Hot Air: Aged

You old fogeys need to stop bogarting my vidja-games!

By Aaron Roberts. Posted 09/09/2010 14:00 1 Comment     ShareThis

Hot Air

A lot of gamers are stressed out by what the Wii is doing on a grand scale.  What are we talking about?  Well, in case you haven’t read any other posts or articles on the site for the past few days, we’re talking about how more and more senior citizens are becoming Power Players.

For a lot of us, it’s threatening.  Old people don’t like the same things as us.  Old people like Sanka and ribbon candy and showing up just in time for the Early Bird Special at the local dinner buffet.  They don’t like blasting aliens and beating up sumo wrestlers and racing go-karts.  In short, they don’t like anything that video games are about.

I think this bothers people of my generation, meaning, those who grew up playing games at home on the Atari 2600 or, more importantly, the NES, far more than it bothers people who are teenagers or in their lower 20s right now.  When we were growing up, old people all told us that video games rot your brain and we should just go play outside and stop wasting our time in front of the TV.  You know what I’m talking about.

Now that old folks’ homes and Moose Lodges or whatever are getting together to have Wii Bowling tournaments, it’s kind of a weird thing.  I’m definitely out of my element.  Not with the game, I can totally school anyone at Wii Bowling, either version.  I mean that I’m having trouble with the idea that the 50-plus crowd can play video games and enjoy them.  I mean any type of video games, not just shooters or Madden or Mario games.

So, now they are, but they’re playing the types of games that we don’t really care about.  Maybe that’s not true.  I may not have Wii Fit, but I’ve definitely got Wii Sports, and I admittedly did not have a choice in that matter, but I also happen to have Wii Sports Resort, and that was without question an optional purchase.

Problem is, that’s almost all that these old folks are playing.  They’re bowling and playing tennis over and over and still having fun with it.  I still like playing Wii Sports and all, but I don’t play it every day, or even regularly.  I want something new after a while.  And it’s not like when I was a kid, when I would play Mega Man into the ground and dominate it completely.  Once I’m done with a game today, I’m done for a long time, unless it’s a complete masterpiece like Resident Evil 4 or Tetris DS. Older games are different, because they take far less time than newer ones do, but the point remains.

Considering this, maybe Nintendo’s original theory that getting people to play the so-called “Blue Ocean” games would somehow trick them into playing Metroid and Zelda wasn’t one hundred percent correct, but maybe it wasn’t wrong, either.  Maybe it’s just that us young whippersnappers have really short attention spans, and those in their golden years can wait awhile before trying something new.  Not necessarily the best financial plan, but not bad, since Nintendo already made money on the original Wii console sale, right?

One Response to “Hot Air: Aged”

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Log In 0 points Log in or register to grow your Ninja Score while interacting with our site.
Nintendojo's RSS Feeds

All Updates Podcast
News Comments
Like and follow usFacebookTwitter Friend Code Exchange + Game with Us Join the Team!