I don't know what it is about gaming, in particular, that inspires so many people to whine over something so trivial. I remember back in the early 1980s when people went ape#^%@ over clunky home versions of Pac-Man, either for the Atari 2600 or the tabletop models, and people were generally happy. Why? Simply because it was Pac-Man at home.

Today, I took a look through the message boards, notably those for the Wii, and found the following whines:

--Why did insert-game-here not come out on Virtual Console today?

--Why is insert-game-here being released on Virtual Console when it comes out in stores soon?

--Why are there so many insert-console-here games being released on Virtual Console and no insert-console-here games?

--Why is it so hard to finish insert-game-here when earlier version of insert-game-here was so much better?

--Why can't I find insert-game-here in stores?

I was, admittedly, glad to see a number of people react the way I did ... GET OVER IT. If your life sucks simply because you can't buy a certain video game or beat a certain video game, then apparently it really shouldn't suck to be you. You have a roof over your head, enough food to eat, clothes to wear and more than a little disposable income. As to the gaming situation, I can't solve that one for you, but I can provide some temporary solutions. Now, in the same order above:

--Go to your local flea market, locate a copy of insert-game-here and the appropriate console for it, hook it up and go to town. Thus, you don't have to worry about Virtual Console releasing it, since you already own it.

--Some gamers, like myself, love compilations because we get to acquire certain games we've always liked. The rest are throwaway. In this case, people can buy the one or two titles they want and not worry about when/if the store version gets released. If they want more than those, then they are already waiting on the store version, since the cost-per-game drops significantly (a game you don't want is worthless in this computation).

--The rationale, as I see it, is this: there are a lot of still-playable NES, SNES, N64, GEN and TG-16 consoles out there. The Neo-Geo is a niche console, to be sure. That's what makes it so alluring; you may not have owned a copy of it, but you probably did play it in the arcades, so it becomes desirable.

--Go to your local flea market, locate a copy of the earlier version of insert-game-here and the appropriate console for it, hook it up and go to town. Thus, you don't have to worry about ever finishing the new version of insert-game-here.

--The Wii's cross-market appeal is its greatest asset and its greatest liability. Now Nintendo has a large customer base that will buy almost anything it releases. At the same time, they are having issues getting product to stores in the proper numbers. It appears to be improving (the Wii itself is more available), but the lag time is still pretty long. While you wait, rediscover a game you've forgotten about ... again, if this is all you have to worry about, life is actually good.

If you run across a whiner in the forums, please feel free to direct them to me. I'll be glad to set them straight.