Controllers and Serenity (hurray)

First of all, I have to say a little “hurray”. The reason being that it looks likely that my local cinema “The Mallard” will be showing Serenity after all. In some respect this is a slight disappointment, as I was quite looking forward to return to Jersey in order to see the film, but then again I’m loath to spend too much money what with an impending property purchase still potentially on the horizon. This definitely has to be my most anticipated film at the moment, I’ve even recently re-watched the entire series of Firefly in preparation.

Elliot has recently taken a liking to playing games on my Nintendo DS (mainly the Mario 64 mini games – which really are worth buying the whole game for). This got me thinking about console controllers. I think that most gamers (myself included) take for granted how complex modern controllers are, the reason being that we have grown up with controllers from Atari to the more complex controllers of today’s generation. It’s no wonder that gaming as a pastime lacks appeal to the non-gaming public, the controllers really must look quite daunting and PC games with their keyboard and mouse operation even more so.

It’s no wonder that the Nintendo DS (in Japan at least) is taking off so well with non-gamers and also female gamers. Using a stylus really couldn’t be simpler, after all if my 2 year old son can master it (and even beat some of my high scores) then I’m sure that anyone can!

Occasionally Elliot will sit on my lap and watch me play on my gamecube, although he rarely has a go himself (maybe every so often with Monkey Ball – which after all you only need the analogue stick to play). Instead he prefers to be spectator. His current favourite game is Mario Kart, to which he will shout “green shell”, “red shell” and “throw the shell” amongst other instructions!

I’ve heard rumblings on the internet that the Revolution controller may be shown over the next few days during Nintendo’s keynote speak at the Tokyo Game Show. Lets just hope that it really is as revolutionary as most Nintendo fanatics hope!