Grandma to Nintendo: "What the hell are you smoking? Hey! That's pretty cool!"

Well this year we found that Mark Felt was the inside source that revealed the corruption of the Nixon Administration. We discovered that Tutankhamun was not in fact murdered in comedic blood sport by Brendon Fraser, but died of a gangrene infection caused by being a clutz. We all cried February when two of my favorite authors, Arthur Miller and Hunter S. Thompson drove the Shark to that big drug orgy in the sky.

Then this happens.

Nintendo held out on telling us all about the controller for The Revolution, a system aptly named for the usually bloody political upheaval that defined the lyrics of The Monkeys. (Note: this may still be a codename for the system, the names "The Imperial Dominator," "The Proletariat," and "N64 Times Ifinity Squared" have not been ruled out.) The secret is secret no longer as Satoru Iwata finally hopped out of his green pipe and jumped on a turtle to show why Nintendo games have so many mushrooms.

The new controller is a remote control / game controller / magic wand / iPod, proving that Harry Potter and Apple marketing campaigns have influenced the deepest realms of Japan. Grandma pushed me away from the computer so she could go to Nintendo's website to get a better look at the damn thing.

"THAT'S a controller?" she asked no one in particular. "How the fuck to you press the- there are no THUMBSTICKS! No thumbsticks! It's like an old school NES directional pad."
"Yeah, but it has motion input, so you can wave it around to move a camera angle, or jump, or hit somebody within the game," I said, feeling wise.
"....I already wave the controller around."
"Yeah, but this time it DOES something."
"I don't know about this thing. Here..." she picked up our handy dandy Adelphia DVR remote and made a swash buckling demonstration. "...If I'm swinging this around, it's moving more of my wrist and my shoulder than I normally have to playing a game."
"So?"
"Arthritis."
"Ah."
"So if they think this is going to attract a larger audience- I mean look at the fucking EyeToy! That was supposed to change gaming- or DDR, or those stupid BONGOS we pass at Gamestop. Do you see me playing any of those? It's not because I don't want to it's because I can't. Physically. I have to try this out somewhere before we get a Revolution- I like Nintendo, I just don't know if I can take this sort of thing."

The controller definitely continues Nintendo's tradition of being innovative, and Grandma likes the idea of taking her frustration out on a game and getting points for it. Nintendo is going to have to let Grandma know how this doesn't exclude folks like her who want to game hard without dishing out an ice cold plate of Rheumatoid.

The keynote speech mentioned older gamers as being a market Nintendo wants to create, just like they've "expanded" the women's market with the DS. (Thanks Joystiq for the heads up on this.) I'm sure all our female OGHC readers will be surprised to find that it was in fact Nintendogs that was your gateway drug into gaming all along (cause it's so CUTE! And girls just LOVE cute things!) Come on Nintendo!! Give us some Metroid Prime sequels!! Give us another dark Zelda! You're a great company, don't DO this to us!


Or prove us wrong. You have a woman turning 70 in a few months that needs you to be as loyal to those like her as they have been to you. Show us the way and we'll help you convince the rest of the world, because right now- they're not biting. People are mentioning the PowerGlove under their breath and glancing the other way.


--More updates coming today, folks!--