Peter Nowak: Videogame revolution leaves Nintendo behind

It wasn't so long ago that Super Mario was king. Now, he's looking like more of a court jester.

For those of us who grew up on Nintendo, seeing the company slowly spiral into irrelevance is painful. It's kind of like watching your favourite singer get old, desperately trying to hold on while losing his hair and voice, seemingly ambivalent that his best days are long past.

But that's Nintendo for you: the Robert Plant of the videogame world.

The company's next-generation game console - codenamed "Revolution", unveiled this week at the E3 show in Los Angeles - is further proof that Nintendo has lost touch with what gamers want.

The Japanese company actually started as a playing-card manufacturer way back in 1933, and it wasn't until 1981 that it hit the big time with the coin-operated arcade classic Donkey Kong.

In 1985, the Nintendo Entertainment System home gaming console was a smash hit, with games such as Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros, and it blew away competing systems from Atari, Colecovision and the like.

And so Nintendo reigned supreme until 1988, when arcade rival Sega got in on the home action with its Master System. For pretty well the next decade it was a two-horse race, with Nintendo leading all the way.

I was a Sega aficionado in those days, a fact that earned me considerable ridicule from my Nintendo-brainwashed schoolmates, who derisively called me the "Sega Kid". I guess the idea of a hedgehog running round collecting rings just seemed more appealing than an Italian plumber beating up mushrooms and turtles.

It's also how I developed a habit of rooting for the underdog. A new videogame war started in 1995 when Sony debuted the PlayStation, making it a three-way fight. Sega was the first casualty - in 2001, the company announced it was sticking to software.

With Sega gone, I naturally gravitated toward my former anathema and new underdog, Nintendo.

And oh, what happy days those were. Nintendo churned out the hits - fun and innovative games such as GoldenEye, Donkey Kong 64 and Rogue Squadron. I still maintain those titles were better than anything found on the PlayStation.

Nevertheless, Sony's offering established a solid foothold with an older audience. But then came the current crop of consoles, and that's where things started to go sour for Nintendo.

Microsoft got involved and changed the rules by introducing a whole slew of new features: its Xbox would have a hard drive, multiple controller slots, internet connectivity, and play CDs and DVDs. Microsoft didn't just want a games machine, it wanted a multimedia device.

Sony's PlayStation 2 beat the Xbox to market by nearly two years without most of those features built in, but the company wisely decided to leave open the option of adding them later.

Nintendo, meanwhile, stuck to its guns and produced a basic, games-only device, the Gamecube. It was a cute box with great graphics, but that was about it. It had an optional internet adapter, but it was clearly an afterthought. Unlike its rivals, it had no DVD player and needed memory cards.

Software developers knew it was weak and the Gamecube consequently had the worst selection of games for the general gaming audience, thus relegating it to catering for young children. It's no surprise, then, that Nintendo is now third in the console world.

What is shocking is that the company took the same tack with its recent GameBoy DS. For 16 years, Nintendo could do no wrong in the portable gaming area, completely owning it with the GameBoy. But when competition in the form of Sony's PSP came along, Nintendo froze up again.

The PSP boasts not just games, but also the ability to play and store movies and MP3s, as well as internet connectivity.

Nintendo's DS, meanwhile, has a nice touch screen and the ability to play wirelessly with friends who are nearby. Those are nifty features, but lag behind what's going on with other media devices. As for its newly announced GameBoy Micro, it's a backwards case of less, not more.

Which brings us to the ironically named Revolution. Nintendo announced at E3 that this new home console will be small with great graphics, a DVD player and wireless internet connectivity. Hmmm. Aside from the wireless part, the new Nintendo console sounds much like ... what the old console should have been, with features only about five years too late.

And, oh yes - the Revolution isn't available until some time next year, definitely behind the new Xbox and probably after the PlayStation 3. By then it may be too late for Nintendo.

Perhaps it's unfair to judge a product that's not even out yet, but given Nintendo's track record over the past decade, and its reluctance to get with the times, it's hard to see the company regaining its edge.

Nintendo will probably end up like Sega, exiting the console manufacturing business. Man, do I wish Robert Plant would retire.