I am a very proud uncle. As far as I'm concerned, my six-year-old nephew and four-year-old niece are pretty much the greatest collection of molecules on the planet. So I wasn't surprised when the nephew picked up my Wii remote one day and totally killed it in Wii Sports Bowling. The kid's a natural.

Like any good parents, my sister and her husband saw this potential in their first born and wished to encourage it, so they bought a Wii. This all happened around Christmas of 2009. In the year that followed, they only purchased two additional games: one good (Punch-Out!!) and one regrettable (X-Men Origins: Wolverine). But for the most part, the family didn't stray into any unknown territory, instead opting to stick to Wii Sports while they got the hang of things.

Fortunately, my sister and her family have recently become determined to expand their gaming repetoire. They've gone back to the classics. One day, my sister went to visit a friend and brought her kids. Immediately, my nephew (the future gaming phenom that he is) took a particular shine to a joystick pushed aside in their living room. On the side of the box was a bright yellow disc with a slice missing. He picked it up and brought it to his mom.

"How do you know about Pac-Man?" she asked. Apparently, some kids at his school were discussing the finer points of Namco's ghost-hunting hero. This particular joystick was one of those plug-and-play, all-in-one games, where you connect the A/V cables directly to your TV and boom! Instant arcade. My sister's friend never used it, so she gave the game to my nephew as a present. Excited, they took it home and tried plugging it in to their fancy new LCD hi-def TV -- not a good idea. Pac-Man hasn't embraced the revolution of HDMI, yet. Crest-fallen, my nephew slumped his shoulders and retreated to his room, where he ate cherry after cherry in a fit of suppressed rage.

But for the prodigal son, this was merely an inconvenience. Through the magic of the Virtual Console, my brother-in-law downloaded the NES port of Pac-Man to their Wii. How he realized such a thing was possible, I'll never know. Regardless, Pac-Man became the family's new obsession. First the Nephew would play, then (very briefly) his sister would try it out, then Dad, and then Mom (the champion of the household so far). But something was missing. The game didn't feel quite right. 

Who needs Championship Edition DX?

I was home this past December and my nephew excitedly showed me how to play their new game.  As he pursued Blinky and Inky, my sister led me away from his listening ears and told me this: "We're getting him a joystick for Christmas." The Wii remote's D-Pad wasn't giving the six-year-old the reaction time necessary to consume maximum power pellets, and the family has standards after all.

Cut to Christmas morning: My dad, brother, and I head over to my sister's family's house to have some brunch and to exchange presents. We stomp our shoes clean of snow and perform the requisite hugs and hellos. Finally, I take my bag of gifts over to the tree and, lo and behold, among the remote-controlled Iron Man figure and Littlest Pet Shop dolls, I see a huge white box emblazoned with the Capcom logo. 

"It was the only joystick they had in stock," my brother-in-law tells me. And so my nephew now has equipment suited to his prowess: He shall eat pellets and destroy ghosts using the joystick equivalent of a B-2 Bomber: the Tatsunoko vs. Capcom Arcade FightStick, retailing now at Amazon.com for $79.99. 

Billy Mitchell should think about using this. 'Cause the nephew is practicing.

The package didn't even come with the fighting game itself: My nephew witll use the eight-button wonder exclusively for a game that uses no buttons. None of this matters to my sister's family. In 2011, they'll be piloting Pac-Man around that infernal maze with a six-pound arcade stick depicting Chun-Li and Ken the Eagle.

And that, if you think about it, is sort of awesome.