Gather ‘round kids…Uncle Josh has a story to tell all of you.  A story of love and loss.  A long time ago, a young boy got a Nintendo Entertainment System; we’ll call it a NES for short.  This boy loved his NES.   He played on it all day and night.  Until one day, a Super NES was released by Nintendo.  In order to get this “Super NES”, young Josh would need to sell his most prized possession, his NES.  Back in the day, kids didn’t have multiple gaming systems, they had one.  In order to buy the SNES, young Josh would need to sell his NES and all games to FuncoLand, one of the first stores ever that would buy used game systems and games.  He sold his NES and got a new gaming system, which he loved, the SNES…but he never forgot his first love.

Well, my friends, after a long time away, she has come home.  Welcome home NES.  I see you brought some friends.

Dragon Warrior (before they started calling it Dragon Quest), was the first RPG I ever played.  I didn't even know what an RPG was at that time.  I just went to Blockbuster, saw the awesome box and rented it.  I couldn't figure it out when I got home, but years later, I have come to appreciate it.  Oh, is that a Zelda 2 gold cartridge still in the box with instruction manual, you ask?  Why, yes it is.  I didn't think you would notice.

Yeah, before you had your fancy Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 13, we had Final Fantasy without a number after it.  That's right...the first Final Fantasy...it all started here.

I got like all the NES Mega Man, Mario, and Dragon Warrior games, plus a bunch of other games, I didn't feel like taking pictures of tonight.

I’ve had a home theater PC for probably about 7 years now.   I’ve never had a dedicated Blu-ray or HD-DVD drive for the PC.  I’ve honestly never needed it.  I’ve always had my PlayStation 3 for Blu-ray and my Xbox 360 for HD-DVD.

We all know the story about how HD-DVD lost the format war.   Yeah, I know.. rah rah blu-ray.  Go team!  So I’ve pretty much had my Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive and movies sitting in a box collecting dust since I moved into my house.  It was a bit rainy over the weekend, so I was bored and in the house.  What did I do?  I decided I would hook up my Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive to my HTPC running Windows 7 to see what would happen and if I could get it working.  I had heard there were hacks in the past to get it working with Windows XP and Vista, but I really hadn’t looked at anything for Windows 7.

I plugged the USB cable in the back of the HTPC and immediately I got a notice saying Windows had installed a new device.  I check My Computer, sure enough, new disc drive.  I throw King Kong HD-DVD (it’s terrible, I know, but it came free with the drive) in the drive, open PowerDVD and it won’t play.  Bummer.  I guess the new versions of PowerDVD don’t support for the, now dead, HD-DVD format.  However, I keep EVERYTHING so I start going through all my old install CDs and I find an old version of PowerDVD 8.  I install it, and guess what...HD-DVD now works.  I had to screw around with the software a bit to get it working, but all-in-all, pretty cool.

You might be saying to yourself, “who cares?  It’s a dead format that isn’t supported anymore.”   Well, there are a crapload of good movies on HD-DVD that cost next to nothing on eBay and Amazon compared to the Blu-ray version.

• Transformers HD-DVD - $0.99 (yes, less than a dollar!) VS Transformers Blu-ray- $16.49
• Army of Darkness HD-DVD - $1.98  VS  Army of Darkness Blu-ray - $13.99
• Top Gun HD-DVD $2.18  VS  Top Gun Blu-ray - $14.49
• 300 HD-DVD $2.67  VS 300 Blu-ray - $13.99

Plus, I seriously love my Heroes season 1 HD-DVD box set.  I know everyone bags on the later seasons, but the first season of Heroes was awesome!

PS – Yes, I know I could have just hooked it up to my 360 and been done with it, but my 360 isn’t hooked up to my home theater in a way I get surround sound.   This was more fun.

I just got a Nintendo DSi over the weekend to replace the Nintendo DS lite that my dog ate last year.  If you already have one, you know you can download games from the Nintendo DSi Shop.  Games range from 200-800 Nintendo Points.  Points cost $10 for 1000.  There is also a free web browser and some other application that I didn’t bother with, if you need something for free.  I don’t even use my regular consoles for browsing the web, no way in hell I am wasting time on the DSi trying to browse the web.

Most of the games for DSiWare are terrible.  I had 1000 points to spend, and it was a struggle to actually find something worth spending them on.  I eventually broke down and bought Mario vs Donkey Kong: Minis March Again! , but even that hasn’t been too great.   Probably not 800 Nintendo Points great.

I have a little suggestion for Nintendo, how about you let people buy and download REAL GameBoy, GameBoy Color and GameBoy Advance games?  I can understand leaving classic console games on the Wii with Virtual Console…that’s fine with me.  Just bring back the classic handheld games on the DSi.  You can call it “DSi Virtual Console”!  It really can’t be that hard to get old games refitted for the DSi.  I would actually pay to play some of the old Mario, Zelda and Metroid games for GB/GBA.  Seriously, I haven’t played Metroid 2 in WAY too long.

Plus, you’ve already killed off the chance of me using my actual GBA cartridges since you removed the slot from the DSi. This all just works together so perfectly.  Nintendo…make it happen.  E3 is right around the corner, this announcement would be most welcome!

I haven't heard from Jason since he got his iPad.  I'm not sure what happened.  He could have been trampled to death by a pack of rabid Apple fans for all I know.

So, Jay, I hate to pry you away from your preciousss, but would you mind posting some thoughts on the iPad?  You can even post it from the device itself, if you wish.