Ian Morris
Ian Morris loves televisions so much he's been banned from wedding chapels in Las Vegas for trying to marry them. When he's not romancing technology, he can be found watching American TV. Ian likes roast potatoes, but he doesn't like digital rights management.
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Thursday 17 April 2008, 9:53am
Now I understand
When I was growing up as a young geek, I always had desktop computers. It all began with the BBC B, progressed to the Amstrad CPC6128 and on to the Atari ST. From then on it was Windows PCs, and that's how it's stayed. So it goes without saying that I always played my games on the PC.
Obviously, that makes me biased towards PC gaming, which means I always laughed at console owners with their little under-TV boxes that cost big piles of cash. Then, last year I bought an Xbox 360, which almost immediately suffered a massive hardware failure. Once I got a working one, I discovered that consoles are actually pretty good -- the controller felt good, the sound was epic via my 5.1 system and there were some brilliant games.
This was a revelation that my girlfriend also had when she was at a friend's house playing Wii Sports. Before, it was all I could do to get her to play Bejeweled, but then she announced she wanted a Wii, so we bought one and it's been like taking the red pill. Every night I try not to suck at Wii Sports, and for the most part totally fail.
But there's no point only having one game for a console, so at the weekend I got Super Mario Galaxy and proceeded to waste an entire weekend grinning at the TV like a slack-jawed idiot. It's like being 8 again -- the bright colours are wonderfully soothing, the noises it makes are so happy I could cry and the hand jiggling to make Mario spin is a delight.
Finally, I see what the draw to Nintendo consoles has been all this time. It's actually fun. It's not difficult, but not too easy either. It's simply the perfect gaming experience.
Next: On-screen Logos: DIE, DIE, DIE!
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Comments on this post
I have a Pioneer DVR-540HX DVD Recorder. Is it possible to make this unit multi region as we have some discs purchased in USA.
Posted by Anonymous on Thu 17 April, 2008 1:22 PM
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