The day has finally come. I’ve completed my two year journey of playing, reviewing and documenting my entire retro video gaming collection here on my Cartridge Corner blog. I started the blog in September 2016 with the Sega Genesis and my collection of games for that system (at the time) and now it’s September 2018 and I just finished documenting my Atari 5200 collection. Everything from the Fairchild Channel F up to the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS has been covered. So what do I blog about now? The answer is anything I want to! I can play any game, any system, any time. I’m no longer bound to a schedule that I had mapped out over the course of two years. I already have such a backlog of games that I haven’t given proper attention including many memorable and important titles in my collection and it’s time to spend some time actually gaming again.
While the focus of my blog as been “retro”, I do occasionally indulge in some modern gaming. When the latest and greatest consoles were announced in the mid 2000s, one could have assumed I would have stuck with my Sony and Nintendo consoles and picked up the PlayStation 3 and the Wii as replacements for my PS2 and Gamecube. Well, you’d be half right. Even though I didn’t own an Xbox until it was already on the way out to make way for the Xbox 360, I for some reason felt compelled to switch allegiances from Sony’s PlayStation franchise, which I had owned the first two versions when they were new, to Microsoft’s even though it meant I would be hedging my bets on the HD DVD format beating out the Blu-ray. Obviously, in hindsight, that wasn’t the correct choice from a DVD perspective but the Xbox 360 was still a worthy competitor to the PS3, in spite of the red-ring of death issue that plagued the console. I was a victim of the red-ring so there was a period I was without my 360 while Microsoft was repairing it. I never seriously considered owning a PS3 as long as I had a 360 as I just felt the games available were too similar and I didn’t feel like I needed a Blu-Ray player that badly in order to buy it just for that. However, Nintendo’s newest console, the Wii, certainly intrigued me.
The Nintendo Wii, the hottest “toy” for the Christmas of 2006, was certainly hyped up as something no one had ever seen before. It was going to focus heavily on the newest innovation, ,motion controls, and would be the driving force in wanting to own one for many who were unsuccessfully able to find a Wii on store shelves that holiday season. From my perspective, I was honestly excited by the idea of motion controlled video games as I had no idea how they would work but was eager to figure out how. “Wii Sports” was the perfect game to exhibit this new control scheme and wound up being a system seller, along with “Wii Fit” in a way that Nintendo hadn’t see since “Super Mario 64”. My own ability to procure a Wii could be attributed to an innovative internet search engine that notified me when it came into stock at any of the major online retailers. If my memory serves me correctly, I was able to pick it up through Sam’s Club’s as soon as the notification came through that it was in stock there and had it shipped to my house in time for Christmas. I played both the Xbox 360 and Wii quite often from 2006-2009 until my own children were born. Both consoles offered different style of games, which was the point of owning both systems in the first place. Even now, twelve years after the Wii’s release, my now elementary aged children still play the Wii, which has been set up in our family room for 12 years, longer than any console I’ve ever owned.
As much as I wanted a Wii in 2006, I wasn’t that interested in Nintendo’s follow-up, the Wii U, when it was released in 2012. Without doing any research, my initial thought was that it was a pseudo-console that would only extend the life of the Wii. I figured it was just another 32X, the add-on that extended the life of the Genesis back in the 90s. Was it just an add-on that gave the aging system better graphical content and allowed the Wii to compete with the upcoming PlayStation 4 and Xbox One? Of course, I was wrong, and the Wii U was its own console with a misleading name, so I eventually bought one for the family as an upgrade to the Wii once my own children showed an interest in family style gaming. We’ve spent plenty of time playing hotly contested games of “Mario Kart 8”, as well as two player co-op games of “New Super Mario Bros. U” & “Super Mario 3D World”, a game that my 7 year old daughter, Clara, has clearly surpassed my abilities in.
Because this is a retro-gaming blog and I don’t consider the Xbox 360 or the Nintendo Wii to be “retro” yet, I am not going to spend a lot of time here on either console but I did want to quickly discuss the fact that I own them, played them and (sort of) collect for them. I have a small collection of HD DVD’s for my failed 360 add-on as well and the Wii and Wii U games continue to get playtime in my house.
Currently in my collection:
Xbox 360 – console complete in box with 3 controllers, 1 head set, 1 extra hard drive from my broken 360 & 1 HD DVD unit
The games I have for my Xbox 360 are:
- Bioshock
- College Hoops 2K7
- F.E.A.R.
- Fight Night Round 3
- Gear of War
- Grand Theft Auto 4
- Guitar Hero 2 (w/ guitar)
- Guitar Hero 3
- Madden ’09
- Mass Effect
- NCAA Football ’07
- NCAA Football ’09
- Pinball Hall of Fame – Williams Collection
- Rock Band
- Rock Band 2 (complete w/ guitar, mic, drums)
Nintendo Wii – white console complete in box with 3 controllers, 2 nunchucks & Wii Sports attachments (baseball bat, golf club, tennis racket)
The games I have for my Wii are:
- EA Sports Active (w/ exercise band)
- Just Dance 2016
- Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
- Madden ’08
- Punch Out
- Super Mario Galaxy
- Super Paper Mario
- Wario Ware Smooth Moves
- Wii Fit (w/ board)
- Wii Play (bundle w/ controller)
- Wii Sports
- Wii Sports Resort (bundle w/ controller)
Nintendo Wii U – black console complete in box bundled with Mario Kart 8, 1 controller and 2 racing wheels
The games I have for my Wii U are:
- Mighty No. 9
- New Super Mario Bros. U
- Rabbids Land
- Super Mario 3D World
Cartridge Corner 