How Megaman NT Warrior in many ways predicted the future

When I was a kid, my favorite game on my GameBoy Advanced was Megaman NT Warrior. I did not see any reason to get any other game for by GameBoy as I felt Megaman was much more awesome than both Pokemon and Super Mario. The plot of this game was to switch between the real world and the virtual world and save the world from a criminal organization called WWW (World Three). WWW took over computer systems and planted viruses in the computer networks. WWW had a vision of taking over the world. I had to enter these networks and delete these viruses. In this game, the networks were a virtual world where I navigated with my net-navigator Megaman, which I used to delete viruses with by using different weapons (Activated by using battleships). Outside these networks, Megaman was on a hand-held device called PET (Personal Terminal). This powerful device would let me read emails, interact with my net-navi and contact other people.

 

It was not until recently I realized how this game predicted the future. Although we did have Internet and computer viruses ten years ago, smartphones was an unknown term and the internet mainly consisted of computers and servers. Today, the internet consists of more than just computers and servers. Consoles, smartphones, network storage devices, printers, tvs, tablets, internet radios and the list goes on. Internet was called “The internet of things” a few years ago because of all the different devices that was about to be connected. Recently, Cisco decided to use the term “The internet of everything” as everything is about to be connected to the internet. Lamps, heating systems, ventilation systems, and alarms are just few of the things that will be “common” to have connected over the internet within a few years. Not only would it be cool to have all these devices talking together, but it would also let us reduce the energy costs and easily control our house through an internet portal. 

Data that travels through the net today is exposed to several threats. Not only criminals are interested in your sensitive data, but also the government. Edward Snowden has said that kids today will be the first generation that cannot share a secret over the internet. The computer next door could be infected by malware. In that case, there is a large possibility that you would have to share several end-points with an infected computer. The internet is indeed a scary place. 

Smartphones lets us access almost any information at any time. We can read emails, watch videos, read the news, check our social networks and many other things. They are powerful devices, which has made changes to our lives in many ways. New technologies like Siri, Cortana and Google Talk lets us even ask our devices to do simple tasks. It is a terminal to everything, in our pocket. 

The hand-held terminals on Megaman did in fact predict the smartphones we have today. The internet today consists of so many different devices, just like on Megaman. The only thing that is missing from making today a reality from Megaman is artificial intelligence and the battle chips. Although I can see that the battle chips was a small detail that made the game a whole lot more fun to play.