A Nintendo Fanboy’s Relapse

It came at me through the television: Mario and Luigi, four-player mode, new power-ups, the whole familiar geography of mushrooms and goombas and secret exits. New Super Mario Bros. Wii. And just like that, something in my brain lit up that had been dark for years.

I had convinced myself I didn’t care anymore. Next-generation hardware, specs, frame rates—none of it had moved me in ages. Then this happened. The memories arrived all at once: Super Mario World, Pokémon, Secret of Mana, The Legend of Zelda. Just saying those titles out loud gives me a physical reaction. Shigeru Miyamoto has been responsible for more of my happiness than most human beings I know, and I think it’s time I acknowledged that properly.

So I got a Wii. I grabbed Sandra, pressed one of those strange elongated vibrating controllers into her hand, and together we jumped and laughed and shoved each other through levels packed with jokes and hidden passages and the specific kind of joy that only Nintendo seems to understand. Mario in quasi-2D, exactly as it should be. Yoshi shows up. I may have shouted.

The question now is what else this white box has to offer. There’s a whole library out there—discs, WiiWare, Virtual Console—and I have absolutely no roadmap. Somewhere in there must be the next thing that lights up the same circuits. I’ll find it.