There’s a certain cycle I go through with fighting games. I’ll pick out a character who looks interesting. I’ll spend some time with them in practice mode and try to learn a few basic combos. I’ll play against the computer and gradually improve. Then my first time out of the gate I’ll get destroyed by someone mashing buttons at random and quit in disgust.

Such is the case with Soul Calibur IV, which graced our household this week. Right now I’m still on the “practice mode” step. It isn’t so much that I just quit out of frustration. It’s because I get a glimpse at what it would take for me to become truly competent at the game, and I have absolutely no interest in putting in the work.

I feel this way about a bunch of genres, actually. I’ve never moved up to the five-button difficulties in Guitar Hero. I’ve never mastered the multitasking necessary for the real-time strategy genre. For me, the payoff of mastering these games just isn’t worth the effort needed. I’m just not having fun.

The idea of fighting games appeals to me, where two players have mastered the controls to the point where it becomes a contest of reading your opponent’s intentions and countering them. That kind of battle of wits sounds great.

The problem is, I’m literally years behind everyone else. The modern genre is for people who cut their teeth on Street Fighter II and learned the nuances of each successive generation of games. There are gameplay mechanics going on in Soul Calibur IV that I’m not even perceiving, let along improving my mastery of. I’d rather be playing something else than trying to make up that deficit.

This is probably what it feels like to be a non-gamer staring at the controller for an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3. I started on an NES controller with a directional pad and two buttons. Then I played a little on the Genesis controllers with three buttons. Then the Super Nintendo controller with four face buttons and two shoulder buttons that were only used in games occasionally. Then up to the N64 controller with an extra analog stick, two more face buttons and a trigger for your index that usually played a key role.

A newbie looking at the modern Dual Shock PlayStation controllers with four face buttons, two shoulder buttons for each index finger, two analog sticks and a d-pad is probably going to decide they’d rather be doing something else than struggling up the learning curve.

And that’s where the genius of Nintendo’s Wii lies. It’s a remote control. Everyone understands a remote control. The nunchuck attachment was grudgingly added as a concession to modern gaming, but it’s strictly optional. The Wii Sports games that seem to sell the console to everyone who tries it barely make use of it.

Stripping down the buttons isn’t a new idea, but Nintendo has succeeded wildly by drawing in the people who have been shut out by the development of gaming, which is exactly what they said they were going to try to do.

So where does that leave us, the hardcore? Well, we’ve still got two of the three major consoles geared towards us. If the fighting game metaphor stays constant, we’ll always have our niche.

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