Five years of the Nintendo Wii

Join Michael Spada in the second part of this two-part series as two of the three current generation consoles celebrate their fifth birthdays.

“You will say wow.”

In 2005, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata told us that we would say “wow” when we saw the Nintendo Wii, then called the Nintendo Revolution. And we were promised just that – a revolution in the way we play videogames.

Five years ago today, the Nintendo Wii was released in America. Are we still saying “wow?” Did we ever? Let’s take a look back at the most successful and polarising five years in Nintendo’s illustrious history.

The launch

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata

I still remember driving by a Toys R Us around midnight in early November 2006. I saw a line outside the door of people waiting for the store to open the following day, to preorder the upcoming Nintendo Wii. A line for a preorder? If I didn’t get in that line right now, it’d be months, maybe even years, before I got my hands on a console I was highly anticipating. My girlfriend and I made the quick decision to pull over and wait in line.

The night was brutal. We didn’t have any blankets or even sweatshirts, it was below freezing, and worst of all, daylight savings time was coming to an end that very night. One extra hour in the freezing death weather. We were 17^th in line, and only 19 preorders were available, so all night we dealt with people trying to cut in line, watching late families crumble at their last chance slipping through their fingers, and lots of horrible discussions with smug, elitist gamers. When the store finally opened and the rush began, I could tell this console was going to be something special.

Nintendo was promising us that videogames would change forever, that the Wii’s motion sensing controller would bring us a level of immersion never before seen in videogames. But people were skeptical well before the console’s launch – the hardware had barely more power than the original Xbox, it lacked a hard drive, there was no high definition support, and the thing couldn’t even play DVDs. Nintendo was hiding in the past worse than ever before. After the Nintendo 64 and GameCube lagged behind in the previous two generations of console wars, many people feared that Nintendo was on its way out with the Wii. Motion control looked like nothing more than a gimmick to many; it seemed it was just not enough to keep up with Microsoft and Sony’s competing consoles.

What ended up happening was something much, much different – the Wii became a cultural phenomenon.

A console for (almost) everyone

Even your mum liked the Wii

For the first time in over a decade, videogames were mainstream again. EVERYONE wanted a Wii. It was sold out in stores worldwide for months, even years in some places. The appeal of the pack-in sports compilation, Wii Sports, was enough to sell the console to millions. The Wii was being featured on every morning show, late-night show, and news program, being touted as a game system that anyone could play due to the simplicity of the gestures motion-control gaming allowed. To its credit, Wii Sports was both fun and something new and exciting at the time, but no one thought it would break cultural and societal boundaries like it did.

What’s more is that it actually became therapeutic for many. The Wii was being placed in rehabilitation clinics to help people regain motor skills and hand-eye coordination. It was brought to retirement homes across the world to keep senior citizens alert and their brains active. People missing an arm could finally play a videogame one-handed. The joy and fun of videogames was being spread to people who simply could not enjoy videogames before. People who brushed games off as something for kids or just outright dumb were now lining up to get in a round of virtual golf. Videogames had never been more accepted by society. Nintendo’s strategy to get everyone playing videogames was a resounding success.

Well, almost. There was one crowd that rejected the Wii and everything it stood for – the “hardcore” gamer.

Hardcore vs. casual

Nintendo had found its first huge success since the Super Nintendo. The Nintendo 64 and GameCube, while great systems, were the first signs of Nintendo falling behind the times and fast. With the Wii, instead of trying to keep up with the competition, Nintendo decided to take a detour and do its own thing. And it worked. Really, really, super well.

With everyone and, literally, their mother, enjoying the Wii and everything it had to offer, many people in the gaming community felt betrayed. Their precious videogames – their secret subculture that no one else deserved to be part of – were gaining loads of mainstream acceptance and appreciation. The gamers who had supported Nintendo through the awkward teenage years of the Nintendo 64 and the depressing years of the GameCube felt betrayed by Nintendo.

The idea of being betrayed by a company is really dumb. But people felt that way. “They don’t care about the hardcore gamer!” “They’re making games that appeal to grandmas!” “Where are the real games?!” It was insane! What they didn’t understand is that Nintendo is a business, and wanted money to continue being a business. The strategy of creating a product to appeal to the widest range of people was incredibly smart and very effective. Nintendo was putting out games that everyone could enjoy and play, without the complexities of a bunch of analog sticks and buttons.

The “hardcore” crowd of gamers were furious that other people liked their favourite pastime, but they neglected the fact that they were still being catered to. They just didn’t want to share.

The library

Despite the rage of the “betrayed,” there was still a relatively steady stream of more traditional games coming out for the Wii throughout its entire lifespan. Sure, there were a lot of so-called “casual” titles coming out, mini-game compilations like Carnival Games and Deca Sports, but every single one of Nintendo’s franchises were represented on the Wii, and in top form.

Nintendo has been beloved since the 1980s for its wonderful and varied series of games, ranging from action titles to platformers to sports games. With the Wii, every single major Nintendo franchise was represented with games that could be considered the best in their respective series. Mario showed up with Super Mario Galaxy and its sequel, games that took the best aspects of every Mario game and melded them together for a perfect pair of experiences. The Legend of Zelda series helped launch the Wii with Twilight Princess, and is, tomorrow, helping the Wii go out in style with Skyward Sword. The Metroid Prime trilogy ended on the Wii, and a more traditional Metroid experience came out a bit later, with Metroid: Other M. Kirby had two fantastic Wii outings, with the gorgeous Kirby’s Epic Yarn and the more traditional Kirby’s Return to Dreamland. Punch-Out received its first entry since the Super Nintendo with the addictive and cleverly named Punch-Out. And of course, Rare’s classic Donkey Kong Country series made its long-awaited return with Retro Studios’, well, Donkey Kong Country Returns. That’s not even all of them!

Super Mario Galaxy 2 alone justifies the existence of the Wii. Everything else is either delicious or poo-flavoured icing on the small white cake. Just make sure you cut the right piece.

And while third party support started dwindling with the Nintendo 64 and nearly disappeared with the GameCube, the mainstream success of the Wii forced the hands of many who had abandoned Nintendo with a range of good to excellent titles. Sega brought Sonic on board with two lackluster “Storybook” games, but redeemed themselves endlessly with Sonic Colours. Supreme weirdo Suda 51 brought adult humor and excessive violence with the No More Heroes series. Capcom delivered the Resident Evil series to the Wii with the definitive version of Resident Evil 4, as well as the Chronicles light-gun rail shooters. Many other companies, like Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Activision, and Harmonix brought top titles to the Wii, giving them more support than ever before.

Unfortunately, the Wii brought along a very bad trend in games as well – shovelware.

Shovelware is a term used to describe low-budget, quickly tossed together, buggy garbage games that are sold at deceptively low prices to fool dumb parents. The Wii got a record number of truly horrendous games that almost looked like practical jokes on disc. Do a YouTube search for Action Girlz Racing, Monster Trux Arenas, the Kidz Sports series, or any other game that doesn’t understand plural nouns, and you’ll think someone that failed game design school was trolling the internet. These unresponsive nightmares were put together with no passion or proper craftsmanship, and flooded bargain bins worldwide, waiting for unsuspecting parents to think they’d be bringing their darling children home a cheap thrill. Nope.

While the bad heavily outweighed the good in terms of sheer numbers, the Wii still ended up having some of the greatest games of not just this generation, but all time. Super Mario Galaxy 2 alone justifies the existence of the Wii. Everything else is either delicious or poo-flavoured icing on the small white cake. Just make sure you cut the right piece.

The digital library

Target Toss Pro: Bags - as good as it sounds

One of the biggest selling points of the Wii from the outset was its Virtual Console. Promising downloadable classics from the Nintendo Entertainment System all the way up to the Nintendo 64, the Virtual Console seemed like a gift from above. Not only that, but games from non-Nintendo consoles were going to be made available as well, like the Sega Genesis and the TurboGrafx-16. What sounded like a godsend, though, felt like pulling teeth.

The Virtual Console launched with a couple of staples of the NES, like Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong, but quickly turned into an incredibly questionable series of releases. While it makes sense from a business standpoint to spread out all the big hits over time (and they did that to the extreme) a lot of their releases in the interim just didn’t make sense. For example, they released the Sega Master System version of Sonic the Hedgehog two years after the superior and proper Sega Genesis version. Or what about the FIVE different versions of Street Fighter II released, three of which were on the Super Nintendo? Meanwhile, classics like Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island and Donkey Kong 64 are absent five years after the launch of the Virtual Console.

Even more disappointing than the Virtual Console’s slow rise to greatness was WiiWare, the Wii’s answer to Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network’s library of original digital titles. Like the Virtual Console, the greatness was few and far between, only moreso. There was truly only a handful of stellar WiiWare titles, with the rest being shovelware that made Ninjabread Man look like perfection. We may have gotten Cave Story and the Bit.Trip series, but we also got games with hilariously embarrassing titles like Family & Friends Party, Girlfriends Forever: Magic Skate, and Target Toss Pro: Bags. Games that were just not very good. And horribly overpriced.

With all this garbage, Nintendo never really got a shot at competing with the digital library of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. And there was a good reason for that.

Nintendo doesn’t know what the internet is

Nintendo doesn’t know what the internet is. At all. You can argue for days about how dumb they were to not include HD, or a hard drive, or DVD playback, or graphics better than the GameCube, but their lack of online support is easily the biggest piece of proof that Nintendo is just out of their minds. While Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network had simple, streamlined, username-based systems for their online services, Nintendo… well, didn’t.

The Wii was connected to the internet, sure. But that’s about where the good ideas stopped. They bragged about WiiConnect 24/7, a way for your Wii to constantly be online to receive the latest updates and always stay connected. What that meant was a firmware update every eight months. And messages from friends. How did you get friends, you ask? Sending them a friend request? Of course not! FRIEND CODES. Friend codes were a lengthy, elaborate 12-number code that you had on your Wii to exchange with other friends. But in order for you to be pals, you each had to add each other’s friend codes for it to work.

You’d think that, hey, we’re friends on the Wii after entering twelve numbers each. Let’s play Mario Kart online together! Not that simple. Every single game had its own individual friend code as well. A friend code for every game! Twelve miserable numbers, exchanged on both ends, separated you from playing a game with a buddy online. It was unbelievably backwards, considering Microsoft mastered online gaming with the ORIGINAL Xbox.

With the basics screwed up, communication was horrible as well. Voice chat was nonexistent for most online games, until the Wii Speak was released in 2008. Used for only a handful of online compatible games, the Wii Speak was a unit placed on top of your television that captured the audio of the entire room. Kind of weird, but very Nintendo. And of course, it only worked with people you shared friend codes with.

That wasn’t the only peripheral to present itself on the Wii, though, not by a longshot.

Peripherals and accessories

Nothing is worse than a third party peripheral or accessory. Dating back to my own childhood experiences, getting a controller for your Sega Genesis that doesn’t fit into the controller port with Bega Benesis written in Comic Sans on it was never a pleasant experience. For whatever reason, companies like Mad Catz and Nyko rarely seemed to get it and put out these weird, warped, or entirely unnecessary peripherals and accessories for the Wii.

Things like charge stations and cheap alternatives to the sensor bar made perfect sense, sure. But what about fake tennis rackets to plug your controller into for purely cosmetic reasons? Or maraca tops for Samba de Amigo? And yes, those wings pictured above are real, and no, I have no idea what they’re supposed to do besides alienate you from everyone you know. The peripherals and accessories for the Wii were ludicrous, coming out months before the console launched and still flooding electronics stores across the world. The worst part is, they’re clearly making money, because they’re still around and probably won’t go anywhere long after the Wii is dead, like the cockroaches of the videogame world that they are. What a disaster.

Nintendo themselves, like with games, seemed to be the only ones that got peripherals right. The classic controller is the shining example, a traditional controller that allows the standard face button/dual analog stick control scheme of their competition for games that support it, as well as Virtual Console releases. The Wii Speak, mentioned above, was relatively competent if you don’t take its uselessness into consideration. And the Wii Fit balance board was a great accessory for Nintendo’s weight loss game, an impressive piece of technology that can not only weigh you but detect your balance as well. And then, of course, they released the Wii Vitality Sensor, a device that detects your heartbeat and – okay, maybe we’ll stop while we’re ahead.

Is it over?

Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime

Here we are, five years after the launch of the Wii. Nintendo has had its biggest success possibly ever with the motion-controlled delight, but lost a lot of faithful followers. The ones that stuck around, though, were treated to some of the greatest games in Nintendo’s incredible history, as well as some truly unique one-off experiences that can only be done with motion controls.

There’s no doubt, though, that Nintendo choked multiple times during its biggest run. It’s almost like the lead in a goofy comedy movie, constantly stumbling and fumbling their way into success. No one would ever believe a technologically inferior console with a wildly different control interface and a reluctance to step into the modern times would sell more than its sleek, modern competition, but that’s exactly what happened.

The Wii, while greatly flawed in many ways, captured the imaginations of close to 100 million people. Jaded “hardcore” gamers may turn up their nose at the Wii, but they’re the ones missing out on some spectacular gems. I’ve always said of this generation that the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 are largely the same, while the Wii is a vastly different experience from the two. That’s either a great thing or a terrible thing, depending on what you want.

But was president Iwata right? Absolutely. I’ve said “wow” a number of times. “Wow, this is one of the greatest videogames I’ve ever played.” “Wow, Nintendo has no idea what people want.” “Wow, Nintendo has introduced videogames to people who never would have played them.” “Wow, that is the goofiest peripheral I have ever seen in my life.”

Most importantly, though, I said: “Wow, after all these years and through all the insanity, Nintendo still knows how to make people happy.”