Wii U: Calculating fun in PBRRs

Before I started studying at IU I would have considered myself a gamer.
According to my old Xfire account, I clocked in more than 2,500 hours of PC games in about four solid years.

Before I gamed on a PC I owned a Nintendo, Sega Genesis, N64, Playstation, Playstation 2, Xbox, Gameboy Color, a DS,. I was absolutely saturated in video games between the ages of 10 and 18.

Then sometime between my junior year of high school and my freshman year of college I nearly quit gaming. I didn’t all of a sudden become “too old” to game. Far from it, I’d say my maturity has not surpassed the level of a 14-year-old boy and is wholly evident in the amount of dick jokes columns I write mentioning Speaker of the House John A. Boehner, R-OH.

Nor would I say the quality of games coming out is not up to some golden age standard I set when I was 13.
 
The real culprit is that gaming is expensive; hell keeping up with technology in general is expensive.

Between picking up heavy drinking, cigarettes and designer drugs, I simply do not have the resources to maintain the gamer’s lifestyle. I suppose it all comes down to priorities and what metric you measure fun in.

Since becoming a true adult in the eyes of the law by turning 21, I measure everything in 30-racks of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I will denominate this as 1 PBRR equal to $20 USD. My best guess for the price of Nintendo’s new Wii U is around $300 or 15 PBRRs.

Let’s assume next we need three more controllers for a full room’s worth of gamers, each at approximately 3 PBRRs and the new Mario Kart for Wii U at an estimated 3 PBRRs. We are looking at a grand total of 27 PBRRs. Well, that’s more than enough for an entire semester’s worth of drinking!

I just want to play the new Mario Kart, but not if it will cost me all of my drinking money.

­— nicjacob@indiana.edu