5 Ways We Know Nintendo Has Lost Its Mind

5 They're About to Make Dick History

Take a good long look at the following screenshot from their presentation. Take your time and really savor it, taking in every pixel as if each represented a single bite of a home-cooked meal before a five-year prison sentence:

That is the last time you will ever see that screen without it being covered in dicks. I'm not speaking metaphorically, and I'm not using "dicks" as another way of saying "rude people." I'm talking about penises.

Nintendo has decided that their console not only has to be a social tool, but also auto logs you the second you turn on the machine. And even though that's not what I'm looking for in a gaming system, I can handle that to a certain extent. It will have your family, friends and gaming acquaintances all in one group so you can see who's online and what game they're playing. But it also adds complete strangers who have the ability to not only text you, but also draw pictures. For a quick example of how that turns out, find any drawing game anywhere online and join any group of people from any culture or socioeconomic class you can think of for just 10 minutes.

How it turns out is dicks. Lots and lots of dicks. And you will see them with 100 percent certainty. But with this new system, we have finally encountered, for the first time in human history, a situation in which a lack of dicks on your welcome screen represents something far worse than being saturated by them:

Dick admins. Since the Nintendo U will be automatically social, it means that your screen will be auto-populated by little kids and those who are easily offended. So in order to curb the massive volume of cartoon anal sex floating around in text balloons, it means they're going to have to include a "Report Player" button. And just like in every other social game on the planet, it will be some poor bastard's job to moderate and ban players who dick-bomb people's living rooms, unless Nintendo has invented some sort of high-tech dick recognition software to help automate the process.

That's bad news for people like me who looked forward to drawing massive erections in my text bubble and then positioning it over my friend's head so it looks like he's dreaming of dicks. Because now if I do that, some 6-year-old kid from Idaho is going to see it, and I'll risk losing my account. On the machine that I just bought -- that I have no intention of ever playing with a random stranger as long as I live.

I touched on this in my Diablo III article, but that means that for the first time in gaming history, the people who make the games are controlling how you play them. Even on single-player titles. And I'm not fucking OK with that.

But maybe I'm just overreacting. Surely the people who created this system know what they're doing:

Wait, what? Did that motherfucker just say, "The purpose of Miiverse is to add ... a new level of empathy between players"? Have these people ever played an online game in their lives? It could be that the word "empathy" is just one of those words that gets mixed up in translation from Japanese to English. Maybe they meant "racism." Because that's far more seated in reality than the bullshit they're just making up as they go along. Which actually brings me to the point I hate the most ...

4 They've Decided Games Should Be Facebook

When did the marketing departments from every technology company in existence get together and decide that we as a society want constant communication, every second of the day, from every device we own? Was it the same people who decided that we wanted everything that ran on electricity to play MP3s?

The problem is that marketing people are like that old cartoon gag where one fisherman catches a fish, and then 50 other guys swarm in and cast their lines exactly where he was fishing. How goddamn insane or codependent do you have to be to demand that everything you own gives you the ability to communicate with others?

This isn't a matter of personal preference here, and it has almost nothing to do with the fact that I barely tolerate mortals. I mean "people." Because I am mortal just like the rest of you. But the reason that matters is because Nintendo looked at Facebook and Twitter and thought, "People are really into this whole social networking thing. Let's make our video game console do that."

And then they did. They integrated it into the console itself, forcing you to constantly interact with others, but they also made it so that you can (and motherfucking will) receive texts in the game that you're trying to concentrate on. Even the single-player ones. Now, I totally understand and respect the fact that there are loads of people out there who would love this feature. And even I, to a certain extent, could find rare, occasional uses for them. But to those people who don't understand why this is such a big deal to a very large portion of the gaming audience, let me explain this to you as gently and succinctly as I can: We just want you to shut the fuck up so we can concentrate. When you talk to most of us while we're trying to play a game, we're picturing ourselves shooting you in your goddamn face.

I'm not letting the other game companies off the hook here -- I don't doubt that their new systems will have even more of this shit (only with Kinect, you'll have real-time video of strangers' cocks popping up on your screen). What all of them are failing to realize is the reason why texting became so popular in the first place: It decreases the amount of interaction you have with people. It eliminated long, boring conversations, loaded with filler and rambling. It allowed the recipient to respond whenever they had time, or to not respond at all, no harm done. Now we have a perfect setup for what every Wii U owner is destined to hear: "Why are you ignoring me? I know you can answer. I know you're not doing anything important because I can see you playing a game."

Let's face it, this system is set up for a very lonely, friendless type of person. Because if you do have friends, and you're choosing to play a game instead of hanging out with them, it means you want some uninterrupted alone time. So the only personality this system appeals to is people who typically make most of their friends online, through games.

And if you think I'm exaggerating that social point, here's a quote from the man himself: "It's a real-time social window that opens up right as you're playing." Fuck every last second of that.

3 They Think People Love Buying Worse Versions of Shit They Already Have

When the following image showed up on my screen, I had to pause the video and spin a top to make sure my actual body wasn't on a transatlantic passenger jet:

Oh, snap! That's fucking Batman: Arkham City, baby! One of the most beloved games that ... has been out for every other system for so long that you can now find it in the bargain bin for less than $40. Keep in mind that the Wii U is projected to come out "around the holidays," as stated at the presentation. Which means that if Arkham City is ready to go on the day the console is released, the game will be over a year old.

But it's not enough that they're releasing a title that everyone in the free world has already played. They had to do this to it:

That's not the game. The actual game is still happening up on your TV. This is just how you switch weapons. By taking your eyes off of the action and fumbling around with a touch screen embedded in your gigantic controller. Because goddamnit, they made that touch screen controller, and you are goddamn well going to use it. But, hey, at least you can steer your batarang, which I'm sure will make it totally worth the money.

I probably shouldn't pick on just Batman. I'll admit, I'm as biased as any person on that subject because I'm one of like three people on the entire site who couldn't give a fraction of a fuck about Batman or that whole universe.

Luckily, they gave us plenty of other already-released titles to make fun of. Like Tank! Tank! Tank! -- an arcade game that's been around since 2009 and looks like it was constructed out of chewed candy. Or Mass Effect 3:

"But that game just came out in March -- it's not that old," some of you are saying with your stupid, unthinking heads. That's true, and in that month alone, it sold 3.5 million copies. When the Wii U comes out, the game will be about 8 months old, meaning that it's already made the rounds, putting it balls deep into the category of "Buy it used for $30" or "Rent it for the weekend." Not "Buy it new for full price."

2 They Think Basic Button Presses Should Be a Game-Stopping Clusterfuck

I need you to think of a very specific game for a second, so hopefully you've played it. Just kidding -- I need you to think of every first-person shooter you've played in the past 15 years. When you needed to switch weapons, what did you do? Most of you said, "Press a direction on the D-pad." A few said, "Press the left or right button (or trigger)." The point is that you pressed one button, and booyah: new weapon.

Looking at that Batman example I mentioned a few points ago, I will concede that this is maybe what they were going for. It may be a pause-screen moment where he's using the touch pad to load up his batpants, and I'm fine with that. The same can't be said for the Wii U's horror title ZombiU.

See the game screen behind that gargantuan controller? That's the game, still going on while he's fucking around with the game pad, trying to loot a corpse and select his weapon. What you can't tell from the picture, but totally can by watching this video, is that the whole time, there is a zombie trying to (and does) bust down the door.

Why is that important? Because it means that the act of navigating a menu in order to change weapons is now a part of the game's survival strategy. Not the story -- not the aiming -- not running or stealth or strategic avoidance. A goddamn menu. They took what used to be "Press a direction on the control pad" and introduced false difficulty by making it harder to perform the basic functions of the fucking game. How's that for an immersion breaker? "You're not being chased by zombies. You're controlling a computer that is rendering virtual enemies. Quick, navigate your menu!"

Or how about padding the difficulty by forcing you to take your eyes completely off of the game while you try to enter numbers into a keypad in order to get a door open? Don't worry, they have that covered!

By the way, they call that "door hacking" -- no joke.

When gamers say we're tired of games being too easy, we didn't mean that we wanted them to come into our houses and cover up our monitors while we're trying to play.

I didn't add that text -- that's the game telling you to stop what you're doing and look down at your controller. It's a cheap-ass way of faking tension by getting you to concentrate on another screen while a zombie pops out on the one you've turned away from. It's their version of the big brother who goes, "Hey, what's that over there?" And then when you look away, he gives you a wedgie.

But that's far from the worst use of this new controller. Nintendo haters are going to full on masturbate when they see this ...

1 They've Invented a Controller That Punishes Everyone for Its Own Existence

One of the biggest complaints from potential customers over the last year was the fact that this system would only come with one of those hand-dwarfing, gravity generating touch screen controllers. In response, Nintendo started hyping what they're calling "asymmetric gaming," which they explain as two people playing the same game, but experiencing two different things. A perfect example of how this works is in the pants-shittingly boring game NintendoLand (Luigi's Ghost Mansion section).

The guy with the game pad is the ghost. The other four characters have Wii remotes. And you kill the ghost by shining a light on him. The stroke victims who are forced to play this piece of shit as part of their hand/eye coordination exercises will note that the ghost can see everyone on his game pad screen, while the rest of the players can only see each other. That's what it produces when it's properly used: a coma-inducing turd that not even dogs would roll in.

When it's bad, it's really bad. Like in Super Mario Bros. U, where the person who picked the touch screen pad will basically sit with his thumb up his ass while four of his friends play the actual game with Wii remotes. Because -- and I'm not joking about this -- his entire role is to touch the pad on his controller, and lay out occasional bricks for the other players to jump on. No, seriously, look:

And though another title they showed, Rayman Legends, actually looks pretty fun, if you were unlucky enough to not get that helicopter landing pad of a controller, your role for the most part is just running and jumping, while they do all the fun shit, like breaking stuff and clearing the path. It eventually leads to the following map, where everyone basically sighs and gets in a good nap while you try to beat an action version of Guitar Hero:

I like to call that the "Just Let Me Fucking Do It" level, because that's exactly what's going to happen when one of your friends who sucks at video games keeps fucking up and having to restart the map ... and you can't play until he gets it right.

But don't worry, because he won't get many attempts before the controller dies. The battery life is "three to five hours," which in real-people terms means two hours.

I kind of feel bad for being this skeptical about a game system, because I've never really been the type of guy to just unload on a product without trying it. The Internet is full of those dipshits, and I didn't want to be one of them. But goddamn, you have to agree that what they've presented so far has painted a pretty dismal picture of their understanding of what we want as customers, and on a more basic scale, as humans. Surely they can't be that far up their own asses. Can they? I keep expecting them to show back up at another press conference, announcing that they were just setting us all up for a huge April Fool's joke next year, but decided against it. Or at least pulling some huge surprise announcement out of their asses that makes all of this make some sort of sense. But every hour that this doesn't happen makes me lose a little faith that it ever will.

But I guess I can't complain too much. At least it isn't this:

John has a Twitter that he bought for thousands of dollars before realizing they were free. So populate that so he doesn't feel like he wasted the money.

For more Cheese, check out 5 Gaming Technologies That Are Making Virtual Sex a Reality and 5 Ways to Tell You're Getting Too Old for Video Games.