Retro Kick

Lately I've been on a retro kick. It started in early May, with the purchase of an Atari 7800 and a ColecoVision, and has continued on since with a slew of game purchases from eBay, local flea markets, and most recently with the purchase of an Atari 5200. It's a bug that bit not necessarily so suddenly, but persistently, gnawing at my hide like a tireless insect that feeds on addiction. My retro collection wasn't exactly nonexistent before. I already had an NES, SNES, N64, and Genesis, and my latest game spending spree has not left them untouched either. I've added a handful of NES games to my library, a couple SNES games, a few for the Genesis, and I've doubled my meager N64 selection. But I seem to have taken up an even greater interest in pre-3rd generation consoles, to the point of dwarfing all other systems I own with the 8-bit era.

So, back to the Wii 2

Or, I'm sorry, the "Wii U". As much as you'll hear it on message boards, Facebook, Twitter and everywhere else in the gaming circle, you're going to hear it from me too: the name just sucks. Hard as it is for me to fathom though, there are actually supporters of the name, and generally they cite the predecessor from which this new console owes its branding heritage to as reason why. The Wii was laughed and scoffed at, ridiculed and made fun of, but look at it now! It's synonymous with fun and all-inclusive gaming! It's something everyone the world over can recognize! And while those arguments may be true to some extent, the situation is a bit different here. It's understandable to want brand recognition to continue on into the next generation, and I have no problem with what they've done on their handhelds with their choice of the 3DS name. But this isn't just a bunch of childish adults making potty jokes and saying it sounds stupid. If you look at the logic they used on the name Wii, then sure, alright, it sorta makes sense. People can come to understand that, and eventually move on. But what's the logic of Wii U?

Reggie went on stage and told the E3 audience that many felt the hardcore folks weren't being catered to by Nintendo. This is something they wanted to change with the new system, so they created a system for "you", meaning the audience he was speaking to at the presentation consisting mostly of hardcore gamers. We're so confident this system will appeal to you, he said, that we're even putting it in the name. So, that in a nutshell is how they explained away the reason behind the U.