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Why the Wii U Does Not Deserve Hate





If there is one console people love to dunk on, it is the Wii U. It has been described as a failure almost as big as the Virtual Boy. But I feel it is unfair. I still have a Wii U and I was a loyal Wii U gamer throughout it's entire life cycle. I was often bullied, mocked, ridiculed if you will, but I can stay silent no more! The Wii U was good dammit and here is why.


The Games

Some of my favourite games in certain Nintendo franchises came out for the Wii U. Super Mario 3D World is my favourite 3D Mario (yes, even more so than Odyssey). I think 3D world is beautiful, the multiplayer was so much fun and the level design is on point! I had hours of fun playing this game and Cat Mario...best power up to be introduced to a Mario game since the Tanuki suit. Now lets not forget that Mario Kart 8 was the Wii U, Super Smash Bros 4 (which essentially became Ultimate) was Wii U and a little game called Breath of the Wild was made for the Wii U. Now yes, I know you can play these all on Switch now, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't show the Wii U some respect!

Now lets have a look at more of the games that were absolute bangers! In fact I am just going to list them off because you all need to be reminded that this console was amazing and anyone who says otherwise needs a Wii-mote thrown at their stupid head: Splatoon, Bayonetta 2, Mario Maker, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Captain Toad Treasure Tracker, New Super Mario Bros. U, Super Luigi U, Pikmin 3, The Wonderful 101 (criminally underrated game), Lego City Undercover (the BEST Lego game), Xenoblade Chronicles X, Shovel Knight and finally a HD remake of the best Zelda ever - Windwaker!

This is just a drop in the ocean of amazing games on the system. I still play Nintendo Land when I have friends over, the hide and seek game and the Luigi's mansion game in particular are an absolute blast and (because apparently i am all about the hot takes today) better than Wii Sports! Many argue that there wasn't the third party support on the system and I agree, the games that did come from third party didn't run as well as they did on the other consoles and some third parties just ported really random old games. However, did anyone really get a Wii U to play Mass Effect or Arkham City? No! We got the Wii U so we could play Super Smash Bros whilst our mum watched Coronation Street on the TV!

The Hardware

Now that we live in a post Switch world, it is easy to look back at the hardware of the Wii U and think about how goofy it looks. I will admit the gamepad was ugly. But the Wii U crawled so that the Switch could sprint! I remember the first time I played the Wii U. My brother had one, so I went over to his place and thought I would give it a go. Now I am a huge survival horror guy so I booted up ZombiU. This game instantly made the gamepad make sense to me. A big part of that game is when you are searching through your inventory you had to look down at the pad. This meant that your eyes were no longer looking at the TV, so zombies would creep up and start chomping on you! I was terrified every time I had to get something out of the character's back pack. I ordered a Wii U that day. Not every game used the gamepad to it's full potential, but to be honest having your map or inventory displayed on the gamepad was actually really handy, and made a lot of games feel a lot smoother.

Also let us not forget the backwards compatibility of the Wii U. It had a Wii built into it! The only draw back was that you had to have Wiimotes to use it, but lets be honest, we all had a million Wiimotes! And the Wii U was an extremely reasonable price, at launch it was around £200 - that is an absolute bargain! I played hours and hours on my Wii U, because it could be used as a handheld. Grinding on game like Assassins Creed: Black Flag or exploring in Pikmin whilst watching my favourite TV shows was revolutionary. I know now we are able to put as many screens as possible in front of our face at one time, but back in 2012, that wasn't as easy. I think everyone who has a switch should be forced to thank the Wii U for it's service every time they turn it on!

So why didn't it work?

My first answer to this is the name. Wii U was an awful choice to name a console because it was so confusing. Many people thought the tablet was just an accessory for their Wii. When my dad was buying me games for Christmas and I had to explain to him that I had a Wii U and that is different to a Wii and therefore has different games, I realised how bad the name was.

The Wii U suffered badly from Nintendo trying to support the Wii U alongside the 3DS, New 3DS, 2DS and whatever goddamn other letters and numbers they could force in front of the letters DS. Several games came out and there was a 3DS version and a Wii U version and it meant that one of them, or both of them was was inevitably terrible. Remember Sonic Boom? Hopefully not! Remember Sonic Lost World? Hopefully not. Sonic and the Wii U didn't mix. Nintendo were stretched too thin. 3DS made more money so they couldn't stop supporting it. This meant that there were massive gaps between big Wii U games, which resulted in many people either selling their Wii U or putting it in a cupboard and forgetting about it. So games were coming out that were amazing, but no one was buying them because Sony and Microsoft had great games coming out way more frequently. 

A lot of people felt the reason it didn't work was because the hardware was out of date. I actually do not agree with this. Remember when Nintendo just slammed a motion censor onto a Gamecube and called it a Wii and it was the best selling thing ever? Nintendo can make hardware that isn't as powerful because the art direction in their games are so amazing that you don't always need the most powerful console in the world. I just wish that they had doubled down, pulled back on the DS and really went head first into the Wii U...maybe then we would have Metroid 4 by now!

My Final Thoughts

The Wii U was done dirty by Nintendo for not fully committing to it. I find it hard to blame third party developers because the console was difficult to make games for. The Wii was also difficult, but because Nintendo were selling a butt load of them, it made it worth adapting games for the system. In terms of first party games though, there is a reason so many of them have been ported to the Switch - because they are some of the best in their franchises. The Wii U was a brilliant console with amazing games and I want us all to take a moment of silence after reading this article in respect for our fallen hero. Gone and mostly forgotten.

What were your favourite Wii U games? Do you agree with my opinions? Probably not. So lets talk in the comments below!

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