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The Gamer Who Came in From the Cold pt. 1
After More Than a Decade Away, it Feels Good to be Back.
Felix Quiñonez Jr.
In the fall of 2016, Nintendo was setting its hype machine into overdrive as they prepared to release their new console, the Nintendo Switch. This was nothing new, of course. Every few years, we see companies put on the same song and dance routine to usher in the “next generation” of video games. Usually, this includes talk of bits, memory, or how realistic the graphics will be. Sometimes they incorporate vague, technical terms like blast processing. But it always feels, generally the same. However, this time, well, there was something different about the Switch.
It had been about 14 years since I last bought a video game console, and in that time, I don’t think I played video games more than a handful of times. In fact, by this point, it had probably been about a decade since I even paid attention to video game news at all. But that was the thing, even someone who actively avoided video games could sense that there was something different on the horizon. During this time, you couldn’t visit any website covering pop culture without seeing countless headlines about the upcoming Nintendo Switch. And they were all trying to convince readers that this new machine would be something special.
