Vidya Thoughts

Note: This post is by my brother Drew. He’ll have his own byline here eventually, but for the time being this will have to do.

It’s the winter of 2006 in Southern Illinois, a hellish wasteland that might be familiar to you if you’ve ever stood naked in front of a box fan set to its highest setting while simultaneously holding ice cubes. I, a young boy who was at the time slowly growing into a young man, can think of little else besides Nintendo’s newest console: The Wii.

For years I languished as a stalwart of Nintendo’s Gamecube, clinging to my twice annual releases in the same way that Moses probably (allegedly?) clung to the two (or three?) stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments; Thou shalt play Super Smash Bros. Melee a lot and like it was my directive from God. 

The Wii would be different, I thought, and on Christmas I was sure to find out just how different it would be.

As I went through the parentally mandated dramatic buildup to the opening of my premiere present (“Plastic covers for Wii Remotes? What could this mean?!”), all I could think about was what I would do first with my new console.

Would I play Metal Slug Anthology and blaze a trail through some of gaming’s greatest arcade classics? Would I bloody some blades and shatter some shields in the long-awaited Twilight Princess? Would I play whatever shovelware my parents inevitably got my younger brother so that he didn’t feel left out of the excitement? These were silly questions, of course, because there was exactly one thing to do with a new Wii in 2006: It was time to go bowling, cousin.

Wii Sports is a simple experience; at the time, it felt profound. A world of possibilities unfolded in my mind with every swing of my virtual tennis racket and every imaginary home run I launched into the upper deck. For as novel as the Wii was, it was hardly the first piece of hardware to capture my imagination in this way. 

Ten years before Wii Sports, Mario’s polygonal face appeared to me in a military commissary like God probably (allegedly?) appeared before his believers in the Old Testament. Ten years before that? Mario’s pixelated face said to the world, “Let there be side-scrolling platformers!” And before that? I don’t know; I’m not that old! I’m sure someone got aroused by a Pong machine once or twice, or maybe they found Jesus in a Magnavox Odyssey.

This was the cycle as it was for many generations: A big bang of a fireworks display followed by years of acceptable but nonetheless whelming firecrackers being flung into the wind. The cycle as it is now is all sizzle and no spark; new hardware doesn’t mean anything! When I bought an Xbox Series X, I turned it on and played my Xbox One copy of Control. Where’s the beef, Phil? When I bought my Switch, I played my Wii U copy of Breath of the Wild. Where’s the beef, Furukawa? When I bought my PlayStation 5, I played Astro’s Playroom.

Friends, we have the beef!

Astro’s Playroom made no bones about its objective: Behold the unyielding vigor of the PlayStation brand. The game and its titular little robot pals celebrated everything from heroes and villains of PlayStation’s past (Nathan Drake! Wander! Ape Escape Guy!) to the startup chimes of every console that preceded the PS5. This reverie served a couple of purposes.

First and most obviously, it was fanservice slop (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). Second and, well, relatively easy to parse, it created in the player the idea that Sony’s hardware is and has always been special. 

So what qualified this new spaceship-looking blight on my living room to join the hallowed ranks of PlayStations One through 4? Astro was keen to let you know just that!

Picking just one single moment from Astro’s Playroom that best exemplifies the potential of the hardware it was released on (and the controller it was released with) is next to impossible.

Should I write at length about the segment in which Astro transforms into a spring-operated, hopping robot whose every compression you can feel thanks to the DualSense’s haptic feedback? What about when you pick up a bow and arrow and genuinely feel the nuance of each and every shot? Perhaps something mundane, like walking around a metal floor and sensing every pitter patter like you are really in the room hanging out with the little guy? 

In isolation, there’s not much to say about these moments; in totality, they take me back to my grandmother’s basement when I lapped up every moment with Wii Sports like a mewling kitten who found milk abandoned on the coffee table. 

Astro’s Playroom was special because it made your new purchase, this luxurious, unsightly behemoth that you spent your hard-earned money to acquire, feel special. And how often is that the case anymore? After the 3D revolution reached the console market, it became easy to see new systems as purely transactional, an agreement reached with Microsoft, Nintendo, or Sony that allowed you to continue playing their software for the next 5-10 years. 

The platforms themselves were interchangeable; the platforms themselves became little more than fleeting occupants of shelf space to be succeeded once their technology was deemed obsolete. I’ve bought and sold so many new consoles since I got a Wii in 2006 and the once sacred act of opening their respective boxes became as humdrum as replacing the registration tags on my vehicle. This industry used to feel magical. I used to believe that something amazing was around every corner. Astro’s Playroom made me believe again.

Truthfully, I knew that the feeling was temporary. The joy I felt upon first playing Wii Sports evaporated over the course of a handful of years once I realized that Nintendo’s latest system was just a repository for the same games I had on the Gamecube but with the added benefits of slight physical activity and the knowledge that more than two other people in the world were sharing in its experiences. The wonder of Super Mario 64 dissipated as game after game failed to live up to its genre-defining prowess (not to mention technical performance). Super Mario Bros. changed the landscape irrevocably, but, again, its many imitators showed that it was more of a singular act of brilliance than a sign of everything to come. And before my time, I’m sure Pong players discovered real tennis and Odyssey owners discovered pornography. 

Even Astro could only sustain me for so long; at this point, it’s pretty clear that most of its accomplishments haven’t merited much more than a cursory acknowledgement from other developers working with the PlayStation 5. 

Optimism always comes packaged with an expiration date, or at least a “Sell By” recommendation. All the same, I wouldn’t trade the unbridled hope, as temporary as it may be, for anything. The aforementioned games inspired my passion for the industry, and every so often that passion needs to be stoked. I feared that console manufacturers, understanding that this pastime is going nowhere any time soon, reached the logical conclusion that they didn’t need an elaborate display to bring us into the fold. And they probably have!

But, just this one time in the Year of Our (Dark) Lord 2020, PlayStation decided to try to rekindle the flames that have fueled this hobby for generations, and in doing so kept me going for at least another 5-10 years.