Dear Nintendo, how on earth do you do that voodoo you do so well?
The Wii broke sales records like no one’s business and it blindsided the entire industry. The Wii made motion gaming a standard feature in all consoles and it brought the wonderful term “filthy casuals” into the popular gaming vernacular.
Yet people HATE it. The poor Wii was the whipping boy and laughing stock of the first HD console generation, mainly just because it wasn’t an HD console at all. Screw those people though, because I loved the damn thing and history has proven that Nintendo played it pretty smart in keeping the Wii standard def; that price point was just unbeatable… I mean, shit, they did sell OVER 100 MILLION UNITS! I said God damn! God damn.
I freely admit that I have a soft spot for Nintendo, but the truth of the matter is, I played a lot of really great games on my Wii that I never could have played on any other platform. The Wii did a hell of a lot wrong, but despite everything that was frustratingly archaic about it – it still changed the industry, and when looked at objectively, had a large catalog of truly amazing games.
The Wii did do a lot of things right too though – Gamecube backwards compatibility was fantastic to have and the virtual console was really great (at first anyway), plus, it brought back the notion of a system shipping with an included game (that was actually really goddamned fun!).
For all its under-powered, standard def warts and basically non-functioning online component, I still loved the Wii. Like the ugly, but super-sweet best friend who is now just collecting dust at grandma’s house… wait…
So here then, is my sincere goodbye to you, sweet Wii – may you go softly into the night as I present my top 10 Nintendo Wii games: