Remember the thrill of Super Mario Brothers? The technology that allowed us to move a little blob called Mario around a television screen was incredible.

Although the eight-bit Nintendo Entertainment System seemed technologically advanced 10 years ago, it's the 21st century now.

With increasing technology, today's game systems are becoming more complex and have features gaming enthusiasts only dreamed about back then.

The Sony PlayStation 2, Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo 64 are the game systems that dominate the current market. These systems feature action-packed, realistic games with high graphics and memory capacity.

Yet for some expert gamers, the best is yet to come.

Microsoft will make its first appearance in the market with its Xbox video game system this fall.

Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, revealed the Xbox at the 2001 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Jan. 6.

This gaming system will feature a 733 MHz processor, an nVidia graphics processing unit, an eight gigabyte hard drive, a front-loading DVD tray and an Ethernet port.

With these features, some may view the Xbox as a cheap computer/DVD player rather than an expensive video game system. For the novice, it might not be necessary to spend the extra money on this system. Even after the release of the Xbox, computers will still suffice as decent entertainment systems.

Yet the gaming enthusiast can't help but get excited at this new system, which will feature games made by over 200 gaming companies.

Nintendo is combating the Xbox with a new system of its own, the Nintendo GameCube.

This system, also due out in the fall, will feature an IBM PowerPC 405 MHz processor, 24 megabytes of main system memory and 16 megabytes of auxiliary memory.

Nintendo calls the GameCube their "vision of what a next generation game machine should do."

Gaming enthusiasts eagerly awaiting the coming of these systems can check out the latest information on their Web sites (www.xbox.com) and (www.nintendo.com/gamecube).