I'm a member of "Generation Nintendo," a bunch of kids who lived a chunk of their childhoods through guys like Mario and Link. Sadly, our generation is growing up.
This week is the launch of "The Legend of Zelda: Windwalker," Link's highly anticipated first appearance on the Gamecube. Sadly, Link is younger than ever and looks uncannily like a green bean. While kids of Generation Nintendo are going to bars and trying to get laid, Link is on a pure-hearted quest to save his sister.
Some old-school gamers will undoubtedly enjoy the new Zelda, but others might decide it's time to throw in the towel. Nintendo would have us believe that video games are only for kids with hands small enough to hold those tiny controllers. Fortunately for the aging Nintendo Generation, there's still hope as game manufacturers are going to extremes to appease our demographic.
While I was at Samedi Gras (the Saturday before Mardi Gras) this year, Bourbon Street was packed wall-to-wall with slightly inebriated guys chanting "show your [whatever]" and accommodating girls. A handful of those girls weren't drunken college students, but highly trained professional biscuits who were all about promoting a video game called Primal - coming soon for the Playstation 2.
Primal will combine a Buffy-esque Hollywood script with an outrageous fantasy environment and intensely gory fighting. Of course, nobody on Bourbon Street cared about this. They simply gawked at the Primal girls and collected Primal beads that they would later trade for a show. That's the Mardi Gras way.
Flash forward to Spring Break, South Padre. You'll find me in the club, Tequila Frog's. A girl wearing a tight black tank top that said, "The Guy Game" bumped into me. I asked her about it, and she told me that it was coming this winter for Playstation 2, and that it combined You Don't Know Jack style game play with elements of Street Smarts and The Man Show. "Sounds cool," I said, thinking I'd probably never play it.
Five minutes later, the DJ was playing 50 Cent again, and the girl was on the stage with three more "Guy Game girls." Topless. Grinding to the chant, "Go shorty, it's your birthday." At that point I realized that I would probably buy the game.
As I was attempting to get my freak on with the girls on the dance floor, a woman approached me and asked me if she could ask me a few questions for a video game. She wasn't a Playmate or a stripper or anything, but I agreed because I'm all about video games.
I assumed it was marketing research, but it wound up being questions about whether or not I was getting any action and what kind of stuff girls will do for Mardi Gras beads.
It wasn't marketing research; they were filming for the game. That means I'll be making my first appearance in a video game since I appeared as a koopa troopa in Mario 3.
The Guy Game is onto something. The lost children of Generation Nintendo have grown up, and now they're a bunch of horny young adults who demand something sexier than Link.
Link doesn't need to throw away his morality and start going topless in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Booty Call. Nintendo simply needs to realize that without the themes of the classics, the old school gamers will divert their short attention spans to games with bigger boobs.
Tim Agne is an old school gamer with Mardi Gras beads. Reach him at tim.agne@asu.edu.
