Wii Are The Champions?

It’s been two whole years since the Xbox 360 debuted, and to date the extent of my experience with the machine is fiddling through the launch games and a few songs in Guitar Hero II. I’ve seen a PS3 in the raw twice. My former roommate has a Wii, which we played for two weeks and promptly forgot. If you call this a war, I’m either a conscientious objector, or I live under a rock. Maybe both.

But despite the fact I’m a rock-living console pacifist, my gaming life has still been affected by the echoes this generation has sent across the industry. Suddenly, one console manufacturer has taken notice of 51 percent of the world, another found a way to turn its machine into an MMOG, and yet another may have found a way to repair its wax-and-feather wings on its journey to the high price point Sun. For the first time, I can’t assume the PC version is superior, and in the case of a few of this year’s new releases, it definitely wasn’t.

Assassin’s Creed, BioShock, Halo 3, Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4. This was the Year of the Console. Maybe the first of many. I know this year, maybe the first of many, was the year I found myself coveting my neighbor’s games. This was the year I promised myself an HDTV with a 360 to match – as soon as I pay off the laptop burning a hole in my credit card balance.

This week, two years after the first shot was fired, we present to you issue 127, “Wii Are The Champions,” news from the console war front. Spanner talks about reduction ad nauseum in “Slimlining,” Christina Gonzalez draws from personal experience to bring you a story about how consoles affect the lives of disabled people everywhere, Kyle Orland checks in on the high-definition movie war, Matthew Sakey reminds us there’s still a very big problem in Redmond and Dominic Davies breaks stride to tell us who’s hot in the comic book world. You’ll find that and more in this week’s issue of The Escapist!

Yours,