this Wii thing...or, nostalgia

Wii is becoming a real time sucker. Whereas we rarely watch television anyway, preferring to walk upstairs, pick up books and read at night, now we're trying to outdo each other in Wii bowling.

I also discovered that you could use it as a regular Nintendo, so we bought games that I used to play with my kids when they were younger.  The first few bars of the theme song for Super Mario Brothers brought back memories, but when I heard the music from Bubble Bobble, I had a major flashback. Blast from the past, so to speak.  I was that kind of mom who didn't allow gruesome or shoot-em-up type games in the house.  Being a native Californian who grew up largely during the 70s, I was anti-gun, pro peace, harmony and love at the time so killing wasn't something I wanted done at my home. Even faked. I took it as far as not even allowing super soakers (remember those?) or toy guns.  I figured my kids had enough friends who had that type of stuff at their homes, so I never bought them. When they were little, the boys got carefully meted-out time for playing video games -- they had to match an hour of reading for one hour on the video games and to make sure they didn't cheat I made them do oral book reports on what they'd read.  They hated me, of course, at first, but they eventually went through a lot of books. One went on to get a BA in English and one went on to work at Borders while going to school. Coincidence? Hmmmm. And I must say, those old games were great while I was working on my PhD...when my brain just couldn't take any more, but I wasn't tired enough to sleep, out came the old NES games.

So now if I want to, I can turn on the Wii and just listen to the old Nintendo game theme songs if I need a moment for recapturing some of the past with my kids. My all time favorite Nintendo theme is from the game "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," a great strategy game that we used to play way back when.It's a far cry from bowling, to be sure.