A bunch of recent news updates have come out about the Wii, detailing much of the stuff everyone interested in the thing have been wondering about, including the release date (November 19), the price ($250) and what comes in the package (one Wiimote, one nunchuck attachment, Wii Sports). Also, some of the ‘notable’ launch games include: a whole bunch of Ubisoft shit, including the sword game, the Rayman thing and a bunch of ports; and just a few Nintendo first-party releases, including Excite Truck and Zelda. (Meanwhile, the Gamecube version of Zelda, which this Wii version is a port of, is being delayed until December 11, presumably to punish people who haven’t bought Wiis yet.) I haven’t got a list of Virtual Console releases yet, but I know that it includes some Sega and TG16 games, so that’s awesome.
If you were excited about the Wii, this stuff may be good news. But personally (and this is a personal blog, so I can ‘personally’ my ass off), I am less excited than ever about the Wii now, and pretty much put off of next-gen totally. That doesn’t mean I’m right and you’re (hypothetically) wrong. It just means that I’m cranky, probably. First, about the Wii:
- The Wii was supposed to be a cheap console. It is way less powerful than its competitors, and not that much more powerful than the Gamecube. The games look anywhere from sub-PS1 to Gamecube quality. Even for a console that ‘isn’t about the graphics’, most of the graphics on display have been unacceptable. Now, $250 is cheaper by $50 than the next available next-gen system (360 Core Pack) and fully $250 cheaper than the basic PS3 pack, but it is also $50 more than the Gamecube cost at launch. The Gamecube, which was technologically competitive with other systems. This is not good. For those of you with jobs, and friends, this isn’t a big deal. You can use the money from your jobs to buy the thing, and enjoy Wii Sports with your friends. But this does nothing for us broke shut-ins.
- Wii Sports looks sort of entertaining, but it definitely doesn’t seem to be $50 worth of entertainment. If that’s how Nintendo chooses to justify the price, I’m not going to accept it. I’d rather have a $200 console and pay the $50 for Zelda (which I won’t do anyway, but I’ll get to that later.)
- Should you decide to buy some extra controllers, maybe in order to emulate all the PR photos of hipsters and old people standing in front of couches posing wildly, well, I’m sorry: extra Wiimotes cost forty damn dollars, plus an extra $20 for one of the nunchuk analog stick doodads. Again, not so big a deal for you employed types, especially those of you going into engineering “fill my pockets” type positions. But again, it just reinforces my feelings that I shouldn’t have hobbies.
- FUCKING ZELDA. I’m not terribly excited about the Wii controls for Zelda (mimicking swordy and bowy motions with the controller, etc.), and I think that original Wii games will benefit more from the unique controller than traditional games will. However, that is not the reason that I hate the Wii version of Twilight Princess! The real reason is that its release has caused the Gamecube version to be delayed, first, until the Wii launch, and then most recently until December 11. I have waited years for this shit! Another, weirder reason is that Wii Zelda will be backwards. In order to match the Wii control scheme they came up with, they mirrored everything to make Link right-handed. The whole game. If they really did this, then I’d kind of like to play them one after another, just to play the same game with all the maps flipped. Weird. And kind of dumb.
Okay, I think that’s all I have to say about the Wii. There’s some really, really hilarious stuff about the PS3 and X360 coming out of the Tokyo Game Show right now, and by ‘hilarious’ of course I mean ‘sickening’, but I’m kind of tired. I’ll post on that soon.
