In 2006, Nintendo did something that only Nintendo could do — they released a mainline console that was entirely built around motion controls. And everyone said, “What… Why?”
Fair point. But it didn’t stop the Wii from becoming one of the fastest-selling consoles of all time, so much so that were massive supply issues on release. Everyone and their dog wanted a Wii and even Nintendo couldn’t keep up.
And yet, in the years following its release, the Wii has become something of a joke. It’s been called a console for “casuals” and kids — mocked for the motion controls and smashed TV screens. Today, the Wii lives more in infamy than anything else.
The motion controls were pretty good actually
Motion controls have become fairly commonplace nowadays, with Nintendo in particular investing a lot into them even now. But that wasn’t always the case. Outside of sub-par plug-and-play Star Wars games, motion controls weren’t a thing until the Wii came along.
Dismissed by many as a gimmick, the Wii was built around motion controls. It was unlike any mainstream console that had come before and changed the gaming landscape overnight.
No longer were video games about sitting on the couch and passively pressing buttons. With the release of the Wii, games became a different beast. Now you had to stand up, move about, and swing the funny little controller around like a madman. A lot of people didn’t like it but you can’t deny that it was different.
And guess what — the Wii’s motion controls were actually pretty good! Although they weren’t doing anything crazy, the motion tracking was smooth and responsive and you always felt like an active participant in the game.
It took PlayStation and Xbox another four (!) years to come out with their own motion control-based systems in the PlayStation Move and Kinect, and let’s be real, they both sucked.
Go ahead and name a single game that came out for the PS Move. It’s fine, we’ll wait. And let’s not even start on the bizarre Orwellian nightmare that the Kinect became.
The Wii did it first and it did it right.
Three words: Super Mario Galaxy
Is Super Mario Galaxy 2 the best Mario game ever? We can’t say for sure (the answer is yes though).
Coming out hot on the heels of the Wii release in 2007, the first Mario Galaxy completely switched the Mario formula up. Based around small planetoids with wacky perspectives, gravity-based puzzles, and a bunch of awesome platforming challenges, Galaxy was a blast from start to finish.
Then what did Nintendo do 3 years later? Oh yeah, they released a sequel that was better in Every. Single. Way. Seriously, Galaxy 2 took everything that the first game did well and turned it up to 11 (as long as you were forgiving of the storyline).
Galaxy 2’s levels were better, the groundbreaking gameplay had been polished to a gleaming shine, and Yoshi was in it! Super Mario Galaxy 2, in our humble opinion, is the best Mario game to date — a good contender for the best game ever — and was only possible due to the Wii.
Nunchuck is a dope name for a controller
That’s it. That’s the whole point.
Wii Sports was, is, and always will be an unrivaled masterpiece
… and we’ll give you one reason why: it shipped with the console, wtf?! Nintendo had no right to release a console completely different from anything we’d ever seen and bundle it together with a game unlike anything we’d ever played before. And yet they did.
Now, there is an argument to be made that it was more of a showcase of the motion controls than anything else but damn Nintendo, that was some showcase. It came with 5 sports — tennis, golf, baseball, bowling, and boxing — and each of them was a ton of fun to play.
The motion controls worked perfectly, the Miis were goofy and charming (more on them later), and the games themselves were the perfect balance of breezy fun and vicious competition. The intensity of a Wii Tennis rally is hard to rival in any video game and the thrill of a strike in Bowling was euphoric.
It might seem a bit lame, especially now with how technology has come on, but there wasn’t anything like it at the time. The feeling of being the one who had actually “thrown” the ball or “swung” the bat was immersive in a way that games hadn’t been up until that point.
Nintendo followed this up in 2009 with Wii Sports Resort which included 12 sports and was also ridiculously fun for everyone involved. But nothing has come close to the original Wii Sports. There’s a reason it’s still the biggest-selling single-platform game of all time.
The Mii Channel theme
As we’ve already mentioned, Miis were the best. They functioned as in-game avatars for Wii games like Wii Sports and Fit and also hung around on the menu of the Wii itself. They were funny, silly-looking, and customizable without being too lifelike and creepy.
But the thing that took Miis over the top was the music on the so-called “Mii Channel.” This was where you could design your Mii and watch as they chilled with all the other Miis on your console.
And the theme played in the background. Never stopping, never relenting, never making any sense. Who wrote it? Who approved it? Why? Questions we will never have the answers to. But who cares?
It’s become a bit of a meme now but for good reason. It’s catchy without being good and perplexing without being interesting. It rides a line somewhere between fantasy and existential horror and is destined to haunt us all from now until the end of time.
And with that, we wrap up our arguments for why the Wii deserved more love and respect.
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