n64 is your oldest??? how young are you people?

I have two different Atari systems hooked up (2600 and 400), a hooked up NES, PS1, and a record player from 1972. These all belonged to me or my siblings. I also have an early 70's "portable" television hooked up in the back of my apartment, but the antenna only picks up TBS...

When I built it, it was pretty good:

2.2ghz AMD
2GB Ram
7600GT

and so on.

I've got a bum laptop crying in the corner, I used to play CS:S on it at about 10fps ;)

This is stupid. WE, the hardcore gamers, know that the Wii has underpowered graphics (I personally don't care, PCs are powerful enough for me). The average consumer probably won't notice, and if they do, it probably wouldn't dawn on them that it was a limitation of the Wii.

Also, for christ's sake, are some developers STILL not learning from the DS's success? Fun only = sales. Graphics only = niche.

I got a Wii when it was released, and I've had a great time with it. There really ARE a lot of non-minigame games for it, like Godfather, SSX (which pretty much rocks), Excite Truck, Zelda, Paper Mario, Sonic, and so on. I'm pretty happy with the games so far, especially since we're in the first year. Look at the DS games they release today, and compare them to the DS games they had in the first year or two.

What I think they could've done though, is update virtual console games a touch. They don't have to change the graphics, but adding an online option to Tecmo Bowl would've rocked the house down. They're continuing to drop the ball with online play, so hopefully they'll keep working on it.

Thanks Steve,

Perhaps you could spend one afternoon each week doing charity work instead of playing videogames? Nah.

Shortfuse,

you write "it's only using the common psychological knowledge that if you bombard the mind with a thematic series of images/video, the next human response will be correlated with that mentioned theme. "

If that were the only thing going on in this study, you wouldn't see an interaction between overall anger and the responses to violent media. You'd see the same reaction, proportionally, for everyone. In other words, angry people would have more extreme responses than non-angry people, but BOTH would show an increase in aggression.

"people who are not angry are virtually unaffected by violent videogames"

A differential effect of violent videogames (mediated by overall anger)kinda shoots your whole "I know everything because I took Psych100" thing to poo, certainly, but is really quite interesting. Something independent of the violent media is creating this effect.

Chris,

To a certain extent I agree, but I think that's an unfair characterization of the limitations of science in general. You don't have to directly experience everything in a laboratory setting to make generalizations about future behavior... that's what statistical analyses are for!

In driving-safety research I see this all the time: you want to make a car safer, but can't produce a lifetime of driving in the two or three hours you have with a participant. After all, if you go most of your life without getting into an accident, it's a bit much to expect for someone to randomly crash during a short experiment! So what you do is determine the types of behavior that are correlated with crashes, like lane-keeping, speed, etc., and see how those measures change depending on your manipulation.

It is VERY likely that the stories used in this video game study (and we could check, since the actual journal article would describe how they were selected) have been shown to be correlated with future aggressive behavior. If not, what you said is absolutely a legitimate concern. After all, a lot of video game research deals with immediate aggression after playing, and not with long-term shifts in aggression. If the authors are able to verify that their measure really predicts aggressive behavior, then a lot of these concerns aren't such a big deal.

I probably should start proofreading my posts. Holy use of the word 'specifically,' Batman!

I'm not sure they really mean that Brain Age, specifically, is the kind of game that would help old people.

They make a pretty clear distinction between the kind of exercises in Brain Age and the kind that show this effect in PositScience. Even when they talk about "playing games" in that last sentence, it's in the context of Merzenich's style of programs. I absolutely disagree that they're trying to say that Brain Age, specifically, is helping people.

"It involves big words like "neuroplasticity," but it's a brain-fitness workout, which Brain Age is as well."

So... you didn't understand the big words, and came to the wrong conclusion about the article? How surprising.

The SEED article is saying, in no uncertain or ambiguous terms, that Brain Age doesn't really do anything and isn't based on any actual research. The PositScience program, on the opposite end of the science spectrum, is based on decades of research and the benefits of the program have been demonstrated empirically.

Not sure why you still make claim that they're on the same page, just because they're "brain fitness workouts." I love Nintendo, but Brain Age is the worst case of pop-culture pseudoscience I've seen in years. If you think it's fun, bully for you. If you think it's helping your brain, you're in for a sad surprise.