Word: nintendos
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That pudgy little plumber is jingling all the way to the bank. Two months after its release, Nintendo 64, the 3-D-saturated game machine, and its marquee title, Mario 64, have vanished from the shelves, inspiring rampant supply-side panic among hordes of would-be Santas...
There are at least three strong reasons for picking the Nintendo, and we'll begin with the strongest: technology. The N64's greatest miracles come from a specially developed internal processing chip that does one thing--paint rich pictures on your TV--better than any other device in history. Called the Reality Co-Processor, the chip was designed by 3-D special-effects giant Silicon Graphics (of Jurassic Park fame) and built by Japanese chip monolith NEC. Even as computers do more in smaller spaces, there's something extraordinary here: SGI and NEC have stuffed the sophistication...
...using the game machine on your TV almost seems as amusing and entertaining as renting a movie or watching a ball game. The 3-D effects are what game pros call immersive, that is, real enough to make you forget the 4-ft. space between you and your TV. Nintendo's smart-chip technology, blended with terrific software, has created a virtual world so compelling that the plastic game box moves from novelty to full-fledged revelation...
...surprise then that the world--or at least the world's allowance-bearing teens--are beating a track to Nintendo. The 64-bit machines show every sign of being the over-the-top smash-hit consumer-electronics item of the year. Released on Sept. 29, the machine has sold half a million units in just over a month; in its first week alone, it sold as many units as its competitors combined did in all of September...
Which means that for the next few years, during the countdown to the 21st century, Nintendo's marquee product will be the machine that most fully influences our children's introduction to the mind-boggling potential of digital technology. What matters most about the 64--what ultimately demanded our vote for Machine of the Year--is its potential as a tool for turning on the next generation to the wonders of cyberspace. Despite all the doubts about marketing and title support, what is decidedly not at issue is the fact that the 64 represents a major technology breakthrough: the first...