The Revolution Will Be Right In Your Hands, Whether You Like It Or Not

Nintendo

I have never been one for video games. A little, I suppose, as a kid, when Pac-Man and Galaga first hit the scene. In fact, I actually always had a soft spot for pinball, maybe because my parents had a vintage one they picked up in the ‘70s that I learned to play rather well. It’s perhaps for that reason that I was close to unbeatable in the short-lived arcade classic Baby Pac-Man, which was a bizarre hybrid of Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man and that same, old fashioned pinball machine sitting right down the hall from where I slept.

You might also remember a game called Track & Field, which mimicked the Olympic Decathlon, but not necessarily its lesser known sequel, Hyper Sports, which was an odd melange of swimming, gymnastics, track and field, and shooting. I was really good at the latter around the age of 14, and once got my main crush Ali Fort to admit that “it’s disgusting how good he is at that game,” which was akin to her telling me she loved me. Needless to say, that lives on as a highlight of my athletic career, which otherwise is low on standout achievements after I aged out of Little League.

My brief foray into gaming ended shortly thereafter, and I have since been more than a tad ambivalent about all the advances that have been made in the ensuing three decades. This has annoyed some of my friends, who wonder how it is that I am such a pop culture junkie and comic book nerd, and yet have a deep aversion to the video games that could otherwise be such an outstanding way for us to waste time together.

Konami

I try to explain that even my extreme geekdom has its limits, and video games have always been on the outside looking in. This can get frustrating when, as someone who gets paid to both create content for and comment upon pop culture and the entertainment industry, I have such little insight into such a large part of it. Especially since more and more movies are being adapted from this source material, and my considered ignorance is so obviously on display.

Essentially, video games are my kryptonite in an otherwise carefully studied knowledge of the field of mainstream entertainment, and pretty much anyone who knows me and pays the slightest bit of attention to the things about which I tend to speak is well aware of this.

So you can imagine my surprise when it was suggested to me by someone whose opinion I hold in the greatest esteem that I should check out the new Nintendo Switch gaming console, because it’s totally different from all previous consoles and it’s going to completely revolutionize the whole industry when it hits the market in March, if not the world itself. I reminded this person that, while this certainly sounded interesting, I am not a gamer, have never really been a gamer, and couldn’t really tell the difference between one console and another if you labeled them for me, which made the idea of my writing about such an innovation a bit on the complicated side.

Then I looked at it online, at a special trailer Nintendo released on Thursday, and I was more than a little astonished at just how well we are using technology to further isolate ourselves from each other. One of the sequences in the video follows a handsome, athletic-looking young man who is playing a game on his trusty home console, when his handsome, athletic-looking dog lets him know in no uncertain terms that he would like to go outside to answer nature’s call and maybe some exercise. Now, thanks to the Switch, this young man doesn’t even have to pause his game, he can instead switch it over to his new, portable, handy dandy Switch and then play video games while his dog is off galavanting through a field. Or a fenced-in dog run. Or a swamp. Or all three. Honestly, I’m not terribly sure, as they don’t really show that part.

Nintendo

Another sequence shows an attractive, hipsterish young woman who brings it to a gathering of her hipsterish friends — I think they’re having some kind of hipstery rooftop brunch, but I’m just speculating — and soon they are all joining in and playing video games together, rather than actually talking about their hipsterish lives, which, actually, now that I think about it, is probably a good thing.

I’m sure you can imagine, at this point, how massive was the extent of the eye roll I offered to this new electronic item, and the vitriol I planned to include in the sternly worded note I’d be sending to the aforementioned friend whom I had, up to this moment, held in such high esteem before lowering my opinion of him with great rapidity.

But then I stopped myself, because I do try to be even-handed about these things. I mean, if this friend of mine really thought it was worth my attention, I could perhaps humor him enough to really put a little more effort into it and find out why, in fact, he was so enthusiastic. Especially when I learned that, in fact, many others are far less so. Wall Street reacted badly to the video, as Nintendo stock fell 6.6 percent on Friday, wiping out $2.4 billion in the company’s market value. That’s exactly the kind of extreme response that I like, which made me prick up my ears even more.

Nintendo

The idea of mobile gaming isn’t new, of course, but I can certainly see how the concept of being able to combine your various machines into what is essentially one big mobile entity would be appealing. The Switch appears to be for someone existing somewhere in between the casual gamer and the serious one which, again, leaves me out, but the thing that grabs me is the tablet aspect of it, and the idea of being able to combine all your entertainment needs into one place is something that, I would think, appeals to just about everyone.

The big question, and this was not answered in the video or in any of the other information I could find about the device, is whether it will actually have those tablet abilities. Nintendo tends to be about games, and games alone, although previous systems have at least had Netflix access. Ideally, it will have all that, because, to me, that makes it something that might actually be interesting to everyone, especially in this era of cord-cutting.

Nintendo

Give me something I can carry with me, where I can engage with all the entertainment I like at the touch of a button, while also giving me the opportunity to either learn how to play The Legend of Zelda or allow one of my many gamer friends to commandeer my Switch for their own, nefarious purposes, and you might actually meet all of my consumer needs, which is something of a tall order.

Which means I sort of need to reword that letter to my friend, and let him know that perhaps he wasn’t so far off, after all. Also a tall order, but I’m nothing if not magnanimous.

Neil Turitz is a filmmaker and journalist who has spent close to two decades working in and writing about Hollywood. Feel free to send him a tweet at @neilturitz. He’ll more than likely respond.