Reuniting with an old friend.

Do that to me one more time.

I've always loved video games. The first video game system I ever played was a goofy Coleco Pong game that my dad bought for us back in the '70s. It ran on six C cell batteries, was in black and white and was one solidly-molded toy with the controller knobs built-in. I played that thing to death, even bothering to learn how to play for both players when I had no one to play with me. Yep, I became my own A.I.

So through the years the gaming continued. Next up was the Atari 2600, then a Commodore VIC-20, replaced with the great old Commodore 64, then the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Super Nintendo, the Sony PlayStation and PlayStation 2, and finally the Microsoft Xbox 360. Oh, there was also a GameBoy Advance and a GameCube briefly in there as well.

I was a diehard PlayStation fan for years, but when the original PlayStation 3 debuted at a price of six-hundred smackers, I jumped the ship and started courting Microsoft. And that was pretty much it. You could never convince me to go back to Sony or Nintendo. I didn't care for Nintendo's 64 system, or the GameCube that much, and I wasn't being wowed by Sony's song and dance anymore. So for the past four years, it's been nothing but the 360.

We used to hang out a lot.

A couple years back, my ex-wife gad managed to snag a Nintendo Wii for herself and our kid. This was still when Wiis were hard to get. She thought he'd have a lot of fun with it, but that didn't wind up being the case. I had given him my old PS2, and he loved playing on the 360 as well, that the Wii just didn't have any appeal, and my ex wasn't bowled over by it, either. So I helped her sell the thing on Craigslist and life went on.

That is, until recently, when I kept telling my kid how great the old NES and SNES was and the fantastically fun games that there were on those systems. I scoured eBay and almost bought an NES and then an SNES, but I never got around to it. In the past, I had gone through a nostalgic Atari phase and had bought an old 2600 and a ton of games in one big lot and then was instantly bored by it after five minutes, so I had fears that the same thing might happen again. Maybe the memories were better than the actual experiences.

Tax time rolled around and I filed early this year and got back a nice little bit. Last year, I had to pay a few hundred, so I was happy to actually get some money to play with this time. But what to use it on? And then I started thinking about the Wii. Maybe enough years had passed where they had a good collection of games to try. I had been getting my kid into some simpler games on the Xbox (he's good at the tougher ones, but I was getting nostalgic), and also playing stuff like "Viva Pinata" and really enjoying it.

So I researched the Wii and the games that were now available and figured I'd give it another shot. I love my "Call of Duty" and "Rock Band" and "Gears of War" and all those other things the Xbox has done right, but lately I was feeling like maybe it was a good time to revisit a gaming world which is more about whimsy and having fun and less about brutal competition and blowing everything up. That's not a dig at what the 360 offers; I love all that stuff, but I also remember loving the games I grew up with and all those previous experiences that kept me gaming to this day.

So yesterday I went and bought myself a black Wii and some games, extra controllers, some Nintendo points, and some goofy sports accessories that my son said he would like because his one friend had all those things on his Wii. I set the system up, created my Mii that looks like me and started looking around the Virtual Console. I snagged "Super Mario Bros.," "Donkey Kong Country," and the original "Punch-Out!" Then I added a few more points and bought some other games. This was great! All the classics I wanted, plus a bunch of new games that also turned out to be plenty of fun.

Good times roll.

I was thrilled. My gut feeling that enough time had probably passed for Nintendo to firmly establish the Wii, rather than it just being the toy no one could get their hands on for a while turned out to be correct. It goes real well with the 360, too. I know the limitations of the Wii, so for it I will get games pretty much made for it. All my "Call of Duty" and zombie blasting needs can be covered with the 360, as well as "Rock Band." Christ, I've already spent enough on that, that there's no way I'd get it for two systems, and besides I heard it's kinda gimped on the Wii, anyway.

But it's nice to be back in this fold of fun gaming and silliness. I feel less tense playing the Wii. I really enjoy "Wii Sports Resort" and the Frisbee game where you through your disc to a dog who brings it back. And yeah, that little bit of exercise I'm going to be getting swinging the hell out of the controllers is gonna make me buff, ladies. Awwww yeah.