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19:44 | view comments
I considered posting about the Nintendo Revolution before, but I couldn't quite figure out a way to describe its appeal to me. It is, quite literally, revolutionary.
Consoles put games into boxes. They allowed you to take your favorite arcade games home - whether in cartridges, CDs, DVDs, or what-have you. They put the games that used to only be available at your local arcade into little boxes that you would fit in your living room or bedroom. The Revolution is, forgive the bad pun, breaking out of this box. How? To put it succinctly, by breaking convention.
The Revolution tries to change the way we play games - and from the looks of it, does so quite radically. Most of us have seen consoles evolve from one version to the next, each generation adding just a bit more to the previous one. We've seen console graphics grow from the single color games like Pong and the four-colors of Mattel Intellivision to the full-color, I-can't-believe-that's-CGI realism on today's games. Of course, we've also seen controllers develop through the years.
It started with a joystick and a single button. The Intellivision tried to introduce a floating disk with a keypad sometime in the 80s, but this (thankfully) never took off. The Famicom and NES, with their 4-direction keypad and 2-button (plus start and select buttons) combination, set the tone for all controllers that followed. Every other console from that point on simply added to this winning combination. Today's controllers typically have the directional pad, an analog stick or two, 892 or so additional buttons. They've also thrown in some other extras, like extending grips with cooling fans, miniature screens, and of course vibrating motors for force feedback.
With the Revolution, Nintendo has thrown the old controller formula out the window. Yes, it still has the standard directional pad, a few buttons, and then some - but these things aren't the main form of control anymore. We've all seen one version or another of a virtual reality headset, complete with a glove or two serving as controllers. Unfortunately, these devices never really took off. Nintendo, it seems, has revisited this idea and made the controller itself, and not just the buttons on the controller, the main, well, control. You don't press a button to move around, you move the controller around. Don't get it? well, like I said earlier, "I couldn't quite figure out a way to describe its appeal to me." After seeing the video below, however, I figured I could let it do the talking for me. On that note, the only thing I have to say is this: watch this video.
19:44 | view comments
I considered posting about the Nintendo Revolution before, but I couldn't quite figure out a way to describe its appeal to me. It is, quite literally, revolutionary.
Consoles put games into boxes. They allowed you to take your favorite arcade games home - whether in cartridges, CDs, DVDs, or what-have you. They put the games that used to only be available at your local arcade into little boxes that you would fit in your living room or bedroom. The Revolution is, forgive the bad pun, breaking out of this box. How? To put it succinctly, by breaking convention.
The Revolution tries to change the way we play games - and from the looks of it, does so quite radically. Most of us have seen consoles evolve from one version to the next, each generation adding just a bit more to the previous one. We've seen console graphics grow from the single color games like Pong and the four-colors of Mattel Intellivision to the full-color, I-can't-believe-that's-CGI realism on today's games. Of course, we've also seen controllers develop through the years.
It started with a joystick and a single button. The Intellivision tried to introduce a floating disk with a keypad sometime in the 80s, but this (thankfully) never took off. The Famicom and NES, with their 4-direction keypad and 2-button (plus start and select buttons) combination, set the tone for all controllers that followed. Every other console from that point on simply added to this winning combination. Today's controllers typically have the directional pad, an analog stick or two, 892 or so additional buttons. They've also thrown in some other extras, like extending grips with cooling fans, miniature screens, and of course vibrating motors for force feedback.
With the Revolution, Nintendo has thrown the old controller formula out the window. Yes, it still has the standard directional pad, a few buttons, and then some - but these things aren't the main form of control anymore. We've all seen one version or another of a virtual reality headset, complete with a glove or two serving as controllers. Unfortunately, these devices never really took off. Nintendo, it seems, has revisited this idea and made the controller itself, and not just the buttons on the controller, the main, well, control. You don't press a button to move around, you move the controller around. Don't get it? well, like I said earlier, "I couldn't quite figure out a way to describe its appeal to me." After seeing the video below, however, I figured I could let it do the talking for me. On that note, the only thing I have to say is this: watch this video.
