-BZZZZZZZZZZZZT!-

Hello? Is-bzzt-this work-bzzt-ing?

-BZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!-

I think-bzzt-that one had-bzzt-an extra Z. -bzzt-

-BZZZZZZZZZZZZT!-

There it goes. No more bzzting.

-bzzt-

Lame.

Allow me to explain what's going on here. You see, I have travelled from the FUTURE, through an INTERNET TIME MACHINE. The future is a post-Wiipocalypse, where the entire family structure as you now know it has been turned around and kicked out the proverbial rock club door because it didn't have the proverbial wristband to get to the proverbial backstage area to talk to the proverbial band and maybe move some proverbial sound equipment out to the proverbial tour bus. What I mean to say is that things have changed, and it's all the Wii's fault.

As we all know by now, Nintendo is reaching out to the uninitiated gamer with this latest console. As in, any idiot should be able to pick up Wii Sports and hit the tennis ball. Unless that idiot doesn't know what tennis is in the first place, but you'd have to be a pretty uncultured idiot to not know what tennis is.

In the weeks approaching the Wii's launch, there was a sudden surge of Wii advertisements. Wii-vertisements? No, that's a stupid name. Wii was everywhere--in a two-episode South Park story arc, advertising during Dancing With the Stars, and various other things that I'm not going to link to. In short: Nintendo wants to take over the world one person at a time, and if those people happen to be middle-aged women watching Mario Lopez do the waltz, then so be it.

What the folks over at Nintendo never anticipated was just exactly how successful this combination of intuitive gameplay and the sensual swinging of AC Slater's hips would prove to be. People bought consoles, people plugged in consoles, people played Wii Sports, people all agreed that Wii Boxing was the coolest, and people all went to sleep that night. Yes, the average Wii-owning American family all experienced the exact same thing at roughly the exact same times, give or take a couple hours because of time zones and those freaky states that don't observe the organized lie of Daylight Saving Time. However, what transpired over the next few days would rock the foundation of the average Wii-owning American family--in more ways than one.

On Day 2, there wasn't much of a notable difference.

FATHER: Are you kids still playing that Wii? (This was be pronounced as "Why.")
KIDS: It's pronounced "Wii." (Pronounced in the usual manner.)
FATHER: [Disapproving glare.] Well whatever it is, pause it. Dinner's ready. You don't want it to get cold.
KIDS: [Disapproving glare, regarding the use of the cliche.]

Note the casual mispronunciation of "Wii," a common tactic among many parents. (See: Pokémon) It seemed...normal. This time would pass as all other console launches passed, mispronunciations and disapproving glares in abundant supply. Also, a lot of dinners would actually get cold.

However, nobody knew what to expect, when, on Day 3, everybody heard this exact sentence.

FATHER: Hey, let me try that tennis game you got there.

The kids guided their father through the simple process of creating a Mii. The father found this mildly amusing, but he was only doing this to appease his children. The kids then loaded up the Wii Sports disc, went through the menu system, and set their father loose on tennis. They showed him what to do, which character was his, and what "those funny square things" under his Mii represented. He began playing.

Three hours later, the kids finally won the arduous struggle, and reclaimed the Wii remote from their father. Somebody then carried the father to the kitchen. The father stood frozen in the kitchen, eyes wide, arms trembling, moving only to wipe the sweat out from his eyes.

FATHER: That...was...amazing.

The very fabric of life in the average Wii-owning American household was about to get its seams ripped out and replaced with dental floss, and while that metaphor doesn't make any sense, it would still be pretty shocking. Children everywhere would suddenly find that they had less and less time to spend with their new console. Saturday morning cartoons were replaced with hour-long dungeon-crawling Zelda sessions--and the kids weren't being invited.

FATHER: Hey, son--do you know what "turbo graphics" are? Because I just bought 40 of them through the "Why Shop Channel."
SON: It's a classic game console. And it's pronounced "Wii Shop Channel."
[pause]
SON: ...where's my digital camera?
FATHER: I needed the memory "chip" for these "turbo graphics." Did you know that this "Why" uses the same memory "chip" as your camera?
SON: But what happened to the actual camera?
FATHER: How do you think I paid for the "turbo graphics"?

Eventually, the Opera browser was released, and the Weather and News channels became fully active. Suddenly, the parents could access all the things they needed--all through their children's console.

The children were not pleased.

KIDS: Mom, dad--we need to talk.
FATHER: No.
MOTHER: No.
KIDS: We never get to play anymore.
FATHER: You also don't work forty hours a week to support your family.
MOTHER: You also don't need to check the weather for the big FAMILY VACATION that we're planning.
FATHER: Yeah, we're taking a big vacation.
MOTHER: A big one.
KIDS: Where?
FATHER: New York.
MOTHER: Nintendo World.
FATHER: To get some Wii merchandise.
MOTHER: You're not invited.
FATHER: Also, I need some component cables.
MOTHER: Yeah, 480p news and weather.
FATHER: But you're still not invited.
KIDS: . . . (This indicates stunned silence.)

The Wii was only a gateway to the world of the DS lite, and soon both Mother and Father were Training their Brains, Nintening their Dogs, and Clubhousing their Games. DS/Wii connectivity allowed them to fully take over every cool Nintendo system in the house. Also they wouldn't buy their kids an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3, which wasn't fair. Seriously.

Cut to a few years down the line: Mom and Dad are full-on gamers, and they're both unemployed. Children have taken to more adult hobbies, such as stamp collecting and thimble collecting and doing taxes and working ten hours a week and supporting the family and taking out the trash and paying bills and talking to the neighbors when they're going to build a new fence and watering the grass and mowing the lawn and caring for the flowers in the garden and planting tomatoes and getting the paper and reading the paper and throwing away the comics except for the crossword puzzle page and doing the sudoku puzzle and tearing out the crossword puzzle and reading Family Circus and writing letters to the doctor in the newspaper because you were angry about how he responded to that poor old woman in Wyoming because she has to be at least 83 and in poor health and she just wanted to know what he thought about the medicine she was prescribed by her doctor and it didn't seem right that he was so mean to her just because she was taking an active part in being concerned about the health care that she was being given by her doctor and saying 'how dare he respond with such candor!' and asking if this is what they call bedside manner nowadays and saying that you can understand why he just writes a column now instead of being a real doctor and also yelling at the judge shows on TV.

Also, kids won't get to play Zelda. Who wants to live in a world where kids don't get to play Zelda?

In closing, it is clear just how a prevalent a threat the intuitive controls and engaging gameplay of Nintendo's Wii console present. You must do your part to prevent this tragedy from taking place. I'm not telling you not to buy the Wii; I'm telling you never to tell anybody about it, and if that means opening Wii-related speakeasies (speak-wii-sies?) underground, then so be it.

Over and out. -bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt-

Time passes.

-BZZZZZZZZZZZZT!-

Okay, scratch the speakeasy idea. That just spawned some kind of horrible lobster/bear species, and I don't even want to know how that happened. So, uh, just take turns.

And that goes for you too, Mr. Father.

And you, Mrs. Mother.

And you, Mr. Pinchy-Bitey, the lobster/bear.

-bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt-

Labels: Console Wars, Nintendo Wii

For a detailed analysis of what will happen, please click here, here, here, here, and here.

Labels: Adventures in Tech Support, Xbox 360

Guess which rarely-updated video game news blog got featured on a Weblogs, Inc weblog? This rarely-updated video game news blog got featured on a Weblogs, Inc weblog!!

http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2006/10/22/console-wars-lcd-edition/

Yes, the news post is about one line long, and yes, he incorrectly assumes I'm from Australia (G'DAY MATE KANGAROO KNIFEY-SPOONY FOSTER'S), and yes, it would appear as though I've only generated a grand total of 4 hits from it, but...that's popularity. This is fame.

No pictures, please.

Labels: Meta, Xbox 360