It felt kind of odd this past Tuesday, not writing about video games. Sure, I’ve theoretically got plenty to write about every week, what with 24, The Office and Veronica Mars, but one of those shows is in an extended rerun period and another has been replaced with a show starring L’il Kim and a bunch of Hoes (and I’m consistently being upstaged when it comes to television recaps, anyway), so I probably should keep with the video game writing. It’s lucrative.

Plus there is never any shortage of video game news that pisses me off.

The big news this week is that trusted sources have all-but-confirmed the coming announcement of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Elite. This will obviously and reportedly be just like the regular version of the Xbox 360 (already three hundred and sixty times better than the original Xbox [Which was X times more powerful than a regular box]) except more elitist. It’s the kind of console that will scoff at you if you wear sweatpants and regularly look down on you for reading digg instead of kottke. It’s so elite that it only drinks foreign beers and feels like anyone who doesn’t drive a manual transmission should be sent to a reeducation camp. (Or just shot.)

It also does some other things.
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Wait! Before you go any further, make sure you’ve read part 1 (Five Things Nintendo Did Right in 2006) and part 2 (Five More Things Nintendo Did Right in 2006) of this article.

Since I’ve started writing about Nintendo, the Wii has continued to dominate in all three major markets. By all accounts it’s still nearly impossible to find on retail shelves and some early estimates have its worldwide sales already at 60% of the total sales of the current “next-generation” market leader, Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

While total worldwide sales are always a bitch to pin down — and sites like this or especially this are hardly reputable sources — the growing trend is hard to miss: Nintendo is doing extremely well with its Wii console.

But all of this success is early success. For all the good moves Nintendo made in the last year, they’ve also made some bad ones. And these mistakes are what separates statements like “The Wii will sell more in its lifetime than the Gamecube” (which is nearly undoubtedly true) from statements like “The Wii will outsell the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 worldwide” (which is impossible to know at this point).

Nintendo’s mistakes, though not as numerous at their successes, are still glaring, and in fact stand out even more in light of the Wii’s early sales success. It’s that whole Tortoise and the Hare scenario — everyone criticizes the Hare for taking that nap, because he was in the lead when he made that mistake. Meanwhile the tortoise clearly made a zillion and a half mistakes in the first 75% of the race — not the least of which was improper footwear — but nobody criticized because well, hey, he’s a tortoise in a race.

For the last decade, Nintendo was the tortoise, lagging behind. With the Wii launch, however, they became the hare. And these mistakes are the equivalent of them leaning against a tree and dozing when they could be sprinting toward the finish line.

The following are a list of the five biggest mistakes Nintendo made in 2006:

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Wait! Before you do anything else, read part one of this series.

I covered a lot of ground last week, but even so I still ended up feeling limited by only listing five things. Part of that is simply because I love to ramble on about this company that I am unabashedly a fan of, but, more than that, I think it was because 2006 will likely go down in one of the more pivotal years in Nintendo’s history. Seriously — it might even be more important than 1985, which was a year that saw the introduction of not only the NES and Super Mario Bros, but also R.O.B the Robot, who would still totally make a list of the coolest robots ever.

It might seem a little presumptuous to be championing a year that, by any reasonable measure, just ended three months ago. I certainly don’t want anyone to think that I’m immediately assuming the Wii will reach NES-levels of success worldwide, because it is beyond too early to make anything resembling that claim. And hell, as important as I think 2006 was and will continue to be for Nintendo moving forward, I doubt it will ever be considered as monumental a year as 1985 was. ’85 was just a good year all around, I think. It’s the kind of year we’re unlikely to ever see again — from Back to the Future to We Are the World to New Coke to me being exactly two years old for at least a day of it, 1985 was one badass year. 2006 will never stand up to that.

But it was a good year for Nintendo! And in addition to the five right moves I outlined last week, there were also five more things they did right in 2006. They’re presented below, in no particular order.

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The early results are in, and they’re looking pretty damn good for Nintendo: their Wii console sold some 436,000 units in the U.S. in January, compared to 294,000 for Microsoft’s XBox 360 and 244,000 for the Playstation 3. Wii Software did well too, with both Wario Ware Smooth Moves and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess charting in the Top 10 titles for the month.

Even more telling than all that data, however, is that it’s three months past launch and it is still impossible to find a Wii. People still line up in front of Best Buys when new shipments are announced, and for the impatient (like me) the only way to get your hands on one is through craigslist scalpers (like I did). I’d compare it to similar sold-out-everywhere phenomena like Tickle-Me-Elmos or that robot pet that blinked and plotted your demise, except for one thing: it’s January.

Consumer chaos, huge line-ups and shipment sell-outs are something that happen over Christmas, not in January. We expect them in December. It’s that wonderful time of year where everyone goes nuts and decides that what their bachelor apartment really needs in a 50″ Plasma Television and so much IKEA furniture that the excess multitools can be melted down into a cube and exhibited in a museum as some sort of post-modern critique of consumerism and giant cubes. Everyone loses their shit in December, and so sales from that month are largely irrelevant. What’s hot in December is in the bargain bin in January, as generally kids wake up and realize that the thing they wanted — whether it was that version of Battleship that actually talked to you or some sort of voice-activated water pistol that attached to your finger — actually really sucks.

But that didn’t happen with the Wii. Their sales in January 2007 were the highest January sales for any console ever.

So how did Nintendo do it? I certainly didn’t think they would. My expectations with the Wii started low, and only got lower as Nintendo seemingly made moves that were, not to put too fine a point on it, really stupid. It’s only twice as powerful as the Gamecube! It can’t output to High Definition! It has a controller that looks like a television remote! They named it “Wii”!

They looked doomed.

And now here we are, with Nintendo for the first time in a decade looking like they might actually have a chance of winning the worldwide ‘war’ for console userbase supremacy. How they did it exactly is anyone’s guess, but here are five moves Nintendo made in 2006 that, in retrospect, seem really brilliant.

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People often talk about the classic love stories of film and fiction. Couples like Bogey and Bacall, Burton and Taylor, Jack and Rose, Butch and Sundance, Gatsby and the Green Light, Kermit and Miss Piggy, and Al Gore and that little pneumatic cart that lifted him high above the stage in An Inconvenient Truth are all enduring examples of the kind of romance that burns brighter than any other light. The kind of romance that defies all odds and makes all involved better. The kind of romance that defines the true meaning behind today, Valentine’s Day.

What people neglect to mention is that great romances aren’t just limited to the world of live action characters and muppets. Video games have for almost two decades been home to couples as much in love as any Hollywood star power couple. Nintendo’s games alone are so mired in the world of romance that the heart has become a near-universal symbol of nothing less than health. The message behind the symbol is clear: in these game characters’ eyes, all you need is love.

What follows is a list of the Top 10 Nintendo Romances of All Time. These are the couples that have loved so hard as to make one wonder if, in fact, they might be more than just the ones and zeroes of binary code.

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