I finally touched a GBA the other day! The games available were F-Zero, for some reason (bleh), and ChuChu Rocket!. And only the former was out of its packaging, which frustrated me a bit. Who cares about a crappy racing game, with ugly Mode-7 pixels all over the place. I want to see what Sega is up to.
All the same, this is a terrific system. Everything about it is perfect or nearly so, from what I can determine so far; it’s solid, it feels nice in the hands (I’ve had two people complain to me about the triggers, but I just don’t think they’re holding it properly), it’s smoothly-designed and simple — the cart fits flush with the top of the system; the back is curved in an ergonomic way, while the front is completely flat — mostly a huge screen, with a couple of buttons around the edges. It seems perfectly molded to comfortably slip into one’s pocket — as opposed to the boxy shape of every other handheld out there. And it’s as “real”-feeling as the NGPC was, and its screen is every bit as good as well. The sound is nice. It’s more powerful than either the SNES or the Genesis. Sega is developing for it. Its boot-up screen is nice. I like the packaging. The cartridges are cute. I like the colors it comes in.
Wow, there are too many great consoles coming out. This thing reminds me a bit of the DC in a way. It’s very small; very compact and functional, and yet stylish and cute at the same time. And it feels like an “old” game system. Like it’s made with the classic sensibilities of the pre-Playstation era.
I think Nintendo is making a sort of a comeback. The N64 and GBC were both mostly lame ducks — uninspired, unimpressive, ugly, and poorly-executed. They had their standout titles of course, since they were made by Nintendo, but past the Virtual Boy they’re perhaps the least impressive things Nintendo made for a long time. Now both the GBA and the GCN are here or on their way — and both are very, very impressive. I think it’s a good thing that Sega seems to like Nintendo so much (though they appear to have a certain fondness for Microsoft as well); there’s so much insipid bland gunk out there — mostly due to Sony — that it’s about time the old timers, who know how gaming actually works, team up to knock the garbage back to where it belongs.
Speaking of the GBA — before leaving home the other day, I started flipping through a new issue of Newsweek. In its “cyberscope” section there was a page devoted to the launch of this system — and almost everything which was said in the article was wrong in some minor or major way, or misleading through a lack of proper supporting information. I was very annoyed. Not only do the mainstream media outlets refuse to give videogames equal billing with movies, books, and music, choosing instead to continue treating them like an occasional curiosity — despite games being the largest entertainment industry in the country at this point — but when they do report they do it with a level of unprofessionalism which leaves me trembling. What moron hired this guy to write these things?
That got me thinking. I’m a heck of a lot more competent than anyone I’ve ever seen in a mainstream outlet, in terms of this medium. I can write better than most people out there. I could probably fix this.
I’m going to do a bit of research, and try writing to a bunch of mainstream magazines and newspapers, describing to them the situation and proposing a way to remedy it (read: hire me). I could do this. I never have considered my writing worth anything at all, but this is merely because it comes as naturally to me as blinking. It takes no particular effort, so it can’t be valuable. But if it is this simple for me, why not get paid for blinking — and get free review software while I’m at it?
I think I know what I’m gonna be doing in the near future at least. And hey — I’m good. If I figure out how to present myself properly, they’d have to be insane not to hire me. Since there’s such a dearth of valuable criticism and coverage in the mainstream eye, I could possibly even carve a bit of a name for myself — but I’m getting ahead of things here.