Topic: Wii was maybe Nintendo's best console

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So this is something I've been thinking about for a while. I often have a hard time deciding which Nintendo system I like best. But when really thinking about them, I kinda realized that I had to go with Wii in terms of which one was the best. It just makes sense for me. There's two main reasons, with some other reasons on top of it.

First of all, I genuinely like motion controls. Not always, of course, but I really think they got a bad rap. In well made games made by talented people, I almost never thought they were significantly worse than normal controls in comparable games. And they were better and/or novel enough times that it almost evened things out. And honestly, I think if GCN wasn't such a top tier controller and in general Wii didn't have a lot of really good non-motion controls options, it would be close. It has its issues but whenever people point towards games with poor motion control implementation, it's not like some great game dev suddenly was RUINED by these choices. The main time I experienced it was from Sega games, who were right in the middle of making some of their worst games outside of Wii as well. They did not need Wii motion controls to make poorly controlled trash. And I don't know how anyone can look at the best of pointer controls especially, and dismiss them as a whole. They're better for shooters than dual analogue, without any doubt. I played that Goldeneye game, I think the controls were half the reason I liked it so much.

Honestly the harshest thing I have to say about Wii controls is that I'm upset that Wii motion plus wasn't as big a deal as it should've been. While I do like Wii motion controls, you have to know their limits, which are fairly clear after a while.. And there was so much more to do with MotionPlus, and yet we got so much less. I'm glad Joycons and VR are around to keep motion controls alive, at least.

And the best part? THEY WEREN'T REQUIRED IN EVERYTHING. Options are great, and motion controls aren't for everything. They are nice addition to expand how to control video games. Obviously, otherwise it would be like demanding every single video game use all four shoulder buttons or something.

This whole point of this part is not why it is better entirely, but kind of just to say I don't care if other people hate motion controls. I don't, and it's not an argument I'd even want to have. It is not a point against the console, and no one could convince me otherwise.

Now my second main point, is that simply put, it is easily the best official retro console ever made. At least in terms of how many older titles were legally available to buy. If you go back to the Virtual Console on Wii, especially before they lost certain titles via stupid license nonsense, it was actually incredible. There were several hundred games across more than half a dozen consoles. For a console that came out more than 13 years ago. Even in the Switch era, that's super impressive to me. I bet there's some games that have not been re-released since, let alone games that skipped Virtual Console on other systems. And it was so simple to buy them too. Nowadays, every company has some different, weird way to re-release their games. If you wanna buy retro games, it seems at least kind of annoying, and you often have to buy them in a group. (I kinda wanna play Megaman X8 someday, but I'm not buying another X collection for it, for example)

On top of that, while people complain about the prices now, as far as I'm concerned, they were pretty great at the time. Keep in mind, GBA was all about remake and re-releases of games, and they mostly cost 30-40 dollars, the same as most things on the system. Even the ones that were literally NES ports, still cost I think 20 bucks. So having them for 5 dollars was pretty great. SNES and N64 was even better. I could buy one Wii game, or I could buy Mario 3, Kirby's Adventure, Sonic 2, Super Metroid, Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask and still save some money. Yeah I guess not all those old games were equal in quality, but that's a problem with most mainstream games since forever.

And on top of THAT, it is backwards compatible with GCN. That only confirms it as the best retro console. Obviously, nowadays its not quite as simple to buy GCN games like it would to use the Wii eShop and buy Ice Climber (clearly a comparable masterpiece to the ones mentioned above!). But at the time, smarter people must've noticed the used games section at Gamestop and made the smartest purchasing choices possible. "Wow this whole console library I never owned, now for cheap for a system I do own!" And nowadays, you can find a surprising amount of old games for cheap online if you look for it, if you want. Not as convenient as downloadable games admittedly.

I will say though, that whole generation was really good for this. Wii was best, but backwards compatibility was still alive on the other two consoles and IIRC PS3 has a pretty great PS1/2 selection of games.

So yeah, motion controls are good actually, and best retro console ever made. Combine that with just at its basic level, having good games like Nintendo consoles basically always do, I think I've made my point. But I do have a couple of other things to mention.

Wiiware was cool. I would hope this place, of all sites, would agree. i realize in hindsight, it was a horribly limited system that people look back as an example, but like the console as a whole, you have to kinda look at it for its time. I'm not sure anyone really expected how much indie gaming would blow up over that generation. Like the difference between downloadable games from smaller developers when Wii first came out vs its dying days is absolutely insane. I think its reasonable that Nintendo could not have predicted how much of an issue it would be. It was just a cute bonus they added to allow some small games from small teams, they weren't going to make the most successful game of all time. Especially some blocky looking 3d game about crafting, pfft, like that will ever sell like a Mario or even a Kirby will. Hindsight is funny.

Wii's main library is...uh...interesting in hindsight as well. The big thing Wii got hated for at the time (beyond hatred of casual gaming that was and still is incredibly embarrassing) was an overabundance of shovelware. And there were a lot of bad and worthless games on Wii, it was the trend. People put out garbage to jump on that bandwagon. At the time, I didn't understand why the internet cared, when those gamers made it clear they would never accidentally buy these games or anything. It seemed hyperbolic back then. It's much worse now when you realize that Switch has even more games no one actually cares about. And...yeah no one cares. No one looks at modern gaming systems and disregards it just for having shovelware. Because that's kinda stupid. (even if I still dread what Steam has become, which is somehow infinitely worse)

But the great games were still...great. Like its really hard to definitely say an entire console's collection is better than another's. That's too many games to judge at once, to say the least. And I and basically everyone has not played all those games to judge them anyway. I can only speak for what I played. Put a gun to my head, I'd say Wii has the 2nd best lineup of games based off of the ones I played and know about, only behind GCN. Certainly helps I played GCN more than anything, but I respect the opinions of people who talk about how a Tatsunoko vs Capcom or Modern Warfare port are really good. Based on what I played, Wii had more 9/10s, GCN very much had more 8/10s. But I feel confident in saying the library of good games on Wii was super underrated. For all the complaints about Nintendo going casual, I actually checked one time. In terms of retail games we got, take away all the casual games (not like Mario Party, but the new, casual specific types of games), and Wii got as many first party games as GCN anyway. And some of those casual games were actually very good. And that's true for a lot of things. There's a lot of 3rd party games on Wii that should've been a way bigger deal but weren't because they weren't the cool new HD console game or were some new IP from a more obscure studio. I maintain that Little King's Story and Muramasa are two all time greats, and combined probably sold as well as Wonderful 101 did on Wii U. Maybe. And there were a bunch of cool games that it seems like almost no one bought. Even Red Steel 2 bombed, and that had actual commercials and stuff. I can't think of another time where a successful console had great games, and those great games were so frequently just ignored. At times it almost feels like an alternate universe where the Dreamcast did great, but everyone said its library sucked. "Jet Set Radio is casual garbage, Imma gonna play Halo 2 and nothing else until Gears of War is invented". And again, looking at Switch, clearly we decided this shovelware problem doesn't actually define a console's library at all.

Ok, this is all I have to say. I should point out at this point, that this exists partially as a defense of the Wii (admittedly from what people said a decade ago, so who cares?). But I wrote this largely because I think I have a really good point more than trying to prove my favorite console is the best one. I'm not sure it even is my favorite console. But the only Nintendo one I could even fairly (Switch is way too new) judge against it was GCN and Wii just...plays GCN so...yeah. GCN does also have advantages over Wii, obviously, especially with some fairly equal third party support that gen. But...Wii plays GCN. And is owned by vastly more people. That does mean quite a bit if we're comparing them imo.