Well, I took my son up to GameStop to use up the rest of his birthday giftcard and was pleased that the store’s Wii demo system was up and running with a Samsung display. The game that was running was “Excite Truck”, which seems like an odd combination of 4×4 Evolution and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. It’s not just about racing, but about grabbing bonuses and hitting certain objectives while you race, almost like performing tricks in a skateboarding game. The more objectives you hit, the faster your truck goes, and so forth. Very cool. The graphics were on par with any modern racer, but what I really liked about it was the controls. Instead of steering your truck with a joystick or directional pad, you hold the wand-shaped controller sideways and tilt it left and right, like a steering wheel. This alone made the experience interesting, though my son and I only played for about five minutes each. Oddly, I was able to come in first place on my first attempt. I say “oddly” because I’m not usually very good at racing games. But overall, based on this limited experience with the Wii, I think the machine has some real promise, and Excite Truck seems like a lot of fun. Incidentally, the store was out of Wiis (out of PS3s too).
There’s always been something about Nintendo and their games. There’s a sense of quality and concern for the gamer that exists in Nintendo’s software that the other consoles just can’t touch. Think about Zelda, Mario, and Donkey Kong. Think about Metroid. Think about kart racing. Genres and franchises that are accessible to all players young and old. And they all have one thing in common: Nintendo created them.
(A grab from the newest Zelda game, for the Wii.)
Maybe it’s just me, but fight-em-ups, horror survival titles, and first-person shooters, which are plentiful on non-Nintendo platforms, just don’t have the pure fun value of a Nintendo platformer or racer. Why do I suppose that is? I look at how my family spends its entertainment time. Now, I very rarely get a chance to play a game, and when I do, it’s usually World of Warcraft. So, the fact that I’m actually excited about the Nintendo Wii (that’s Nintendo’s new console, pronounced “we”, by the way) is very telling. So is the fact that my kids, who have both a PS2 and a Nintendo DS, have gradually migrated away from the PS2 toward the Nintendo portable. About the only time they dust off the PS2 is to play Battlefront (Star Wars mania runs rampant in our household). And if Battlefront ran on the DS, something tells me they’d never have a reason to power up the old slate-black PS2 any more.
Why? What’s the appeal of Nintendo. For starters, the games are accessible. Most games have simple controls that don’t take a 15-minute tutorial level to understand. Left, right, up, down, action1, action2–Nintendo games tend to be self-explanatory. This allows younger (and older) audiences to get into Nintendo faster than they would a PS2. Now granted, there are certain cross-console franchises that have crappy, overcomplicated controls no matter what (Madden comes to mind, so does Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series), but on average, the games bearing the Nintendo logo are just easier to play (not defeat, mind you).
(One of the games that comes with Wii is a tennis game.
It allows you to hold and swing your Wii controller
like a tennis racket.)
And I think this is the clutch idea behind the Nintendo Wii. Nintendo is smart enough to realize that they probably can’t grow their slice of the pie by competing directly against the technologically superior Playstation 3 or the entrenched XBox 360, both of which have better onboard gear than the Wii. Nintendo is taking a different tack: convert non-gamers into gamers by making a gaming experience that is immediately accessible and broadly appealing. Hmm, sounds like a great idea. After all (and I’ve argued this before, having played some gorgeous but uninspiring RPGs on the PS2), it’s better to truly have fun than to look like you’re having fun.
It seems that at least some of you agree. I recently had a poll on my site, where you could pick your favorite next-gen console–the XBox 360, the Wii, or the PS3. Six-to-1, you picked the Wii. It doesn’t have blu-ray or HD like the PS3, and it doesn’t have Halo like the Xbox 360. But what it does have is unique:
The Controllers
Nintendo is breaking the rules of console control with the introduction of its WiiMote, the de-facto controller for Wii games. It is shaped like a remote control wand, and can be swung around in the air to simulate in-game motions. It can also be held sideways to simulate an old-school control-pad. Driving games will benefit from the tilt-sensivity of the wand when it is used in this fashion. Remember watching your friends tilt the controller while rolling into a tight turn in Outrun or Pole Position? Now, that tilt will actually do something. Nintendo is also offering the Nunchuck controller, which provides an analog joystick. In addition, the WiiMote has a built-in-speaker (which adds a whole realm of possibilities) and can vibrate (unlike the PS3′s new controller).
The best thing about the controller setup? Each controller has a light indicating which player it belongs to–no more “who’s got player 1, who’s got player 2″. Oh yeah, and the controllers are wireless. So you’ll be completely untethered to toss that virtual bowling ball and swing that virtual sword.
The Console
Not much larger than hardcover book, the Wii console allows you to connect Gamecube controllers and even plays Gamecube games. In the rear are USB ports, and Nintendo has already let it slip that, in addition to the Wii’s built-in WiFi, you’ll be able to obtain a wired Ethernet adapter to plug in here. And considering the rumor that the Wii runs a form of Linux, count on keyboard and mouse support to surface soon, too.
The Extras
The Wii is also the most Internet-aware console to date. It offers several net-leveraging applications, which Nintendo calls Channels. These include a weather forecast channel (no more waiting for Local on the 8′s?), a “Mii” channel, which allows users to create a cartoonish caricature that will appear across many Wii titles, as well as be used to interact on Nintendo’s new online game matching service, WiiConnect24. Nintendo is even throwing in a (RSS-based, I suspect) news channel that lets you build a personal news portal. Then there’s the Virtual Console Channel, which lets you download any previous-generation Nintendo console game, as well as any Sega game or Turbografx game, and play it on your Wii. Pretty. Cool. Stuff.
(Double Dragon from the old Sega Master
System–download and run on the Wii.)
Too bad I can’t download and play Lemmings or Shadow of the Best. Maybe that will come next year. Say, why hasn’t Amiga licensed their ROM images to Nintendo? There are 5,000 awesome Amiga games worth playing on the Wii…
The Web
For the first time, living-room web browsing is actually realistic, or so I’m told. The Wii is going to come with Opera, the web browser. With the point-and-click capability of the WiiMote, this should be practical. Let’s just hope YouTube is compatible.
The Price and the Verdict
Nintendo has hit the $249 price point, and unlike Sony, which is going to sell its top-end PS3 for $600 at a loss, and Microsoft, which has never made money selling Xboxes, will actually see operational earnings as soon as Wiis start shipping on November 19. I think this says a lot. (Pre-orders start tomorrow, October 13.) Though its IBM PowerPC is (far) less powerful than the PS3′s behemoth (and in short supply) Cell processor, I think it’s safe to say that Nintendo realizes that it isn’t processing power that sells games. It’s fun.
W00t!
Yes, for those of you who might not be privvy, I grew up in Detroit and one of my most cherished memories was the Tigers defeating the Padres in the 1984 World Series. Here we go again!
Reign in the powerbrokers. Produce better content at a lower cost. Increase the amount of quality content. Fight the power. Empower more content producers to succeed. Sound like Web 2.0? Sounds like George Lucas.
During my support call with Comcast, my cell phone cut out, disconnecting the call after 26 minutes of “reboot your modem” and “it must be your router”. Grrr..
ted-wallingfords-computer-2:~ ted$ ping www.yahoo.com
PING www.yahoo-ht2.akadns.net (209.73.186.238): 56 data bytes
…
— www.yahoo-ht2.akadns.net ping statistics —
92 packets transmitted, 39 packets received, 57% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 24.525/27.098/60.377/5.501 ms
It’s been like this for WEEKS.
