The Wii plays games but IS NOT for gamers.

When you think about the most fun that you can have with a current generation console you think about all of the interesting and console-specific titles that the Playstation 3 has: Blast Factor, God of War 3, Heavy Rain, SOCOM, Gran Turismo 5. But, at the end of the day it just isn't the console that everyone is scrambling to knock off the throne.

The Nintendo Wii is the reigning badass of the console world. This might lead people to believe that "gamers" invest in and play the games that come out for this system, but those people would be wrong. The games are fun and the system is quite intriguing, but very little legitimate gaming is done on this particular console and that has been a sticking point for many gamers and many game-enthusiasts for quite a while now. While the quality of Nintendo and it's consoles can't really be disputed, just how much of a gaming device this is can be.

For years the kids lived and breathed Mario. The original NES opened the hearts and minds of the youth in America to a fun-loving plumber and a scary dinosaur dragon walrus princess stealer. We had Metroid and Duck Hunt and other classic and great games. We loved the games and they loved us back, at least until they wouldn't load right and our bright idea as to... blow on them. The Super NES was a big jump forward and many people were very excited. We didn't really view games the same back then, but we all knew that something magical was happening. We got some more amazing classics like Final Fantasy 2 and 3, as well as Earthworm Jim, Turtles in Time, Super Mario All-Stars, Street Fight 2, Chrono Trigger and Mega Man X. The quality of the games was better. Both story, graphics and gameplay all became better and you could feel the gaming community begin pushing the boundaries and moving forward.

Then we got the abortion that has become known as the Virtual Boy. What a huge disappointment. One of the worst attempts at gaming that the world had ever seen. While the vision may have been there, the technology wasn't, yet Nintendo soldiered on and let it happen. This set gaming back and may set back the "virtual" community for a very long time. We are just now seeing 3-D television and movies move into the mainstream, 15 years later. The bad taste and overall sucktitude of the Virtual Boy wouldn't last long though. Nintendo had one of their neater tricks up their sleeve. The N64. While it was one of the last of it's generation of consoles out, it was also pretty solid in terms of performance. However, Nintendo refused to go with the CD for it's games and continued on with the cartridge. This made things terrible for developers and a lot of games on N64 suffered because of this. The console did offer some of the more fun FPS games in Golden Eye and Perfect Dark, it was severely limited and also managed to put out one of the worst games ever in Superman 64.

The N64 wouldn't quench the thirst for power for ve ry long. Again coming in later in the pack for the next generation of consoles the Game Cube came out and stunned people. Mostly because the games really didn't look any better than before. The Game Cube didn't look terrible, but the games were overly cartoony and you could tell a difference between it's power and the power of the other three main consoles. While the Game Cube was far from a failure, it did not have the sort of amazing success that the previous versions had become accustomed to. The PS2 and the XBox were able to convince gamers that they were superior consoles and offered and overall better experience. Nintendo would stay up to task and develop a console that would once again vault them back to the top of consoles gaming. They would do it by being the weakest in terms of tech specs and offer games that were entirely different than anything their competitors could. They would make you play the game... for real.

The Wii used motion, your own motion, to power your gaming experience and people were shocked. All of a sudden people were off the couch and moving. The bowling game was fun, tennis was a blast, golf was a skill game and everyone could be involved. Grandmothers and 5-year olds alike were now gaming.... WAIT A MINUTE! This isn't gaming. It's playing. Nintendo had tricked us. They sold us a toy and made us play with it and called it gaming. Dammit! We had been deceived!

Thankfully Nintendo opened a lot of eyes with the console and helped push it into many houses. It has changed the mind of people who thought that playing games would make you worship Satan and lick Marilyn Manson's asshole. It has been both good and bad for gamers. It might have set gaming back, due to it's simplicity and lack of advancement. Especially since the console sold so well that Sony and Microsoft just recently announced to add their very own Wii-like additions onto their existing current generation consoles.

Awesome! I can't wait to be hardcore and virtually pet seals in Norway!