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How the Wii U could have revolutionised console gaming

21 May

nintendo-wii-u-blackNintendo haven’t had a good time with the launch of the Wii U. I want to wear my colours on my sleeve straight away here and say I own one, I love it and I think as a console it should be getting the recognition it deserves for trying to do something different with the way we approach playing videogames. The truth is, it’s not. A lot of that is down to the lack of third part support in a gaming environment that requires and thrives on it; it’s disappointing to see developers and publishers drop the machine like a hot potato, although it’s not entirely unprecedented when it comes to Nintendo machines. It’s also down to Nintendo’s perceived family friendly image, bright and colourful games that could in no way be entertaining for a teen audience – of course this couldn’t be far from the truth, but modern gaming craves the thrill of the kill, something that a Nintendo machine rarely delivers.

But, these aren’t new issues for Nintendo; they’ve soldiered on over the years, pulling through the murky launch of the original Wii to have it become the best selling console of the last generation, as well as doing the same for the 3DS. They’re survivors, they produce high quality hardware and software and get the recognition they deserve from the people who know they deserve it.

The Wii U is a very capable system, probably not technically in line with Microsoft and Sony’s imminent consoles, but Nintendo could have done something dramatic that would have given the system a chance to be a real contender going forward.

The hook for the Wii U is the screen in the controller; sometimes this is used to display certain game elements, allowing for greater interaction. Most games also allow you to play the game in its entirety on this smaller screen, freeing you from the TV. And this is where Nintendo should have elaborated. The controller screen works by streaming a video signal from the console, and does not do any computation of its own. But what if it did? What if Nintendo had created the worlds first handheld/TV console hybrid? Wii U is an expensive console for what it is, but if the cost hadn’t shifted and Nintendo had perhaps housed the guts of the TV box inside the tablet, giving it enough on board flash memory to store games and saves, we could potentially have the first high end machine that you can play on your TV AND take with you, rather than having two devices like Sony tried to do with PS3 and Vita cross play.

It’s an intriguing thought and one that bears consideration. The Wii U is not a terrible console. But in an age when console gaming is seemingly becoming irrelevant, the three main hardware manufacturers need to step up their game to genuinely change the way we play. So far, none of them look to have done that, but Nintendo certainly had a chance.

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Nintendo Wii – a Retrospective

13 Nov

First off, sorry to any regular readers – personal and work stuff went into orbit these last months and I’ve been struggling to find time to update the blog. I’m going to try to write a bit more from now on! Okay, now I’ve finished chastising myself, on with the article!

At the end of the month in the UK, Nintendo will take a new step in the console market with the release of the Wii-U. The companies first HD console, it adds another new control scheme to the ever evolving way we play games, marrying touch gaming popularised by Apple’s iDevices with a more traditional twinstick layout. I’m getting one. I’m already planning my trip to the local midnight launch with some glee! But this article isn’t about the Wii-U; it’s about the machine it’s replacing – the Wii. The little console that could.

The original Wii was first unveiled in 2005 as the Revolution. It was something of an enigma, Nintendo promising a different way of playing but not yet revealing the controller (which, at the time, was ironing out a few bugs). By the system launched in 2006 (preceeded by the underperforming GameCube, which is still one of my favourite consoles of all time) the public had been shown the wandlike Wii Remote, a motion sensing stick with few buttons and an infra-red input, and the industry at large had decried the system as an immediate failure. Underpowered next to Microsoft and Sony’s offerings, with a simplified controller and a strong focus on casual, family friendly games, how could Nintendo’s new console possibly compete? It was the end for the former Japanese Giant!

Fast forward to 2012, in the run up to the launch of the Wii’s successor, and the console once “doomed to failure” has gone on to become the third best selling home console of all time, behind Sony’s behemoth’s the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles#Worldwide). So how did this happen?

The Controller

Yes, the controller was simplified, but that is one of the key parts of the Wii’s success. People who weren’t accustomed to using controllers, or who felt intimidated by the standard twin-stick and buttons set up, could pick up this little motion controller and immediately know what to do. Bowl a bowling ball? Make a bowling motion. Hit a tennis ball? Same thing. My sons, who both get frustrated when they can’t play games on controllers, love the intuitive set up of the Wii remote.

The Games

Yes, the Wii had its fair share of shovelware, but so did the PlayStation 2 and that’s one of the best selling console’s of all time. The Wii also had two very interesting strands of gaming, though. It had “Casual” games, games that could be enjoyed by everyone. Games that could be picked up and played, like Wii Sports, Wii Party. It had Wii Fit, not so much a game, but something fun that could be integrated into an exercise routine.

It also had Nintendo games. In an age where everyone wants to play the next Grand Theft Call of Modern Warfare, it’s nice to know that Nintendo still produce games like Super Mario Bros, Metroid, Smash Bros; in fact, the Wii offers a wider range of gaming experiences than the higher end consoles where gaming has become focused narrowly on competitive multiplayer killfests. Super Mario Galaxy is probably one of the most gorgeous looking, fun games I’ve played in the last five years!

And, towards the end of the console’s lifecycle, the Wii received three of the best RPG’s of this generation in the form of Xenoblade, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower. All three were exclusive to the system and showed what could be done with the hardware by competent developers.

The Price

On launch, the Wii was cheaper than the competition. While this can’t be said about Wii-U, it was certainly a helping hand in getting people to invest in this new, crazy little game machine. It made it seem less specialist, more like something people would be happy to have sat next their DVD player. Nintendo maintained a low price point as the system aged, meaning that it was always appetising to those who didn’t want the “kids consoles” of the XBox and PlayStation, systems many viewed as overly complicated and not for them, despite their relevant developers trying to position them as media centre devices for everyone.

In Conclusion

There’s a truth that so called “Hardcore” gamers can’t seem to grasp. Gaming is not an elitist thing; it’s not something that people should be excluded from just because they can’t or won’t use a controller. The Wii proved this and, all of a sudden, EVERYONE was gaming!

In our house, we’ve been through both Kinect (sold that, Microsoft wasted an opportunity to do something innovative there) and Move (still has its uses) but we always come back to Wii.

My kids love Wii Party and Wii Sports; I can show them old SNES and MegaDrive games through the system’s Virtual Consoles; we can play through the classic Zelda’s and Mario games through my old GameCube discs (something sadly lacking from Wii-U). I can’t say the same for the XBox and PlayStation where many of the games are not something I could play with my kids.

The Wii changed the face of gaming and it’s something that Microsoft and Sony are still trying to catch up with. If either of them can do it, I think it’s Sony; Microsoft seem to be showing a complete lack of understanding as to what “family” gaming actually is (but I’ll leave that for another article!) It may not have been the most powerful, but Wii was certainly the most important console of this generation!

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Why I think that Prometheus is the most important film of the year.

4 Jul

Right, let’s get this out of the way – this is not a post talking about whether Prometheus is a bad film (it’s not) or whether it fails the Alien franchise (it doesn’t because it’s not really part of it – same universe, different story; kind of like Out of Sight and Jackie Brown. I digress.) This post is for me to try and explain why I think that Prometheus is the most IMPORTANT film of this year. Not the best, the most important.

Main reason – it’s a proper, adult sci-fi tale that doesn’t pander to a teen popcorn munching audience (see last post for more on that).Cinema is becoming flooded with Superhero movies, remakes, reboots, sparkly vampires and the rest. I really liked The Hunger Games but thought that the deeper meaning of its story might be lost underneath the shiny, perfect toothed teen veneer. (Disclaimer – my favourite film of the year is Joss Whedon’s superb Avengers, but mainly because I’m a massive Whedon and Marvel comics geek!)

But then we have Prometheus. It’s a film that sticks to its guns, doesn’t rely on boombastic action scenes every few minutes to hold the audiences attention, and tries to do something a bit different. All the things director Ridley Scott was doing back in ’79 with Alien, the film Prometheus is a spiritual prequel to. It also has an interesting writer in the form of Damon Lindelof who came in to tweak the screenplay from being a straight up Alien prequel to the film we now have. Lindelof was a writer on the mindbending TV program Lost. Personally I find him to be a very clever writer, someone who can tell a story while hinting at a wider world that we never really find out about. There’s no magic Basil Exposition’s in his scripts – if something’s a mystery to our characters then it’s likely to be a mystery to the viewers too, even though we’ll be given visual clues as to what the purpose or reason for this thing might be. I get why people don’t like that, but it gets us talking, discussing theories, explaining things to those who were too busy texting or looking into their popcorn when something important happened onscreen.

Prometheus doesn’t hold the viewers hand. It doesn’t give them a reason for everything that happens. It doesn’t tie things up in a nice bow. It asks the audience to be adults, pay attention, watch, listen, enjoy the film and take something away. It presents a prequel that isn’t really a prequel per say (were people mardy that they didn’t get that perfect prequel? Perhaps Ridley Scott’s right – the Xenomorph from Alien has had his time). We can argue pacing, acting, continuity with the “other films” in the series til the cows come home, but what Prometheus did was something pretty ballsy for a film that was pitched and advertised as a summer tentpole. It could have been sanitised by the studio, crafted into a straight up new Alien movie – but it wasn’t, and what we got was something infinitely more interesting.

We need more films like this in our cinemas, attracting a bigger mainstream crowd and presenting them with something they perhaps weren’t expecting. Let’s not make Films the niche to Movies. That’s why I think Prometheus is the most important film of the year. Not the best film of the year; but certainly the most important.

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