The year is 1987 and a 6 year old me is playing Super Mario Bros on the NES for the very first time, in fact playing an NES for the very first time. I had never experienced anything like this before, sure i had a Spectrum but the games on that were in the majority boring, took a lifetime to load and looked like ass. This was a totally different story though. The NES took seconds to load, the games looked great, they had sound!!! and Super Mario Bros was fun...actual fun!!! Not i kind of guess this is fun but i don't want to EVER stop playing this fun.
Fast forward to 2011 and right now i'm sat next to my 4 year old son watching him play Super Mario Bros Wii. His eyes will light up when he finds a Yoshi, he knows where all the hidden items are, which pipes to go down to find secret areas. He will tell me about how Bowser has 'stolen' the Princess and Mario has to find her and all this with the same excitement i held for what is essentially the same game all those years ago, and its not just Super Mario Bros we will play Sonic, Mario Kart, Donkey Kong etc. If i were to put on the PS3 i don't think my son would relate to any of the games on there except maybe Little Big Planet and even then he would probably find the controls to floaty to enjoy it. My point here is that no matter how much Nintendo seems to have dumped on the core gamer this generation the Wii and also DS have been instrumental in bringing a new generation into gaming. Its brought parents who may have grown up playing Mario back into gaming and at the same time introduced there children to it. These are the same kids who will go on to play games in the future, make games in the future and even write about games in the future. Nothing stands still forever so to those people who say with the Wii Nintendo have forgotten there roots and core audience i say look at your kids playing these games and tell me there not getting just as much enjoyment out of gaming as you did...all those years ago!
