Rookie of the Year: Raiders of the Lost Wii

The following is the latest in a series of journal entries chronicling the author’s descent into next-gen gaming degeneracy, from getting his first television in years to trying to figure out why the @$@‚$)@ you need two @$@‚$)@ directional pads just to walk down a @$@‚$)@ hallway.

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Under the layers of dust and the crust of dried battery fluid, it was still there.

My Wii.

Digging it out, I became an adventuring archaeologist, studying my own life, precariously piecing together my day-to-day existence – circa 2007 – using only the scattered remnants of a left-for-dead videogame console as evidence of a time long since passed.

I cracked open the backs of my Wiimotes, made near-hazardous material by leaky Duracells. For the first time in months, I calibrated my sensor bar, which had been sitting steadfast on my TV stand, waiting in silence for a sign it still mattered, that maybe I’d magically start playing Wii Sports again with my ex-fiancée’s brother.

[pullquote]I haven’t abandoned Skyward Sword. I plan to play it some more before my Wiimotes crust up again[/pullquote]

I haven’t spoken to my ex-fiancée’s brother, or to my ex-fiancée for that matter, in years.

Soon I was slipping a brand-new rubber shell around an old Wiimote, turning it into something called a Motion Plus, and watching an explanation video with female hands manipulating the joystick as if they were slipping on a condom.

Back then, I was sharing a standard def, hand-me-down television in a ratty Hoboken railroad apartment, stealing away to play Metroid Prime on a donated chaise lounge when I was home alone or when the ex was through watching Ugly Betty.

Now I’ve graduated to my own setup. I play Xbox and iPad games – from the comfort of an actual couch – and 2007 sometimes seems like a bad joke.

Still, I can recall those halcyon days of the mid-’80s when my NES was a gateway to another world, and two decades later when the Wii was not just about nostalgia but old classics made new again.

I expected the same from Skyward Sword.

So I washed out the battery compartments on my Wiimotes, followed the Hand Lady’s erotically-suggestive setup instructions, and I began to play.

I’m not a kid anymore. I’m not even the man I was five years ago, or two. But I’m still a Zelda fan, so I was willing to look past the endless cutscenes, the standard-def graphics that just look blurry and the overall lightweight, childish feel of the game.

The old Zelda learning curve was still there – I’ll never forget desperately trying to catch a fish in Twilight Princess – and I stumbled around SkyTown or whatever it’s called for a while before I got the hang of it.

I even moved my coffee table for unobstructed gaming in my living room. I slashed and poked and raised my sword and leapt and swung and swirled and dashed. I somehow won a Loftwing race, and made my way down to the surface world where I learned to dowse and shoot a slingshot.

I wasn’t exactly having fun, but I saved some cuddly toy of a creature stuck in a tree and won passage into my first dungeon, where I finally came across some real puzzles, swimming and climbing my way through tucked-away portals and unlocking doors to new challenges.

Perhaps I’d ultimately found the next great game to consume my free time, to thrill me with its new spin on a familiar, comforting theme.

Then a funny thing happened. A new iPad arrived, and later an Apple TV. And I ordered tickets for Broadway shows, and concerts, and ballgames, and conventions.

These days, my gateways are plane tickets and tablets, not a little man in a green suit with an enchanted sword and a weak wooden shield – and I don’t need to force myself to get excited by them, to roll my eyes or clench my jaw through unsatisfying scenes in anticipation of good ones.

I also thought of Skyrim, and Fable II, and how immersed I was in them from the beginning – I’m finished with both, so they’ve now become artifacts of my gaming past, too – and how I didn’t need to make concessions for them in my mind, how I didn’t need to reach back into the hidden recesses of my memory for that unconditional love that still lingers from childhood.

I do see the inklings of something that was once great and powerful in Skyward Sword, but with those more recent games, I didn’t need to give them the benefit of the doubt at every turn.

I didn’t need to make any more excuses for a relationship that’s stuck in a rut, or one that’s really been over for longer than I cared to admit.

Still, though it’s as if I’m being driven away by booby-trapped walls, snake pits and a giant, rolling boulder, it’s too early yet to call this a breakup. I haven’t abandoned Skyward Sword. I plan to play it some more before my Wiimotes crust up again. And though the coffee table has already returned to its usual place, perhaps I’ll slide it over after I finish this column, and you’ll be reading in this space two weeks from now about the moment it finally clicked.

I’m hoping that happens. But I also know that sometimes it doesn’t.

I left Hoboken and I haven’t looked back.

I tried looking back at my Wii, and I all but turned to stone.

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Matt Marrone upgraded his life by moving to Astoria, New York, the second awesomest place on Earth after Disney World. You can follow him on Twitter @thebigm.