Knowing where to look is important for all kinds of reasons. I’m rediscovering this as my 3-month-old son learns that his neck is for more than just bobbling around, that he can turn it left or right to feed the vision center. The pleasure he takes in doing so is unmistakable as I watch him pulling at the corners of his mouth, turning that mouth into an O and conjuring broad smiles when he sees something he recognizes. A toy. A face. Mom. Dad. I can make it happen on command now, using my face as a lure, snapping my fingers or singing, saying the sort of stuff you say in parentese to 3-month-olds: “Over here, kiddo!” and “What’s that?” and “Is Daddy silly?” The Wii U, which arrived last week and then merged with my entertainment center like the Spider-Man symbiote, is doing something like this to me, teaching me how to feed my own vision center using cues from multiple sources. It sounds radical — two screens working in tandem like this, competing for your attention — and it kind of is, though not in the sense that it’s never been done before. Remember these? Sega’s Dreamcast offered auxiliary-screen gaming with its pint-size Visual Memory Units, which could either act as standalone handhelds or provide supplemental information during a Dreamcast game. Sony took a stab at the concept with its PlayStation-based PocketStation, which was functionally similar to the Dreamcast’s VMUs. PC owners have, of course, been multiscreen gaming for decades. And Nintendo experimented with secondary-screen gaming during the GameCube’s tenure, allowing you to connect a Game Boy Advance to the console and download minigames or use the GBA as a supplemental screen. In Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, for instance, multiple players with GBAs could connect to a GameCube, using the GBAs as controllers and their GBA screens to access personal status menus. But the Wii U is the first game system to make the secondary screen the center of attention, placing a crisp 6.2-in., 854-x-480-pixel display in the middle of the![]()
