Nintendo Wii Fanboy

If you live in the U.S., you probably know that there's a presidential election coming up this November. As it stands, you currently have a few front-runner options: John McCain, Barack Obama, or ... Mario and Luigi?

Yes, the joke's been done before (especially because of the nine thousand Mario Party games out there), but now it's on a t-shirt. Yet, that's not where Nintendo stops interfering in politics.

Supporters of presidential candidate (and popular Mii), Barack Obama, have made a ton of 1up themed paraphernalia endorsing the candidate. The "O" in "Obama" was replaced with the green power-up, and the slogan reads, "Obama: 1up for America." Check past the break (or just click here) to see the design made by the Leftique.

Now all we need is some game gear for McCain, and Nintendo will have completely taken over this election.

Some high-profile U.S. Senators, including Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Joe Lieberman (ID-CT), have made attacking the ESRB their new pet project. The cause of this controversy is, of course, Manhunt 2. You may recall that Rockstar was forced to revise the game in order to remove the "Adults Only" rating given to it by the ESRB. These tactics may have worked in the U.S., but the British Board of Film Classification was unimpressed and still refused to issue a rating for the title.

The Senators are pretty ticked off at the ESRB for not being as censor vicious as the BBFC. But the ramifications of the Senators' attack on the ESRB go deeper than Manhunt 2, and may affect the video game industry in general if the ESRB is put under the "thorough review" that they are demanding.

Even worse, the Senators are calling for more extreme ratings on the Wii, due to the console's motion-sensitive controller. They argue that the Wiimote "permits children to act out each of the many graphic torture scenes and murders."

Of course, they don't acknowledge the fact that children shouldn't be playing Manhunt 2 at all, since the game was given a "Mature" rating by the ESRB, and one of the few ways they can even play the game is with parental permission. If children playing mature games is really their concern, perhaps the Senators should be putting parents under review, and not the ESRB. Those old enough to play violent games can differentiate between using waggle and using real weapons, making separate Wii ratings unnecessary.

At times like these, we really yearn for Stephen Colbert to make a political comeback.

With all the news of Mario relating to politics this week, we have to speculate that our favorite Italian plumber (as opposed to the millions of other Italian plumbers you know) is currently aiming for the position of World Dictator. As it stands, it seems that pretty much everyone would be okay with that.

According to a Zogby poll, the games of choice for conservatives are Madden and Mario, while liberals like Mario and The Sims. See the common denominator? Even middle-of-the-road folks love him, choosing mostly to play Mario, Donkey Kong, and Madden.

We don't know how reliable a poll like this is (as Game Politics points out, where are all the Halo players?), but one thing is certain: the people love their Mario.

Suddenly, the term "Mario Party" seems to have taken on a whole new meaning.

[Via Game Politics]

We must be getting closer to elections if presidential hopefuls are beating the drum about game retailers and stricter laws again. This time it's Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney who's struggling to take the family-friendly line. While his rhetoric on games is empty and uninformed, it will probably strike a chord with parents, as it makes for a tasty soundbite: "It's time to clean up the water in which our kids are swimming," he said. "I've proposed that we enforce our obscenity laws again and that we get serious against those retailers that sell adult video games that are filled with violence, that we go after those retailers," he said.

It's unfortunate that the truth doesn't get more votes, because we'd love to see another candidate (any one will do) fire back with some of the statistics on exactly who's buying all these video games. Here's a hint: it's usually not the kids who are wielding the credit cards during game purchases. There are protections in place for children -- parental controls on consoles, rating systems, current laws -- and considering that only 17% of game purchases are performed by children, it seems that more laws, stricter punishments, and whatever else Romney could come up with would be a waste of resources. Until we can convince parents to take a more active role in monitoring the activities of their children, the current system is just fine.

That doesn't make much of a clip for the news networks, however.

[Via Game|Life]