sad news for nintendo fans today... zelda: twilight princess was delayed until at least march '06 instead of its original november release date. basically, everybody was looking forward to this zelda being sort of the last hurrah for the gamecube. but coming out in march of next year now? by that time the xbox 360 will already have been out for months and the PS3 could very well be close to launch, not to mention nintendo's own revolution.

the thing that baffles me is who the fuck's gonna want to play a game on the cube when the revolution is about to come out? isn't that kinda like having a good ol' time with super mario 3 while all your buddies were enamored with super mario world?

personally i'm behind enough in my gaming so that it won't affect me much, although i think over the xmas holidays i prolly would have been more likely to waste my days away with a zelda game rather than to fire up my long-awaited jumps into stuff like tales of symphonia and pikmin 2.

---

y'know, i still don't really know what my take on the next gaming generation is. i don't know if at this point i really lean towards any of the 3 with wholehearted support. i love nintendo for their first-party games, but as soon as they announced no HD support i was really disappointed. if the revolution doens't cost an arm and a leg it might work for a good second system i guess. i'd like to think that i'd purchase either a ps3 or a 360.

some stuff about the 360 turns me off as well though. microsoft's really rushing the console a bit, and the news that mulitple versions of it could come out in the next few years doesn't make you wanna run out and buy one on launch day. i have no doubt it'll be powerful and their HD support should be pretty strong, but i'm not sure if i'm the biggest xbox supporter. i didn't even play one till '04 actually, when i grew to love my roommate's ninja gaiden. i won't naysay the console enough to make myself look like an ass if i buy one, just that i'm not 100% excited about its upcoming release.

i feel like so far we just don't know enough about the ps3. sure it's gonna be powerful, but i dunno if their gaming network will stand up to microsoft's. i'm also really unimpressed with a lot of sony's decisions lately. if the console's gonna launch at $500, i sure as hell wouldn't buy it too quick. having a blu-ray player could be sweet, but let's face it, the HD-DVD vs. blu-ray battle hasn't even begun yet. i think the best feature of going with a playstation is knowing that you'll have good franchises for it, sorta like nintendo's legacy characters. if you go with the ps3, you at least know you'll have all of sony's best sellers coming soon, which could really drive its sales.

if the revolution drops enough in price or is considerably cheaper than its competitors, i'll strongly consider it. the idea of yet more advanced mario/zelda/f-zero/metroid/donkey kong/pikmin/etc franchises sounds too tasty to pass up. nintendo hasn't yet convinced me of anything with the classic gaming library access they've mentioned so far. i grew up playing a lot of fantastic nintendo games, but that doesn't mean i wanna spend my free time going back and playing 'em all for nostalgia's sake. if i wanted to do that bad enough, i'd invest more time in emulators.

sure i'm growing up a bit more and could maybe get by without any new console at all, but knowing me i won't go that route. it also helps that i feel i'm becoming more and more turned off by PC gaming now that consoles are so advanced. it's funny that i engineered my apartment to enjoy playing PC games on the 50" DLP, and yet i hardly ever use it to play games. a lot of PC games are plenty of fun, but i'll be damned if the instability of most of the games doesn't drive me insane. i always feel artificial pressure to fit in and play the latest junk that's come out, and yet it's so demanding on the hardware that it frustrates me enough to just flip on the cube or ps2 instead. i typically have like 20 minutes of fun with doom 3 or C&C: generals before the system just reboots itself and the monitor won't come back on for another 5 minutes. that kinda shit drives me crazy. i could do a million things to fix that kinda crap, but the problem is i have to spend 2 hours fixing something to play a game for 15 minutes. much easier to just bide your time on the console that never seems to crash.

--j