PixlBit

I got my Wii at launch.  We went to Wal-Mart at 6 pm before the midnight release and waited outside in a line.  We weren't the first to get there, but we were ahead enough that we knew we'd get one if we waited.  Luckily we got to wait in the garden section so we weren't out in the cold or anything.  My brother Jeff went with me and we spent the time playing PSP and watching movies on a portable DVD player.  But around 10 pm the manager came out and gave us tickets and told us to go home and come back at midnight to pick up our Wii.  So we really only had to wait in line for about 3 or 4 hours. Then after we got the Wii, Jeff and I went over to one of my friend's houses and played Wii Sports for another few hours.  Jeff was still pretty young so he thought it was cool to be able to stay up that late with the 'big guys.'  So I have a lot of good memories of that night.

The Wii was great, but it's not my favorite Nintendo console.  Like how the N64 was the catalyst for me getting a N64, the Wii was the catalyst for me getting a 360.  Just not enough games.  And the motion controls got pretty gimmicky pretty quickly.  Actually after the Wii, all of Nintendo's consoles have been kind of gimmicky.  

But there were still a lot of great and memorable games on the Wii.  Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 are some of my favorite 3D Mario games.  Heck, I even liked Wii Music!  Lots of great Kirby games and the Virtual Console was pretty amazing.  I loved how it even had Turbo Grafix 16 games on it!  Hudson was really a major supporter of the Wii.  I miss them.  

The only reason why I got a PS3 was because when we got a new TV for the living room, the PS3 was the cheapest option for a Blu-Ray player!  The thing always ran slower than the 360 and they had that security breach on it that made me decide to never have my credit card on file on any console (I just use point gift cards).  So yeah, the PS3 is my least favorite of the Sony home consoles.

I got the PSP a couple of years after it came out, once there were enough games I wanted to play on it and review.  Aside from the Neo Geo Pocket Color, the PSP is one of my favorite non-Nintendo handhelds.  I think I even like the big bright screen on it better than the Switch.  Although I haven't tried the OLED Switch yet.

Some of my favorite games on the PSP include Loco Roco 1 and 2, Ys Seven, Work Time Fun, Half Minute Hero, Mega Man Powered Up, and many more!

When we did our podcast on top five favorite home console games, the 360 was on my list.  Which is weird because I didn't own the Xbox consoles before or after it.  The 360 just had a wide variety of games I wanted to play on it, and to me it was the first console that did the online thing right.  Consoles today still imitate what the 360 started with that.

My only problem with the 360 was the dreaded 'red ring of death.'  It happened to me twice.  I have a rule with consoles and games and that's "three strikes and you're out."  So any time I play a game that freezes up on my three times or more, I stop playing it.  So it's a good thing the red ring only happened to me twice.  Still probably too many times for that to happen, though.

When we did our top five favorite handheld console podcast, the DS was on my list.  I liked it better than the 3DS because even though the 3DS had meatier games and StreetPass, the DS had more creative games and I didn't have to worry about the gimmicky 3D stuff (because I'm blind in my left eye and can't see that effect anyway).

I first got to play a prototype DS at E3.  A select few of us got to go into a room and play a select few prototypes of games.  I was lucky enough to play what would become Pac-Pix, a game even Miyamoto wished he had come up with! One cool thing is that when I left that room, Charles Martinet was there to greet me!  He's the voice of Mario!

So many great games to talk about, but I think my standout favorite on the DS was the Phoenix Wright series.  It started out on the GBA in Japan, but the touch screen support worked wonders and I'm glad Capcom brought that to the US.

When we did our podcast on our top five favorite consoles, the GameCube was my number 5 choice.  It was real hard to pick from that and the PS2, but ultimately the GameCube won out because this was when Nintendo was really firing on all cylinders and making some pretty experimental games for it.  Case in point, the launch title for it was not a Mario game, but Luigi's Mansion!  I got the black GameCube at launch at Wal-Mart with a few of my friends.  This was back before game consoles weren't hard to get.

Other games I liked included Super Monkey Ball, Mario Sunshine, Zelda: Wind Waker, Four Swords Adventures, F-Zero GX, Metroid Prime, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, heck, even the first Animal Crossing came out on GameCube, and that's one of my top five favorite games of all time!  Oh yeah, and the Game Boy Player was a game changer!

Thanks for reading and commenting!

I never owned an Xbox.  I sure did like the 360 that came after it, though.  There just wasn't enough games on the original Xbox for me to warrant purchasing the system.  Some I kind of wanted to play included OutRun 2001, a new Toe Jam & Earl game, a 3D Spy vs. Spy game, and some of Rare's offerings.  But that's really about it.

Typing was probably one of the most important classes I took in high school.

When the PS2 came out, I had just graduated college so I was low on funds so I couldn't get it right away.  Plus it was really hard to find for the first few months.  I finally got one around March or April that next year.  Aside from stuff like Kingdom Hearts and Katamari Damacy, I don't have many PS2 specific memories because most everything I wanted to play came out on both the PS2 and GameCube, so it was just a matter of what system I'd rather play them on.  

I was still reviewing games for the newspaper when the PS2 first came out.  I remember my editor saying, "Cary, you need to get a PS2!"  And I was like, "I just got out of college.  I have to get some funds first!  Maybe if you hire me full time I can get one soon.  Or let me have your press copy which I know you have."  My editor didn't like me much.  Not sure why.