http://www.nowgamer.com/features/826/screw-the-wii-give-us-back-the-old-nintendo?o=0#listing
Sionara. Wii-san.
If you’re one of those people who measure a console’s success on the number of sales said console accumulates, you’d be hard-pressed to have anyone convince you that Nintendo’s Wii has been a dismal failure. Instead, you’ll pull a string of huge numbers out of your throat like a magician with a string of not-at-all-convincing cobweb-thin bunting – eighty million this, fifty gazillion that. We have those numbers to hand, but we won’t bore you with them, because they are irrelevant to our argument.
Here's link getting all defensive. A bit like his fans.
This all started – as these things often do – with a feeling. A sense of creeping despair which, up until a moment shortly after our usual triple-strength caffeine enema this morning, we’d barely acknowledged. But there was something itching there – something we couldn’t quite shift. By the time we’d sat down to work, we spat it out, expecting – even from our own colleagues – boundless repetition of the voluminous collection of sales figures outlined above. “Whatever happened to Nintendo. I miss them. I miss what they used to be.” We were met with sympathy.
“And so started a conversation. One which was an unexpectedly heartfelt experience.”
And so started a conversation. One which was an unexpectedly heartfelt experience. We threw ourselves into a more orbital perspective and, rather than attempt to bring any order from the resulting memory soup – the one which saw Nintendo slow-boil from definer of an industry, to platform-provider of ceaseless shower of shovelware shit – we instead tried to recapture and compare the experiences we’d once had with the ones we now readily have to hand.
Without delving into nostalgia, what we found ourselves asking is whether or not Nintendo can continue to bear the rock it has created for itself. Since when exactly, is the internet, or the larger gaming community, getting hyper-excited about the next big Wii game? Back when the console first emerged, there was a feeling among core gamers such as ourselves that these casual interlopers, these throwaway five-minute wonders, would play background to a universe of bright gaming stars. It was after all, exactly what we’d become used to.
It's-a-me: One of two games worth owning a Wii for.
And it’s true that for a very long time, there were those who clung on; fed scraps and strung along by morsels such as Super Mario Galaxy, and more recently, Super Mario Galaxy 2.
Yes, that was a joke, but it makes our point adequately. How many true Nintendo fans are there still out there? Fans who still hold onto the notion that the Wii will yet still retake the appeal it – Nintendo – once inspired to the so-called hardcore. So-called because the way we see it, we’re just gamers. Gamers who would rather not spend our time either grunting at our television sets, or throwing our arms about while our on-screen avatar rummages through hedgerows, looking for the pink cat.
Of course, another question which crossed our minds was whether gamers, who are currently clinging onto the notion that Kinect will ever pull anything aimed at them out of its shiny black butt, will be strung along down the same avenue of inevitable and dismal disappointment. But that’s another story…
Our NES, our SNES, our N64 and to a far lesser extent, our GameCube, used to be the entertainment hubs to our world. We were, admittedly, far younger, but we’d cart out carts to our friends house, or throw mini Ninty-Parties for the sheer love of GoldenEye or Super Mario Kart. Now, of course, we project ourselves into the online world, our Xboxs and PlayStations assuming that that is where we wish to be long before offering us any choice in the matter.
Nintendo’s uniqueness is not gone forever, but it has changed. No longer is it the social maven it used to be. If anything, it has become the antithesis; rather than an object we associate with the mutual enjoyment of our friends, one which we dust off and dump awkwardly beside our sleek HDTV set-up whenever non-gaming people arrive at our door. Our gran, our nieces, other people who, taking the ties of family out of the equation, we’d rather shit our own faces off than spend any time with.
This controller is almost singularly to blame for the Wii's limited experiences.
Our Wii is a pariah. It is an object we have grown to detest. An object we don’t associate with fun times, but with the filling of awkward silences. It doesn’t matter what Nintendo does with the handheld market – no one could possibly argue that there at least, it has succeeded admirably and will continue to do so – in the pathologically depressing Nintendo-free TV-console future we’re anticipating, there is no coming back from where the Wii has driven us.
And that makes us sad.
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I share the same feelings. I believe they've done it right with Super Mario Galaxy and Mario Kart Wii this gen but, in general, I feel like they changed a lot from what they used to be. They never replaced Rare. That was a huge mistake.
The upcoming lineup is very promising though.
Pixel Art can be fun.
