Finally, a surmountable problem!

I don't want to complain about a free thing but-well, ok, it's not really free you have to sign up for the online shrive and I actually do want to complain about-huh? Oh, right. This one's going to be about video games. Wha-? Yes. Again. Yes, I know there are bigger things going on in the world right now.

Me talking about video games today isn't going to
make the Water Wars happen any sooner so...

The NES games are an appealing feature,
not playing video games as an adult.
I'm not saying that stops me, but...

Some background if you're not into video games-although, if that's not really your cuppa, I'd suggest bailing out now, because I'm about to get into some pretty picky nerd stuff here. Still with me? Super. So if you sign up for Nintendo's online service, you get access to some NES games you can play on the Switch. Great, right? Yes. If you're a grown ass adult like me that not only plays video games but still plays video games you played when you were ten, it's an appealing feature.

A couple of days ago, Nintendo announced that they'd be adding a rewind option to the service. That means that if you screw up or miss something in a game you'll be able to pause, back-up and try again. "Why would anyone want to do that? Isn't that cheating?" You ask. And sure. It's totally cheating.

Anyone asking that question has evidently never had to put up with this nonsense.

"Here just...just take it."

-Me, to video game

companies, for decades

And I'm ok with that. Games from that era were like, super-hard. War crime hard. It has something to do with developers wanting to justify to kids' parents a fifty dollar purchase (something like a hundred dollars in today's money). Also, game rentals were big then and manufacturers wanted to make sure you couldn't finish a game on a three day rental. The harder the game, the more likely you were to buy it. Then as now, creative decisions were driven by cold, cynical corporations. I know this, yet I continue to give them my money.

I mean, I ask you...

Anyway, I am pro rewind, but as you might recall, I had some complaining to do. So the Switch NES games app is ok, but not perfect. Flawed is the word. Like, the trickle of games is excruciatingly slow, the games are permanently surrounded by a frame with the menu controls permanently listed on it just in case you forgot, but whatever, I can live with that. What I can't live with is the way the buttons are laid out. For reasons passing understanding, you can't remap the buttons, and B and A on the NES games are mapped to B and A on the Switch which is wrong.

Oh wait a minute, maybe
they do just hate their fans.

Wait! Where are you going? No really, it might not sound like much, but hear me out. For decades the buttons have been side by side so the tip of our calloused thumbs could rest on the B button while the joint landed on the A button. You could hit either without having to move your thumb. In some games, you even had to hold the B button while hitting A, making this layout essential. The Switch on the other hand asks you to either let go of one to hit the other or to contort your hand into some kind of arthritic claw to simulate the correct layout. Like, do they just hate their fans or something?

I'm bringing all this up because it's great and all that they're adding a rewind feature. Love to cheat. But for serious why can we not remap the controls to be less, I don't know, deliberately frustrating? Button mapping has been an option on like everything else, why not here? And look, like I mentioned before, there is plenty wrong with the world right now, but this. This is something that can be fixed.

Have they seen the news? Things are pretty screwed. We need a win here.