Wii remember
I haven't been blogging in ages. And to be honest, it feels kind of weird to restart now, since the internet is in a weird place. To say the least.
Not too long ago, I had a Twitter-Account with a good number of followers. But as that site has become an eternal hellscape, I decided to move away from it. I'm very happy on Mastodon now, where I came up with this very blog project.
Since doing large threads can be a huge hassle on that site, I decided to give this space a go. Bear with me as I get a hang of it.
In this blog, I am going to focus on my personal experience with the Nintendo Wii – from launch to death. I will limit myself to the games I got during their release window (around two months of their release). Between 2012 and 2016 I bought many more Wii games used and built a big selection and I will for sure dive into some obscure games in other blogposts. But for now, I’m mostly trying to retell my experience of the system as it was back in those times.
Please note that I also owned a 360, Nintendo DS and gaming PC at the time. Even if I considered my Wii my most important machine back then, the sad truth was that I didn’t use it all the time. There were dry spells, and they were significant. But that did not take away from my overall enjoyment of the system. I am also including WiiWare and Virtual Console games, as I feel these were essential for the experience back then.
Before I go into the start of the Wii, I want to first talk about how hype was building up back then. The Nintendo Gamecube was my first console that I bought with my own money. That was a huge thing as a teen, since that meant it was wholly my console that I had to share with absolutely nobody. However, the selection of games, all above the JRPGs, was kind of lacklustre.
So, I was very much looking forward to what Nintendo would do with that new console they called “Revolution”. When the new name became public in April 2006, my enthusiasm did not drop. Watching the E3 2006 show of Nintendo, which was my first E3 I saw live, reinforced my hype: While I wasn’t a Zelda fan and still aren’t to this day, I was looking forward to playing this one. And Red Steel looked so awesome!
The announcement of the Virtual Console was also a big deal for me. I’m a huge sucker for backwards compatibility. And a system that is compatible with the Gamecube and offers downloads of retro games was absolutely blowing my mind back then. There was this promise of a machine that would bring together all the consoles I enjoyed in the past. And even some I missed out on, like the Turbografx-16, that never saw a full-scale release in Europe.
So, launch day rolled around and I tried to muster up as much money as possible for it. I was able to get the console with Wii sports, a second controller with Wii Play and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The last game here was a tough choice: I’m no Zelda Fan, but Red Steel did not seem meaty enough for me, so I initially skipped it, to get it used about a month later. Anyway, let’s focus on December 2006 for now.
Wii Sports and Wii Play were fun games, especially at get togethers. Before the launch of the Wii, I used to travel with my Gamecube to friends’ places to play games together. This continued with the Wii and these two games were fun for a while. I was really sold on the gimmick from the get-go, so it did not take a lot of convincing for me to get on board. But I very quickly had enough of it and moved on.
The game I played the most when I was alone at home was of course The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Now, as I have mentioned before, I am not a big fan of Zelda. They are fine by me, but they never manage to hype me, and I only ever played a couple of them. In fact, Twilight Princess was the first game in the franchise I really sat down to play. And I sure completed it in December 2016. It was fun, very atmospheric, and quite engaging. It was also an experience I have a lot of trouble remembering now. Unlike other Wii games, I never revisited Twilight Princess and the most lasting impression I got from it was… moods. Which is fine, really, but I sometimes feel like I’m missing something, when it comes to this franchise. Maybe it has something to do with me getting into it so late, but the same holds true for Metroid and I love that franchise. However, the novel thing the Wii brought to the table and that was later dubbed “waggle controls” is something I really enjoyed. I felt that it gave me a bit more immersion. That sounds silly looking back, but I still think that motion controls can greatly improve your experience. If the implementation is done well, of course.
The other game I got early, but used, was Red Steel. This game was very hyped, and we got an early look of it during the summer, when gaming magazines dedicated a lot of pages to the game and pretty much filled them with bullshots. The screenshots still look leagues better than the finished game. It wasn’t ugly by the standards back then but failed to live up to the hype. Add to the fact that it was a generic game in terms of mechanics, and you see why so many have pretty much forgotten about it. I for one dug the atmosphere, as I am a sucker for Japanese aesthetics. I also enjoyed the First-Person Shooter controls, that were generally panned. What I didn’t enjoy that much were the swordplay mechanics, which were mediocre at best back then. I replayed this game to completion three times, one last time about five years ago. And while its many flaws have become way more apparent, I still hold a special place for it in my heart.
While these two games alone would be enough to keep me busy, I also got Donkey Kong Country and Golden Axe on the Virtual Console. I used to play Donkey Kong Country as a young teen at a friend’s place. I did not own a Super Nintendo back then, as I jumped from NES to Mega Drive, but I was always interested in this game. Finally getting it digitally for what I considered a low price was a huge deal for me. I played it a lot, but never finished it. Which is fine, but I still plan on returning to it at some point.
Golden Axe has a little personal story too. The only arcade around during my teenage years was at a cinema and they had a machine with Golden Axe on it. I got hypnotized by the attract mode of that game: the fantasy setting was a huge draw for me, and I usually enjoy Beat’em ups. After buying it, I did my best to finish it. And while that was enjoyable enough, with the crunchy music and sound effects and all that Beat’em Up goodness, I also enjoyed playing it with friends. It’s not the best of its kind out there, not even on the Mega Drive, but we played so many sessions of that game over the years.
And this already concludes 2006 and December 2006. For my next post, I will be skipping to May 2007, so stay tuned for that.