PixlBit

The PixlBit staff shares their Wii launch day memories.

Vic Roman:

I remember the first time I ever saw Super Mario 64 being demoed. The idea of 3D gaming both confused and amazed my young mind. I didn’t fully understand how the N64 controller worked and was more than curious how one could control a character using a joystick on a 3D plane. It was a sense of awe and wonder I had never experienced before. The first time I saw the Nintendo Wii… or should we say Nintendo Revolution… I had my second dose of awe and wonder.

Why was the controller shaped like a television remote? Why was the d-pad above the A button? How was pointing a remote at a TV supposed to convert to gameplay? Nothing I saw made any sense and all I could think about was getting my hands on a “Revolution” controller and trying it myself. Then Nintendo shocked us by unveiling the official name, the Nintendo Wii. It seemed everyone – myself included – wondered what Nintendo was smoking and if they had an English translator to explain just how bad the name “Wii” is. But lo and behold, the Wii became a household name all across America almost overnight.

Then E3 2006 revealed the Nintendo Wii in all its glory. It was a time when Red Steel looked way better than the final product really was. It was where Wii Sports helped explain the practicality of the controller. It was when I became overloaded with excitement for Nintendo’s magical white box. It was E3 2006 when I decided I needed to buy a Wii at launch.

Then November 2006 rolled along and I learned that buying a Wii wasn’t as easy as just walking into a store and going to the counter. No, it was a year of consumer hunting, fighting, bribing, or whatever dirty deed you needed to do to get a Wii in your hands. I called everywhere on launch day, but everyone was sold out. Repeat this process for a month until one Wal-Mart tells me there are three Wii’s arriving. I drive as fast as humanly possible (actually, as fast as legally possible) to arrive directly behind the man buying the last Wii. My hopes were crushed and my dreams remained as fantasies.

I eventually gave up on my hunt because a friend bought a Wii. Every night after university classes a group of 4 to 6 of us would get together to play countless hours of Wii bowling followed by the chaotic WarioWare Inc. There were so many other Wii games, but those two titles took up all of our leisurely hours for nearly a year. One of my friends happened to take his Wii bowling extremely serious, and when he got a good enough average to be “Pro” the rest of us felt the evil need to select his “Mii” and throw countless gutter balls until his point rank was as low as possible. To this day I don’t think he knows exactly what went down on that fateful night.

Then 2008 rolls around, and finding a Wii is somehow still impossible to do. Finally I check out used websites and find one for $350 with four games, two controllers, and $20 unused on Virtual Console. It was March 2008, there was a massive blizzard outside, but not even the gods could prevent my fiancée and I from driving across the city to claim my Wii. We finally did it; we had a Wii. I played Twilight Princess, Resident Evil 4, and Mario Galaxy with the glory of motion controls – a novelty that hadn’t yet worn off and a control scheme that was far from being perfected.

Speaking of novel and less than good motion controls, we bought Cooking Mama Cook Off. This is not a game I’d recommend to anyone, yet my fiancée and I could not put the game down. All we did was prepare and cook food by doing obscene motion gestures that 9 out of 10 times fail to compute the way they should. Or at least that’s my excuse for losing 90% of the time; she seemed to have the terrible controls down to a science.

Cooking Mama is a perfect game to describe my love of the Wii. It’s an underpowered machine driven by unique controls that most game developers could never get a good grasp on. On the other hand, the games that shone were above and beyond the competition: games like Metroid Prime 3, Skyward Sword, Super Mario Galaxy, New Super Mario Bros., Mario Kart Wii, and pretty much all of Nintendo’s first-party titles. There were some great third-party games that took advantage of the Wii’s motion controls as well, like Zack and Wiki, Grand Slam Tennis, Pro Evolution Soccer, and Red Steel 2, but there were definitely more duds than gems in the third-party library.

The Wii launch is my most memorable console launch. The appeal of something unknown in its motion controls and the challenging task of finding one to buy made the Wii a word that often slipped into my dreams. Even though the game launched in 2006, it took me nearly two years until I could get my hands on my own Wii. With the Wii U’s launch now looming I’ve been thinking about selling my Wii, but the memories are strong and I’m not sure if I want to part with such an iconic part of my gaming history… I think I’ll keep it as a reminder of an era now gone.