Discussion The Wii U turns 10 this year

[NTMBK]

First off- wow, that makes me feel old. I remember going out and buying one with money from my first proper programming job. Got a bundle with New Super Mario Bros U, and Pikmin 3. Great couple of games.

How does everyone feel about it? It still has a place in my home- I'm looking forward to introducing my daughter to all the family friendly Wii and Wii U games when she's old enough, and with Nintendont I can even play my old GameCube games on it. So many great games on the thing.

With that said- it was definitely a weird design for a console. I think Nintendo should have ditched the Gamepad, lowered the price, and just sold it as the Wii HD. The marketing was a mess, and with a clearer message it could have been a lot more successful.

 

[purbeast0]

My buddy gave his Wii-U and like 10 games to my other buddy when he got his Switch. Then my son got super into Splatoon 2 on Switch and wanted to play the first one, so he ended up giving it to me so I could let my son play the original Splatoon a bit. After like a week or so and realizing no one plays it online, he got bored of it. Literally yesterday I gave it back to my buddy that let me have it lol.

It is the only console since like the Jaguar or 3DO that I have not owned. It just did not really interest me at the time. I will say though I do have quite a bit of the Switch versions of the Wii-U games and think they are fantastic - Mario Kart 8, New Super Mario Brothers, Mario 3D World, Donkey Kong Country. I may have another one or two but that is all I can think off the top of my head.

It was just a very oddly designed console and I think that hurt it more than helped it. The name was also really stupid.

 

[shortylickens]

yeah to me thats pretty wild. I go the Wii U later than most people. And aside from Mario Kart 8 I didnt spend much time on it. Consoles kinda lost my interest after the Super Nintendo. And since then it seemed like they moved way too fast. I bought the Xbone late too, and didnt get into Forza until it was well established. In fact I didnt buy FH 2 until it stopped getting support and I couldnt buy the DLC anymore.

Still need to beat Breath Of The Wild. Gotta stop slacking. its probably only one week of hard work.

 

[NTMBK]

It is the only console since like the Jaguar or 3DO that I have not owned. It just did not really interest me at the time. I will say though I do have quite a bit of the Switch versions of the Wii-U games and think they are fantastic - Mario Kart 8, New Super Mario Brothers, Mario 3D World, Donkey Kong Country. I may have another one or two but that is all I can think off the top of my head.

Yeah, a LOT of the good games from Wii U have had Switch ports. That's the reason I didn't get a Switch until last year- I'd already played a lot of the best games on Wii U! I already had Breath of the Wild, didn't need to get a Switch to play it.

 

[sdifox]

It's a stupid console.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Switch owes its existence to the Wii U. People picked up its controller and wondered why they couldn't just play games on that wirelessly. Nintendo capitalized on that.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Hard to believe Nintendo failed so hard marketing this console with how many really good games there were for it. Mario Maker, Bayonetta 2, Super Mario 3D World, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, Zelda Wind Waker Remaster, Mario Kart 8, Splatoon, Xenoblade X, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, NES Remix, I mean that is not the kind of library you'd expect to see out of a flop of a console that only sold 13 million units.

 

[igor_kavinski]

The controller was too clunky. No amount of marketing could have fixed that. They should have made it smaller, thinner with long battery life and independent of the main console. They learned an expensive lesson and designed the Switch fixing everything wrong about Wii U, but sacrificed backward compatibility coz only Tegra offered the lower power consumption required for decent battery life.

 

[purbeast0]

The controller was too clunky. No amount of marketing could have fixed that. They should have made it smaller, thinner with long battery life and independent of the main console. They learned an expensive lesson and designed the Switch fixing everything wrong about Wii U, but sacrificed backward compatibility coz only Tegra offered the lower power consumption required for decent battery life.

Would be kind of tough to fit a DVD into the Switch don't you think lol?

 

[NTMBK]

The controller was too clunky. No amount of marketing could have fixed that. They should have made it smaller, thinner with long battery life and independent of the main console. They learned an expensive lesson and designed the Switch fixing everything wrong about Wii U, but sacrificed backward compatibility coz only Tegra offered the lower power consumption required for decent battery life.

Or they could have just shipped it with a Wii Remote and dropped the Gamepad...

Microsoft had a similar problem with Xbox One- they designed the whole console around Kinect, and then nobody wanted Kinect. So they started shipping a version of the console with no Kinect in the box. Nintendo could have done the same, and sold a cut price version with no Gamepad.

 

[NTMBK]

Would be kind of tough to fit a DVD into the Switch don't you think lol?

Only Sony were crazy enough to put an optical drive in a handheld!

 

[shortylickens]

Why is everyone crying about the tablet? Am I the only person who knows they made tons of gamepads for the thing? And they never include enough controllers with modern consoles, so you'd have to buy a second one anyway.
My Xbone only came with one controller and when it started acting up I had to get a second one. Its just part of the modern era. And the Wii U controller was less than half the price so it wasnt a big deal anyway.

But I will say this: With Nintendo more than any other company, it seems like they need two whole systems to show any real improvement.
From NES to SNES was a pretty good boost in processing power, but I think if we're all honest it wasnt an evolution in gaming.
The N64 was much more powerful but it still relied on cartridge's which didnt hold shit and the resulting games were awful. But they did have the good sense to finally include 4 controller ports right on the unit. Of course the only game anyone played regularly and enjoyed was Goldeneye.
The Game Cube was small and finally used discs but of course they had to use those tiny bastards which didnt hold as much as Playstation so again, most of the games were not awesome, but it was a tiny step forward.
The Wii actually tried to do things differently in terms of controllers and game play, and plenty of people really enjoyed it, also they moved to full size discs like a proper gaming system. But then there was the lack of HD which was already standard with the competition.
The Wii U had some good ideas with the tablet but it also had some drawbacks. And too many games like Starfox required you to constantly jump back and forth from your tv to your controller and that crap got annoying fast.
The Switch seems a littler smarter especially the new compact one. If they are smart they can now have one platform for both TV and mobile gaming and really thats something they should have done generations ago.

But if you look at the big picture at least Nintendo is trying to really innovate, which is more than can be said for either Sony or Microsoft. They're just making limited functionality computers in cute little cases, nothing special. And they cant run a desktop OS or the millions of games made for Windows.

 

[NTMBK]

Whoops, I may have gotten a bit carried away with my nostalgia and just bought a copy of the Twilight Princess remaster. Oh well, now I've got the full set of Wii U Zelda games!

 

[purbeast0]

Whoops, I may have gotten a bit carried away with my nostalgia and just bought a copy of the Twilight Princess remaster. Oh well, now I've got the full set of Wii U Zelda games!

Twilight Princess was a Gamecube/Wii game.

 

[shortylickens]

Twilight Princess was a Gamecube/Wii game.

read his post again, slowly.

 

[purbeast0]

read his post again, slowly.

Oh I thought TP was the recent remaster that was on Switch but it appears it was Skyward Sword. I never played Skyward Sword because I didn't like TP.

 

[NTMBK]

Oh I thought TP was the recent remaster that was on Switch but it appears it was Skyward Sword. I never played Skyward Sword because I didn't like TP.

I loved Twilight Princess back when I played it on the Wii, surprised you didn't like it! It had a slow start, but some really epic moments like horseback combat. It felt like a new version of Ocarina of Time that could do a lot more with the big technology improvements.

 

[purbeast0]

I loved Twilight Princess back when I played it on the Wii, surprised you didn't like it! It had a slow start, but some really epic moments like horseback combat. It felt like a new version of Ocarina of Time that could do a lot more with the big technology improvements.

Yeah I played it for like 6 hours and it was just slow and boring as hell still. I also hated the stupid waggle controls that were completely unnecessary, as I played it on the Wii.

I did love Ocarina of Time though.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I loved Twilight Princess back when I played it on the Wii, surprised you didn't like it! It had a slow start, but some really epic moments like horseback combat. It felt like a new version of Ocarina of Time that could do a lot more with the big technology improvements.

It has some of the worst opening hours I have ever experienced in a game and every time I try to play through it I get frustrated by herding sheep and such and lose interest.

 

[NTMBK]

Yeah I played it for like 6 hours and it was just slow and boring as hell still. I also hated the stupid waggle controls that were completely unnecessary, as I played it on the Wii.

I did love Ocarina of Time though.

Well my copy arrived yesterday, so I guess I'll get to enjoy that boredom again for myself soon! At least now I won't have waggle controls.

 

[jman19]

It has some of the worst opening hours I have ever experienced in a game and every time I try to play through it I get frustrated by herding sheep and such and lose interest.

Yeah the opening definitely has some terrible pacing. Gets much better later on. Enjoyed the game but the beginning is the main thing that keeps me from replaying it.

 

[NTMBK]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1488768496347529218

Not surprising that it outsold the Wii U so fast... Still got fewer good exclusives than the Wii U though.

 

[NTMBK]

And now to celebrate the 10 year anniversary, Nintendo is killing the eShop. Sigh.

I'm going to miss proper Virtual Console that you don't need to subscribe to. I might check out MiSTER once they get N64 running on it, though I suspect that will need a more powerful FPGA.

 

[Golgatha]

And now to celebrate the 10 year anniversary, Nintendo is killing the eShop. Sigh.

I'm going to miss proper Virtual Console that you don't need to subscribe to. I might check out MiSTER once they get N64 running on it, though I suspect that will need a more powerful FPGA.

My Virtual console collection is a great reason to still have my Wii U around. That and the fact my now teenage boys still play our Wii and Wii U games relatively regularly. It is a great console that was held back by bad marketing and a tablet interface it didn't need for 95% of the games on it.

 

[Golgatha]

As a side note to my comment above, it's a sad thing that the tablet part of the Wii U is needed to launch games. To me, that's just another point of failure, and it's a largely unneeded piece of hardware.