I won't lie to you, folks. I wasn't about to get off on a rant here, but it just sort of happened. I was going to preview the GameCube port of Mortal Kombat: Deception originally, but your boy Mikey's been sitting here for more than a few minutes, trying to think of a decent opener for the article. Sadly, I've been lacking. That got me to thinking - why spend time previewing yet one more Mortal Kombat game? I mean, let's face facts. The genre has maintained some solid opinion ratings among the general gamer crowd over its lifespan, which is a very admirable feat. However, nothing's really matched that initial pop that the franchise got back in 1992.

Then I got to thinking: it's the nostalgia factor. In about two weeks, I'll have hit my twentieth birthday. Twenty years on this planet. And given that the average console lifespan is about five years, that puts me four generations deep in gamerdom. Four generations. Five if you count the ColecoVision controller that was put into my hands - as Twomey family lore goes - five minutes after I broke out of my playpen. I'm not claiming to be the elder of the tribe here by any means. There are others in my particular field whose veterancy goes far deeper than mine. But I've reached my point. That time when I peruse the racks at Best Buy, see a Sega Genesis controller that plugs into a TV and let someone play Genesis games right there, and I suddenly feel the need for a nap, followed by dinner at four o'clock in the afternoon and some tapioca. And I don't even like tapioca. But I digress.

I realized, I preview Mortal Kombat games much for the same reason I drop eight, ten dollars to see a Star Wars prequel. I'm looking for that spark, that thing that grabs the Etch-A-Sketch of the common worldview and shakes the living hell out of it. I probably won't find it, I know, but there's always that one chance. Diogenes and his lamp, me and my Firefox. Any given product can cause shockwaves through our world, but it's been far, far too long since we, as the gamer culture, has just been rocked by a release into the marketplace. Honestly? I don't think it's really happened since the NES. (Some would say the Atari 2600, going back beyond the Great Crash of 1984. See? Not that old!) Anyway, everything since those two consoles has been a progression along the lines that they first drew. Even the transition from cartridge to CD media, while substantive, was really just a logical move to make in order to continue the "bigger, faster, better" evolution of the console.

Basically, what I'm saying is that I'm afraid of how the industry's going right now. While many quality titles have come out for us in the years, we as an industry, I feel, are steadily reaching a point of stagnation. The power moves by Electronic Arts to corner so many licenses and aspects of the game market are both a perfect example and a damning harbinger of what might come. What's worse is that the closer we get to that point, the more drastic the action will be needed to shake us loose.

Enter the Revolution. Nintendo's provocatively-codenamed new console is slated for an unveiling this May at E3 2005, claiming a change forever in the way we play games. A console that, to quote Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, doesn't need to divulge tech specs because "...they really don't matter." Something that signals that a "...time when horsepower alone made all the difference is over." Already details are leaking out, giving a few edge pieces to the puzzle, but not much more. The console can hook up to a computer monitor. Does that factoid go beyond just increasing the options of output devices? Don't know. The traditional D-pad and face button configuration will be eschewed on Revolution controllers. What they'll be replaced with, nobody knows yet. Rumor has it to be a touchscreen like the DS, but that's nowhere near confirmed. More fantasy-pleasing rumors are those flying after Nintendo struck a deal with Gyration, Inc. - a leading manufacturer of gyroscopic sensors, far more accurate and sensitive than the standard accelerometer tilt sensors behind control sticks on the market today.

Kids, you want to know what twenty years of life teaches you? The future is a game of three-card monte, with one great promise and two great disappointments on the table. I'm loving where these hints are leading, but I'm wary. I have really high expectations for this one, folks. I want to sit in the Kodak Theater and have my socks rocked off clear back to the Mississippi. I want to stagger out the press conference in May not knowing what's up and what's down. I want my Mortal Kombat. I want my first Star Wars movie.

I want my Revolution.

Mike Twomey