I need to take a break from being all angry about the blogging industry and start promoting fun discussions. So instead I’m working on this article that I haven’t come up with a topic for yet, but I’m sure it will come to me as a write this. I’m thinking maybe something about music in games, but that’s been done before. How about something more abstract, like “Best unexpectedly fantastic video game”? Eh, nah. I would talk too much about Fragile. Maybe “Best game featuring food”? No, that’s just stupid.

Oh, here we go. Let’s do “Favorite Gimmicks in Gaming”.



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