Nintendo, because there is no other

Yes! Weekly - "It's obviously been owned by a smoker," my girlfriend says as we pry cellophane and packing tape from around it.

She's right - while the case was a cool gray in 1991, this one's the color of stained bed sheets, or perhaps Grey Poupon. A wad of electrician's tape holds the controller wires together, and there's a sticky purple substance on several of the game cartridges. If this were any other eBay purchase, I'd unleash a storm of negative feedback.

But this is an original Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and I think it's beautiful.

Full column

Carolinian Exec. Editor and Yes! Weekly staffer Chris Lowrance wrote a very good piece on people buying back their childhood one electronic at a time. I couldn't agree with him more, except that my weapon of choice is the original Nintendo (they did it right the first time), complete with the orange Duck Hunt gun.

I also agree that the Nintendo Wii is a console worth buying, for no other reason than every Nintendo and Sega game will be available for download. I'm not interested in the new games; they're blasphemy. I want Mario Kart and Mortal Kombat. Zombies Ate My Neighbors. Double Dragon. The very first Zelda. The very first everything, before the games became tarted up and whored out by the new flashy thing that makes it look cooler.

It's not that sequels can't be better. Mario 3 is the best Mario, hands down. It's that there is beauty in the simplicity of the first attempt, history in the original. It's the game as it was meant to be. Two buttons and a D-Pad. It's all I'll ever need.

Now if I could just get the damn thing to turn on.