The worst thing about living in a college town and no longer being in school, is watching your friends leave year after year. I’m about to say goodbye to a friend I met at the now defunct Playland arcade, while playing low tier MvC2 and loving every minute of it. I’ve read a lot about technology changing our lives and making us the masters of our own futures (of course does this mean to say that we weren’t before buzzwords like Web 2.0 and the like!?) and the biggest thing technology has done for me is help me to meet some really great people.

If you read the Time magazine year in review, you may think their person of the year is crap — for those who didn’t know, it’s “you.” A copout maybe, or a simple declaration that there isn’t really anybody out there in famous-ville worth admiring. Of course that isn’t true, but we’ve had a year of really crap things happen. Among that we did find a voice thanks to a technology that is really blooming and giving us, the users, power we never had before to comment on life, and politics, and love, and videogames.

As I was saying (dang wandering mind!), the semester has ended here and yet another friend moves into the world. I’m happy for him, but sad that once again the crew grows smaller. We’ve spent that past 4 years getting together and playing fighters of all kind, with the occasional GC 4-player fest (Smash, Tennis, Kart, Mario Party, etc.) I often argue with co-workers about videogames and their place in society.

I argue that they are valid and worthy of as much attention as I give them. I can say that Nintendo has helped me on more than one occasion win my argument. At first it was the GC and how 4-player get-togethers were as social as any event I could think of. Thanks to their universal agenda with the NDS and taking interactivity to a whole new level with the Wii, I have even more fodder for my argument.

Recently, I’ve ended up talking with older, non-gamers who are seriously considering getting a Wii. I just recently had a relative get a NDS simply because of the many awesome puzzle games on it and how easy it is to use the thing.

So if I had to look back at the year, I would definitely give the nod to Nintendo for innovating the way games used to and a small nod to Microsoft for offering a really solid and ever-growing online community by way of the 360. The jury’s still out the PS3, largely because it is so out of reach right now, while the other two are much more tangible.

Let’s hope that 2007 continues to push gaming into the realm of further interactivity and community and that we still get to see lots of the small stuff (though Live arcade and NDS should keep the 2D torch alive for a while). I am curious to see that fate of the PS2’s niche publishers such as Atlus, NIS, etc. Will they have the means to support the PS3 and make a decent living doing it? I sure hope so, though I’d be perfectly happy playing the next Disgaea on Xbox Live in full HD glory and possible level expansions, hint hint.

I wish everyone out there a good holidays and may Santa or whomever brings those wonderful presents, drop-off plenty of videogame loot!