Don't Build It, and They Will Come Anyway

Some things in life just weren't meant to be understood. Take for instance feel good stories of how a sick child is miraculously healed, or how a family in dire need is somehow blessed with a smile from lady luck at the last possible moment. We've come to write these sort of things off as blessed occurrences from a higher power, and that is enough for the majority of us. Call me a softy, but I've always felt that it's enough for me as well, and I leave it at that.

However, this article isn't one of those things. The blessed underdog going into this generation, Nintendo, seems to be struggling a bit too much under the weight of it's own sales, for my taste. Now the problem is, I don't know who to rip into first, about this. You see, we have one side an analyst (yes, I love to poke at these guys), who makes the outlandish prediction that Nintendo may have trouble meeting consumer demand for the Wii up until 2009. On the other side, we have the equally ridiculous concept that a hardware maker with many years of experience under it's belt can't figure out how to crank out a hot product while it's still hot. Like I've stated before, If we were talking about cutting edge technology here, I might be a bit more forgiving. Since we are talking about what amounts to an incremental step from the original Xbox a fair six years after it was released, the thought of it all just confounds me.

For Pete's sake, Nintendo, you have amassed a legion of fans bested only by the yearly totals of American Idol viewers, in terms of sheer numbers. Okay, so maybe I'm embellishing this one a bit, but you can't deny how large the loyal followers of the Nintendo World Order have become. The point is, you could probably talk these guys into building a couple factories for you, and piecing together Wiis from spare parts lying around in any electronics store. If that weren't enough, I'm more than certain that there are enough Gamecubes left in the wild for you to simply gut and refit them with nice shiny white cases. Then all you'd have to worry about is making a few million remotes. You can do that before 2009, can't you?

And as for the aforementioned analyst; your not off the hook either. Are you out of your freaking mind? You have somehow managed to convince yourself that while millions of manufacturers can crank out enough products every day to meet customer demand, that Nintendo will need the better part of two plus years to finally put a Wii in every household that wants one. I'm not sure what the drug of choice is for those in your industry, but I'm glad it's not found over the counter. God help our great nation when it becomes readily available on the street.

So that brings us back to this whole enigma that has yet to be understood by anyone. There's a hot product out there with a niche market. The product seems to be fairly cheap to make, and it doesn't use any form of technology in it's parts that have yet to be reverse engineered from future UFO crash sites. Like the great mystery of just how many licks it really takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop, the world may never know the why this hasn't been remedied as of yet. Until there, I fear that there's no shortage of analysts who will continue to make outlandish predictions about the equally outlandish positions Nintendo has put itself in, yet again.

Who Is This Gameboi fella ?

Hello everyone,

The screen name says gameboi (it’s a long story), but everyone pretty much knows me as Alan. I’ve been a video game fan since the days of the Atari 2600, and it was Donkey Kong that started me down the dark path of the empty wallet.

I’m a big fan of Resident Evil(and survival horror games in general), but I play pretty much anything you throw my way. I’m not real keen on Sony these days, and I make no apologies about it. Needless to say, I tend to gravitate towards Microsoft and Nintendo when it comes to gaming. This isn’t to say that I won’t acknowledge a great game from Sony’s camp when I see it.

My all time favorite games are as follows (but I could go on forever)….

Resident Evil 2
Viewtiful Joe
Shadow of the Colossus
Tomb Raider- Legend
Silent Hill 2
Earthworm Jim
Super Mario 64
Knights of the Old Republic
Donkey Kong
Dragons Lair
Metal Gear Solid 3
Legend of Zelda – Ocarina of Time
Bionic Commando
Legacy of Kain- Defiance
Max Payne

I am also a pretty big Star Wars nut (Vader all the way), and I’m still PO’d over Firefly getting cancelled. Your probably bored enough as it is, so I’ll end that ramble here.

While fairly new to the blogging thing, it was on Amazon.com’s Computer and Videogame message boards that I cut my teeth, so to speak, in terms of talking and sharing opinions about video games in general. The board itself was a bit archaic, but I was surprised to find a few knowledgeable gamers who made the place quite interesting

Unfortunately, Amazon wasn’t real keen on performing software upgrades (last one done in 2001), which meant spamming became a major issue for us as time went by. After a few years, I threw my name in the hat to help mod the place for free, since the paid mods had seemingly disappeared and moved on to bigger and better things (not that I blame them). You may recognize one of them as Mike Fehlauer of Penny Arcade fame. Another one, while not paid, is a pretty popular mod on Roosterteeth.com, known as Dark54555. Both are great guys.

Right away, the remaining members and I banded together to try and curb the spamming, and do our best to kick start the community. As history now shows, that didn’t happen, and Amazon basically pulled the plug on the place in favor of miniature discussions on each product page. We fought tooth and nail, but it was not enough. A new board was made by one of our members, and most of the remaining holdouts moved over after Amazon stopped by for one last message that they were taking us down.

I still stop by the new board to keep in touch, but the place has never been the same place since Amazon crushed a small group of hardcore gamers. Do I have hard feelings towards them for this? I did at first, but have since moved on. Looking back, they kind of did me a favor. Had they not done so, I most likely would not have moved on to my new home at Destructoid. Like the fond memory I will always carry of a few years ago, I have found another group of hard core gamers who share my vision of what a videogame forum/site should be like. Now I’m ready to write the next chapter in my gaming journey, at Destructoid.

Here's the link to the place if anyone wants to comb through the history a bit more on their own. You can't post there, but it tells our story in real time as it unfolded. Once again, I thank all of you for the warm welcome.