Nintendo consoles -- the plumber's perpetually expanding domain.

​There's nothing quite like the feeling of total joy that occurs when you know that you've just received the most recent issue from the loins of technology. Throughout history this experience has brightened the souls of many. The innovative caveman who first sharpened his wooden "kill stick" into a spear was surely filled with the same surge of excitement that modern shoppers experience while waiting in line to receive the newest iPad (though your purchase of Apple hardware is most likely not followed quite so quickly by a vigorous hunt for boar meat). Beholding the most recent product of humanity's collective intelligence is and forever will be a supremely invigorating thing.

Today Nintendo is expected to unveil their newest console. As these words are written, there is only hearsay and speculation ("Project Cafe?  Maybe Nintendo's releasing a console with a taste interface!"), but by the time you read this you may be swimming happily in the actual details, imagining the brilliance of a gaming future not-so-distant. So now's a great time to look back on the features of past consoles that delighted us, awed us and educated us about the ever-widening limits of gaming.

1.) In the end, it's all about the games.

 

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Video game manufacturers learned early on that no matter what your system was capable of or incapable of, it had to be able to run entertaining games. Popular games. Games that don't center around falling into holes. Or sexual assault.

Let us elaborate. The Atari 2600 console was a titan in its day. It owed much of this prestige to the port of the unfathomably popular arcade title Space Invaders to the console. The plot was simple: malicious aliens are descending upon the planet; kill them. The gameplay was as addictive as crack (and predated it by several years!). And the result was an ultra-hit that buoyed Atari and the industry as a whole.

But that same console was stymied later by a simple dip in average game quality. ET, in comparison with the earlier Space Invaders, was a mess. The plot was confused: a nice alien is hungry for candy and needs to make a phone call; help him fall into some holes. The gameplay was as addictive as cauliflower. And the result, of this and other games (often unsanctioned 3rd party efforts like Custer's Revenge, a video game made to appeal to the 1800's rape-inclined racist demographic), was consumer loss of faith.

Whatever else your system has, it's got to have great games.

 

2.) Add a futuristic touch, when possible.

The cutting edge.

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The Famicom / NES achieved a legendary status for many reasons. One reason is R.O.B.

Sure, the NES had solid games like Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt and would've been great even without the addition of a robot pal who figures into the actual play of only a few games. But god damn it if it didn't feel like Nintendo was supplying you with your own personal robot guide to the new frontier of gaming.

True, as robots go, R.O.B. was pretty low-grade. No weaponized lasers, no dry sense of humor, and human-killing sprees were very rare even among malfunctional R.O.B.s. But sometimes that extra bell or whistle can make something brand new seem even newer.

 

3.) That said, don't try to rush the future.

Hey kids! Want to see what hell looks like?

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If somebody in the Dark Ages had the idea to make a tank, it would be a really cool idea.  But the technology simply didn't exist back then. If they tried to build a tank in the Dark Ages it would just be a dude throwing old eggs riding in a wheelbarrow. There needed to be years and years of advancements in the military sciences to make that idea into a functional reality.

As anyone whose retinas experienced the flood of crimson that was Virtual Boy gameplay will tell you, sometimes when inventing things you have to wait for technology to catch up a little bit.

 

4.) Competition is good.

 

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The console wars of the 90's must have been remarkably stressful times to work at a video game company. But they were amazing times to be a gamer. In their struggle to achieve dominance in an increasingly competitive field, video game companies were forced to avoid complacency and consistently create new platforms for superior games. And this trend continues to this day. Sure, many of the systems and add-ons of that era are, for the most part, lost to the ages. But you couldn't look at your Sega Genesis, tricked out with the 32x on top and the Sega CD component on the side and not smile at the pace of the field's evolution.

 

5.) Things are always more exciting if you add an element of danger.

 

To this day many people believe their Arwing is in danger when their cellphone buzzes.

 

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Let's just hope that as controller-free gaming becomes more and more common that they can still figure out a way to vibrate gamers' hands mildly. Otherwise, where's the thrill of it all?