Nintendo Okie

Guitar Hero, Rock Band, DJ Hero and now Tony Hawk Ride; if you are anything like me, you are running out of room for all of these plastic peripherals.  I already have a hall closet devoted to video game controllers, but now a separate bedroom closet has to be used to hold my Rock Band and Guitar Hero instruments.  I made a rule to not buy anymore colossal controllers, but now DJ Hero and Tony Hawk Ride have been released, and their price tags are almost as big as the boxes they come in.

I wasn’t really interested in the two games until I was watching some off-screen game play for Tony Hawk Ride.  Half-way through the video I realized the Ride controller was what I always wanted; an arcade machine in my own home.  Think about it, what were the arcade machines you always played in the arcade?  You played that X-men beat’em up sure, but also Time Crisis, Cruisin’ World and all those others that you had to pay more than a dollar for.  Now with games like Tony Hawk Ride and DJ Hero, we can get that arcade experience at home without waiting in line or worrying about the bratty kid in front of you breaking the controller.

Honestly, this wave of home arcade experiences is long overdue.  Unless you live in Japan, you probably haven’t been to an arcade that doesn’t have an overgrown rodent problem in a long time.  The classic arcades of my generation have all but died out now.  I shudder to think about younger generations that have never felt the rush of anticipation from waiting in line to play Mortal Kombat 2. (ed. Note: Or Street Fighter II) Sadly, those days are long gone, but perhaps with services like Xbox live and these plastic peripherals, we will be able to preserve a small taste of the arcade experience in our homes.

The special controllers aren’t anything new either.  Think back to some of the early home consoles.  The Atari 5200 had a track ball controller, the Sega Master System had a pair of 3D glasses and the NES had the Zapper, you could fill a garage with these old school controllers.  Some people do.  Now that video games are one of the major players in the entertainment market, we are starting to see a new influx of these controllers spring up on stores shelves.   The question is, will it last?

I worry that games like Rock Band and Tony Hawk Ride will follow in the footsteps of their older arcade brethren and become all but extinct.  Hopefully miniscule issues like storage space won’t cripple this new home arcade experience before it has an opportunity to show its potential.  Like I said before, I only have so many closets.  So the next time I am shocked by the price tag on a Tony Hawk Ride or a Guitar Hero bundle, I am going to remind myself that it is cheaper than the room full of arcade machines I wanted as a kid.