Wii Love

An article by Brad    No Comments

Being a 31 year old father of two who works five days a week, my time is limited. Between television, sports, reading, writing and blogging, the amount of time I can allot to video game playing is minimal. but I make sure I find a couple of hours here and there because, well, I am a male and I grew up playing video games. I love ‘em, and lord knows, if I didn’t have a family and I didn’t have kids, I would love to spend more mindless time playing.

That all being said, when i purchased a next-gen console two years ago, I had a choice to make. i already have a PSP and DS, and there is always something to play between those two systems. So I knew that I would only be able to buy 1 system. So which one would it be? I chose the Wii.

Now, to a lot of you out there, that may seem silly. As an adult, shouldn’t I value the technical and graphical superiority of the Xbox 360 and PS3? Of course that was an issue. I bought Madden ’09 for the Wii, and when compared to the PS3 and 360, the graphics were awful (though I did enjoy the motion controls). And of course each system has their own franchise games that i can not enjoy on the Wii: God of War, Gears of War, Ratchet and Clank, Halo… and those are but a few examples. And I will miss not playing them.

But I am a child of the 80′s. I grew up playing Mario. And Zelda. And Metroid. And when decision time finally came, I asked myself, “Which games do you really want to play?” And you know what? I wanted to play Super Mario Galaxy. And Twilight Princess.  And Metroid Prime Corruption. And I don’t regret my decision one bite. Video games to me are everything about nostalgia. And don;t get me wrong; if these games sucked, I wouldn’t be playing hem. But Mario Galaxy is one of the bets games ever made, and there is a sequel on the way. Both Metroid prime: Corruption and Twilight Princess were great, and there’s just soothing about the music, something about the characters, that brings you back to a simpler time. And, like Galaxy, both of these games are getting sequels sometime.

But you can’t build a system on a handful of games, and I will admit that the other systems may have more non-first tier games than Nintendo, and more of the games are better. I won’t deny that. But the fact is, Mario Galaxy had such great replay value that I played it for four months, and both Metroid and Zelda were long, engrossing games.

And the Wii does have some other games that are of high quality and can fill in the time between these first tier games: Boom Blox, Punch Out, Super Smash Brothers, Zak and Wiki. And many of the cross-console games reach the Wii, though the graphics and controls are often inferior. But the fact is, there is enough on the Wii to keep an old fart like me entertained, and nothing brings me back to those good old days like watching Mario and Link and Samus save the world.

I won’t deny the pure superiority of the other consoles. i won;t deny that they have more, and in many cases, better games. But for someone with limited time who grew up fighting Ganon and Mother Brain and King Koopa, the Wii is enough for me

Hopefully Nintendo will remember Kid Icarus and Starfox and bring quality games to the Wii based on these franchises soemtime soon.

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