After writing that review of Dead Rising Wii, it suddenly occurred to me "This is the best time ever to be a fan of videogames".

It's not because all of my favorite games ever are coming out right now, because they aren't. Probably my favorite era in gaming ever was the Saturn/PS1/N64/Dreamcast era, when 2D fighters were still huge, but 3D action games were just starting to come into their own. Parappa the Rapper was simply jaw dropping to me at the time, as were Final Fantasy VII, Guardian Heroes, Resident Evil 1 and 2, Street Fighter Alpha, Shenmue, and Seaman.

Those are games that suit my personal tastes, but that doesn't mean that the era they were released in was the best ever.

No, that time is now.

Now is the time when we have art styles of every era of gaming being represented on multiple consoles. Mega Man 9, Wario Land: Shake It, World of Goo and Castle Crashers are just three games that look like they could have been from at least ten years ago, yet they have all found success today. Point and click games are actually making a comeback. For an old LucasArts fan like myself, having the Strong Bad games, the Sam and Max, and Zack and Wiki are all a big deal. Shmups are also making it big again, with tons of releases in the genre hitting all the home consoles all the time.

The classics are doing alright for themselves as well. Mario, Chris Redfield, and Solid Snake have all shown up in games that are better than or equal to the most popular games in their respective series, the DS has THREE amazing 2D Castlevania games, Street Fighter has finally made a come back, and Contra 4 completely kicked ass.

Then there are the "new" icons, Ace Attorney's Miles Edgeworth, MadWorld's Jack, No More Heroes's Travis Touchdown, Noby Noby Boy's Boy, and Braid's Tim. All of them do things that, in their own ways, have never really been done by videogame characters before. Add them to the always growing army of videogame characters, and it only takes a few seconds to realize that the world of videogames has never been more inclusive.

It used to be that videogames were made to appeal to one age group, one gender, and one socio-economic demographic. All those games that I loved in the Saturn/PS1/N64/Dreamcast, they were really made just for 18-24 year old boys (a group I managed to be a member of at the time). These days, it seems like there is at least one game out there for everyone, regardless of your tastes.

Saying that you don't like videogames in this era is like saying you don't like TV, or books, or even food. It just sounds foolish. You can say that you don't like watching TV, or reading, or even eating, but you can't deny that there is at least one show, book, or food that you like. It's that kind of thought that came to me right after finishing the Dead Rising review.

"Capcom somehow knew that Dead Rising 360 came close, but didn't quite suit my tastes, and knowing that, they actually had the guts to remake the game just to please people just like me." It's an amazing thing to witness; a videogame company so confident that videogame playing populace is broad and deep enough that they attempt greatly alter one of their popular games, and with confident that it will still find an audience.

In the lat 90's, they would never dare re-make Final Fantasy VII for the N64 but make the battles in real-time, or remake Metal Gear Solid for the Saturn but make it a 2D fighter. Back then, developers didn't believe that their were enough "different kinds" of gamers out there to validate such decisions.

So really, it's because of us that gaming is better than it's ever been. There are more of us gamers now, and more "types" of gamers, enough so that more different kinds of games are being made now than ever before.

Just thinking about that makes me excited to see what the next "gen" of game consoles will bring us. I could care less about what the games of 2015 will look like. I want to know what kinds of games they'll be.

Could things actually be more diverse than they are now? Is so, I can't wait to see how.