Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. Grad School: Year Two, Day One. Don't say we didn't warn you.

The first day of class means the last day of being able to sleep in late, but it's only one more year before I get that stinkin' Master's degree and get to work sane, normal programmer's hours, like 10am to 8pm. Meantime, a little fatigue poisoning's not too big a price to pay, right?

Right.

Onward.

At this point, I tend to doubt we'll see the US Gamecubes launch with multiple colors: Nintendo's going to have its hands full filling orders as it is, and they probably figure it's easier to hold color options back for when the market needs a minor boost. Of course, I've always found it hard to believe that there are people who give a damn what color their console is (as long as it's not, y'know, pink or anything) but you and your girlfriend have proved me wrong. All I can say is, silver goes with just about any other color, y'know? My own WEGA will not be terribly offended if it has to color coordinate with a purple console...

'struth! The more I think about the Gamecube and the wonderous games it'll have at launch, the more it seems like Christmas has come early for good little gaming nerds and nerdettes.

The only problem is, I'm not sure that Nintendo will rule the season like they did before. Consider how much hype the PS2 had at this time last year among the general public; savvy gamers have been aware of the Gamecube for some time, and they're excited about it, but the rest of the world seems pretty oblivious about it. Back when the N64 launched, Nintendo got a good bit of bounce from offering "the next Nintendo", but after the N64, I don't think the Nintendo brand name offers quite as much as it used to.

On the other hand, Spaceworld's right in front of us, and Nintendo's almost certainly holding back on their marketing campaign until they can kick it off right, at their own trade show on their own home turf. My greedy palms will be wrapped around one of those funky new GC controllers come November 5th, but I guess we won't know how many other people will feel the same way until we see how Nintendo presents themselves to the world in a few days.

There's little doubt in my mind by this point that Nintendo's learned a lot of lessons from the N64: important things about storage media, keeping 3rd party developers happy, offering the public a wide variety of genres and content... in short, I have little doubt the Gamecube's gonna rock the proverbial casbah, despite my being an "adult gamer".

On the other hand, Tallguy's representative of a sizable group that Nintendo's got to win over: the maturing gamer who felt ignored by the N64's family friendly focus, and who was strongly courted by the newly emergent PSX. From what's been shown so far, the Gamecube has a fair amount of offerings designed to win over errant ex-Nintendo players, but there's no way of knowing if they'll buy it until the system's actually out there and on the market. And the ironic thing is, the main thing that'll determine if the GC succeeds like past consoles will be the extent to which people like Tallguy believe it'll succeed like past consoles.

You're surely not alone in that, based on the reaction from the E3 crowd, and if anything's going to convince people like Tallguy that Nintendo is back, a seriously great new Metroid is just what's called for.

Unfortunately, at this point the game's mostly smoke and mirrors. Nintendo showed about a 15 or 20 second long trailer of the game at E3, but there was only about 6 actual seconds of unique footage there; they literally showed the same exact scenes two or three times, and that was it. Even more disappointing, what was shown looked far more like FMV than actual gameplay footage. A new Metroid is coming, and Nintendo is intent on marketing that fact to people, but it's not near ready yet and likely won't be for a while. Tragic.

Y'know, theoretically the GIA was at one point supposed to be just as much about puzzle games as it was RPGs, but I'll be damned if I have any grasp of the historical detail needed to answer this. I admit my abject failure as a gaming wise-man (if it wasn't obvious enough already) and turn to my readers for help: anyone got any ideas about this?

Luigi's Mansion's a very interesting game, not only in what it is and how it plays, but in how it's divided Nintendo fans. I maintain there's a lot of potential to the game; even just fighting ghosts with a flashlight and vacuum cleaner is a lot of fun, and there's already some evidence that Luigi can do much more than that. We've seen the vacuum turn into a water pump, and standard video game upgrade logic suggests that if a weapon has water capabilities, then fire and lighting might not be far behind. As long as the entire game doesn't take place in the Mansion, (perhaps there are additional caves, or a haunted forest or whatnot) then I think we could have a really interesting, innovative game on our hands.

On the other hand, most of the extensions I was discussing above are simply speculation on my part. What was actually shown at E3 was far more limited, and the almost obsessive level of graphical detail and polish gave many people the impression that Luigi's Mansion was little more than an overgrown tech demo. This could certainly be the case, and we'll just have to wait and see what kind of "real" Mario games Spaceworld produces before we find out if Luigi's destined to be the real star for once, or an eternal sideman appearing in a mere fluke of a game.

Guh? I called up my local EB upon seeing this and found out that the $10 I had put down reserved my jack squat: Fox is right, nobody's taking preorders for the Gamecube yet, and all my $10 had done was reserve me the right to do a real preorder, if and when such a thing every became available. Yeesh.

But again, this isn't that surprising if you assume that the PR department isn't even intending to gear up until Spaceworld, and all the surprises it brings. Until then, there's not much to do except play the waiting game, and dream of shiny new Nintendo consoles.

We've had a topic similar to this in the recent past, and this one also touches on other sensitive areas we've covered recently; ultimately it all comes down to the perceived worth of games as bot an entertainment form and a lifestyle, but I suppose it couldn't hurt too much to revisit things...

Closing Comments:

Ok, there's your topic: to what extent should parents encourage or discourage gaming in their kids? See you tomorrow.

And incidentally, I suppose I should mention that I had originally planned for Friday to be my last day, but while the DA applications are proceeding apace I'm not sure we'd have someone locked in for Monday's column just yet. So I'll be back next Monday, and most likely Tuesday as well, but with a little luck, a week from today, you should be seeing an entirely new era of Double Agent in this here spot.

-Chris Jones, becoming as obsolete as the N64, sadly enough *sniff*