Wii = Dead (Literally This Time)

Turned on the Wii last night only to be warmly greeted by a black screen and the following curt, clipped sentences: "THE SYSTEM FILES ARE CORRUPTED. PLEASE REFER TO THE WII OPERATIONS MANUAL FOR HELP TROUBLSHOOTING."

As if simply telling me that my Wii is fucked was not enough, the nice person in charge of creating this screen--yes, someone has to create these types of screens; paging Dr. Kafka--also saw fit to render the two sentences in some of jarbled-up, broken-assed font.

I was oddly calm during this moment. I didn't start sweating, or turning over furniture. I didn't pour myself a drink the way that Tom Hagen pours Vito Corleone a drink before telling him that Sonny got shot on the causeway.

I very calmly, cooly began troubleshooting. Step one: I have no fucking idea where my "operations manual" is. So I moved on to step two: restarting and saying a prayer.

The most curious aspect of the experience was the complete and utter lack of emotion I felt about the whole thing. I have had emotional relationships with my consoles. About a month ago, I visited my New York City at my apartment. I went through my closets and found my Super Nintendos (plural; my brother gave me his when he got married), my PlayStation, my Dreamcast, my Nintendo 64, etc. I held each machine for a moment, wiped the dust from its casing, and as cornball as it sounds, I spent some time recalling all the terrific times the two of us had together.

Let me tell you, those machines got me through some rough periods in my life. Break-ups. Deaths. Firings. Even smaller moments--example: missing the 10:19 bus in Chicago, knowing that I'd be late for my shift at the stupid, dumb, fancy restaurant where I worked in the '90s--were bearable because I knew at the end of the day, after all the bullshit and headaches and arguments with Frank the sous chef, it would be me and M. Bison going at it hammer and tongs in Street Fighter II on the SNES.

Which brings me back to my cold reaction to the Wii's death.

Make no mistake, the Wii and I have had some fun together. The Super Mario Galaxy games? Excite Truck? Mario Kart Wii? Good stuff, all of it.

But the aspect of the Wii that I have always loved the most was the Virtual Console. The white, unassuming little box has always been little more than a cipher to me, an empty vessel that appropriates old dreams and experiences. Of course, I downloaded all of the best shit from the past. Super Metroid? The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past? WaveRace 64? They're all on my Wii's corrupted hard drive.

Which should make me panic.

But it doesn't.

Because I know I can simply download them all again once a new Wii comes into my life.

Or, I can get on a plane, fly to New York. I can always hook up my old consoles and play them there.

Old consoles, which by the way had a failure rate of 0.000000000 percent.

CORRECTION: My friend John Teti who edits the A.V. Club's videogame section sent me this useful bit of information: "The thing is, you can't download all your Virtual Console games again -- at least not without paying for them again. Because Nintendo is shit and they tie downloads to a single machine." Thanks, John.

Hidden Potential (And Why the Wii Doesn't Have Any)

I watched the Super Bowl yesterday with a friend of mine who works as a game developer here in Vancouver.

One of the many benefits of living in Vancouver, besides near constant rain and high taxes and all the natural beauty your eyes can take: Becoming friends with developers.

A couple of things about watching the Super Bowl in Canada:

1. The commercials are completely different here and, for the most part, lame. (I had to watch all the "real" commercials online after the fact, including the Dante's Inferno commercial.)

2. It's very difficult to find anyone who genuinely gives a rat's ass about the Super Bowl in Canada.

My friend, who I will refer to as "Thumb-Blaster" in order to protect his identity, is probably the only person on earth to have finished No More Heroes (the man found every damn collectible in the game) and to also suffer from a pathological Modern Warfare 2 obsession. He's a terrific human being, full of curiosity, neuroses and savvy insights into life, and more importantly, how games are made.

As you've probably guessed, Thumb-Blaster isn't much of a football fan. To keep Thumb-Blaster engaged, I did my best to make nerd-centric small talk during the game's idle moments (i.e. during the Canadian commercials). We discussed Battlestar, the merits of The Saboteur, The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess (he loved it; I'd rather have my taxes done than play it again), and so forth.

Yes, it was an old fashioned, boot-stomping, nerd-style hoedown.

During halftime, as we consumed sausages at an almost alarming rate, I asked Thumb-Blaster why Wii games haven't evolved the way that games typically evolve over the lifecycle of a console. In other words, Twilight Princess (2006) and, to an even greater degree Metroid Prime 3 (2007), looked terrific, but more recent Wii games don't necessarily look, or play, any better than those first-generation Wii titles. Early games for the PS2, 360, and PS3 have all made significant strides over time. Yet the Wii appears to have stalled out. How come?

Thumb-Blaster's response: "It's because the Wii just kind of laid it all out there."

Explanation: "It's an easy machine to understand, and to program for. Therefore, there are no hidden possibilities in the hardware to be uncovered. Basically, with the Wii, what you see is what you get."

On the other hand, Thumb-Blaster continued, the nuances of both the 360 and the PS3 are still being sussed out. "We don't really know what [these machines] are capable of yet. We're still trying to figure them out. Truth is, no one really knows what to do with the cell processors yet. Nobody really knows how to use them. People are starting to experiment, but we're still a long way from having a handle on them."

I went back to my sausage sandwich. I'd never thought of these machines as being mysterious before. I liked the idea that both machines hold some hidden, unrealized potential. Neither machine seems even remotely tapped out yet. (Hell, I'm still convinced that the PS2 has some life left in it.)

I once loved my consoles. The Super Nintendo? Man, I would have married that thing, and kissed it and loved it all night long in the honeymoon suite at the Radisson.

I've never been in love with the 360 or the PS3; not like that, anyway. Both seem a little cold and distant and distant and alien. They're like attractive women at a party who won't talk to me, but instead prefer only to peer at me askance. I've never loved them as objects; I don't think I ever could. I need them, but I'm indifferent towards them. If either one broke down, I wouldn't mourn the loss. I'd simply head to the nearest store and buy a new one.

Still, after Thumb-Blaster's words of wisdom--Thumb-Blaster is so very wise--I'm not exactly ready to rent out the Radisson honeymoon suite just yet, but I am just a tad more fond of both machines today.