Two recent realizations have put me in a nostalgic mood. First, I covered my first press event for new Nintendo hardware by going to the Nintendo Switch unveiling. That along with going to E3 for the first time last year has made my games journalist bucket list much shorter. I also remembered that last November was the 10th anniversary of the Nintendo Wii, the massively successful motion-controlled system between Nintendo’s GameCube slump and its Wii U slump. I then started thinking about just how much the console meant to me as a developing gaming enthusiast. So I decided to write those thoughts down.
If you’ve read any cover letter of mine you’ll know my earliest gaming memories are playing the Super Nintendo, the best game console of all time, with my older sister in the early 1990s. Sorry to make anyone feel old but it’s the truth. The Super Nintendo is such a default gaming console to me that I used to call the NES the lowly “regular Nintendo.” From there I played the N64, GameCube, various Game Boys, any PC with StarCraft installed, and even a PlayStation or Xbox from time to time. I’ve always enjoyed video games.
However, I wouldn’t call myself a Hardcore Gamer ™ until about 2003. That’s when I started paying attention to gaming industry news and reading gaming magazines. RIP GMR and EBGames. That’s when I realized a games journalist was a real job a person could have, setting me down my current ridiculous path. The Nintendo DS was the first piece of gaming tech I became aware of before it was officially revealed. E3 2004 was the first E3 I ever watched. Once it came out, I bought exponentially more games for the dual-screened handheld compared to past systems. It had an amazing library, but I was also that much more into video games. And with the Wii, it was the first time I was truly hyped for a console. I could not wait for that thing to launch.
It may sound strange, but the Wii was the only video game console I had throughout Generation 7. Don’t get me wrong. The Xbox 360 was a great system that lived a long life and had a lot of great games. The same applies to the PlayStation 3 (after it stopped costing $600). I always tried to keep up with news surrounding those systems, especially once I decided to make this journalism thing work. I totally admit my choice to only own a Wii kept me from playing some fantastic games at a time, and since then I’ve gone back to try and play most of them. However, I also think that choice to grow up with nothing but a Wii had a peculiar but ultimately positive impact on my growth as a gaming enthusiast overall.
I’ll say it again. I love video games. But the larger gaming community has some issues, especially if you enter it as the nerdy and passive aggressive teen boy I could have easily become at the time. For as diverse and strange and whimsical games can be, especially during their formative years, gamers can be prone to rigid dogma and oppressive groupthink. There’s a conservatism to games culture (not necessarily political but not necessarily not politically based on the dark events of 2014) that disappoints me. Its pitfalls trap a lot of ill-informed kids.
However, by only having a Wii, I think I avoided adopting a lot of misguided gamer priorities. This wasn’t my goal. I was just a Nintendo fan. But it did happen, and I’m grateful. I’m glad I don’t think a system’s sheer power is its only worthwhile attribute, that a game like Super Mario Galaxy, Punch-Out!!, Kirby’s Epic Yarn, or Okami can be beautiful and fantastic even if it doesn’t feature the most technically advanced visuals. I’m glad I don’t think “casual gamers” are some existential threat to a true hardcore gaming way of life. I’m glad I don’t want to create arbitrary barriers blocking people who may want to get into video games because they don’t care about “my games.” I’m glad I don’t hate motion controls and don’t see traditional dual-analog stick controllers as the perfect final form of video game controllers. I’m glad I value creative experimentation with the ways we play games and not just the games themselves. And I’m glad that because I grew up reading and disagreeing with so many hardcore folks who were convinced positive Wii experiences like mine were invalid, I don’t fall in lockstep with the rest of gaming culture, a culture that isn’t always correct.
Most importantly, I’m glad I got to play a lot of neat games. The Wii had a ton of games. That’s what happens when you sell 100 million consoles. Many of those games were very bad, but some were also very good, you just had to be willing to dig. So dig I did, and in the process of reading countless reviews and news stories about promising upcoming Wii games, I became even more engrossed in the world of games journalism my future career. The big, high-quality Nintendo games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl (the only game I ever camped out for) and Metroid Prime 3 were hard to miss, but I also played countless neat, B-level, under-the-radar games for Wii and even downloadable WiiWare games.Rabbids Go Home justifies the rest of the annoying, Minions-esque franchise with its European answer to Katamari Damacy’s Japanese absurdity. Red Steel 2 was the actually cool gunslinger/swordfighter combo the first game wanted to be. Deadly Creatures lets you play as a dang scorpion and sting Dennis Hopper in the crotch. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories features some of the best storytelling of the series. House of the Dead: Overkill is my favorite rail-shooter. Game of the Year Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People debuted on WiiWare as did the charming city-building game Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King. NBA Jam got a fantastic Wii revival. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is the crossover Marvel vs. Capcom 3 should have been. Boom Blox proves Steven Spielberg maybe understands games as much as he understands film. No More Heroes is an artistic statement. Between discs, downloads, and the Virtual Console, I have nearly 100 Wii games. So I could make this list four times as long, but you get the point.
These days my tastes are now more aligned with the larger gaming culture. I have an Xbox One and a PC as well as this job covering gaming in general. Ironically enough, that’s left me with less time to actually play games, so I’m not diving quite as deep as frequently trying to find cool games no one is paying attention to. But I still have a healthy skepticism of gaming industry norms and accepted truths I think comes directly from growing up a hardcore gamer with just a Wii. I think it made me a better gamer and a better games writer. Maybe somewhere right now there’s a kid with just a Wii U who is learning the same lessons.
[Source:-Geek]
