How the WiiU Can Own the Sports Genre

Way back in the N64 days, Nintendo mildly shocked the gaming industry with its inclusion of Nintendo Sports: which was a grouping of sports games that would be made and published by Nintendo, and exclusive only to their systems. Needless to say, Nintendo Sports was a big hit that rarely gets discussed, as the likes of Waverace 64, NBA Courtside, 1080 Snowboarding, WWF No Mercy, Wayne Gretzky’s 3-D Hockey, Mario Golf, and Mario Tennis became phenomenal hits. To add to that, you had underrated gems like Excitebike 64, Ken Griffey Jr. Slugfest, All-Star Baseball 2000 grace the system. But for whatever reason starting from the later days of the Gamecube on, Nintendo’s efforts towards sports games greatly diminished.

While EA owned the NFL license, Nintendo still had access to the extreme sports games, baseball, basketball, and more. The Seattle Mariners never made their next-gen baseball game, Kobe only did one more Courtside (which was weak), and the only true sports success story were the Mario sports games—especially Super Mario Strikers. As for the Wii, their potential with sports games was met with ho-hum attempts after monster smash Wii Sports. In the meantime, you saw a rise in baseball and basketball video games while Madden continues to make good money for EA Games. Sports games made excellent money for all three systems in the seventh generation, whether it’s the arcade sports games on the Wii, or the simulators on the competitors. Nintendo however can pull all the stops if they put forth the effort in showing its potential in the upcoming system. Which leads us to the WiiU: If the WiiU wants to truly succeed, they need to become the frontrunner and new frontier for sports games.

The WiiU would be absolutely perfect for most sports games, especially football.
And it has everything to do with the controller/tablet.
Let’s start with football, which would benefit the most from the tablet. Imagine being able to choose plays without having to look at a menu on the screen. You can just look at your controller and scan and pick. Even better the tablet can keep track of your statistic throughout the games, allowing you to alter your strategy depending on the results. Even cooler would be the ability to create your own plays by turning your controller into a whiteboard full of Xs and Os. Imagine being able to create dozens of random plays for your team and then taking it online to take on other opponents and their created plays. While the ability to make plays is nothing new, with the tablet technology it can be driven to a whole new level. Football is a very strategic sport so a tablet controller makes a perfect complement to the game.

Another sport heavy on the strategy would be baseball, which can also benefit well from this tablet. Imagine being able to quickly alter your lineups and shift your infield/outfield without having to press a variety of buttons or refer to a menu screen on the television. Imagine the ability to scan through dozens of statistics of the opposing players like a manager before drawing conclusions as to who is going out there on the field. The tablet for the WiiU will most likely be used for mostly gimmicks, but posing as an information center would be loads of fun and would definitely add depth to the sports simulators.

Then there’s basketball, which can also benefit from the tablet by doubling it as a playmaking whiteboard. Wouldn’t it be awesome to draw out what might be the game-winning play in the playoffs for your team? After years of screaming at the television when a coach makes a dumb move, this tablet allows you to see how you’d manage as a coach of a ballsquad. The only catch to all this is that outside of EA Games, Nintendo would have to whether convince the third-parties to step up in their gameplay to better suit the WiiU, or Nintendo would have to make these games themselves. Left Field Productions, the company that gave the N64 many great sports games, is no longer with them. Which would lead to Camelot and Next Level Games as the lone second-party companies that has sports experience---although both never worked on a true sim.

Bottom Line: Nintendo has a great opportunity to send the sports games to a new level with its tablet. The main issue is, will the other companies be on board with its potential and do something about it? The Wii had some excellent first/second-party games, arguably among the best in recent years. But their third party status is in shambles and has been for quite some time. Yet with a little effort, the likes of Sega, EA, and Next Level Games can produce some fantastic and innovative sports games that uses the tablet to its utmost potential. The entire gaming genre of sports can flip upside down if done correctly.

Until then, we gamers are just dreaming.

WiiU Controller's potential for Success/Disaster

The WiiU controller was unveiled a couple months ago and we still are quite confused as to what its going to do alongside the WiiU system. The controller showcased its technological capabilities, but didn’t really dab into what it will do to our video games, our favorite franchises, and our favorite genres of games. And while I don’t have the answer to any of those questions, I can pretty much give opinions and predictions.

First off, the specs:
• Built-in accelerometer, gyroscope, speakers, front-facing camera, sensor strip, microphone and a 6.2 inch (15.7 cm) 16:9 resistive touchscreen
• Two Circle Pads and one D-pad
• Stylus
• Select, Start, Home and Power buttons
• A/B/X/Y face buttons, L/R bumper buttons and ZL/ZR trigger buttons
• Controller sync button

Let’s look at a few more images of the WiiU controller.




And now, let’s predict whether the controller will help/hurt certain games, franchises, genres of gaming.


Category #1: Mario
Predicted Verdict: Hurts

This controller is a bit too mighty for Super Mario, as he is a simple plumber engaged in forever-simple games that can usually be learned in a few minutes. Our fondest memories with older Nintendo systems usually involve Super Mario, and jumping and running your way through colorful levels. With that massive screen in the middle, it makes the controller a lot wider. Mario’s appeal was its simplicity. Platform games never need an extra screen, don’t let anybody else tell you different. Look at the Mario Bros. games, they are among the best is history and needed just a couple buttons. That screen? Waste of space—if you plan on playing as Mario.


Category #2: Zelda
Predicted Verdict: Helps

Zelda has always been more of an adventure game and less a combat game. While Zelda combines action and adventure with usually flawless precision, this game is far more exploration/adventure based to nearly a point of it being an RPG. As a matter of fact, some gamers out there do classify this as an RPG. That extra screen gives plenty of potential to the Zelda franchise, as you can use this screen for maps, for configuring items, for searching for hints, for fun interaction with people you meet along the way, and much more. You may think we’ve exhausted all the ideas for this franchise—this controller can honestly open the door to some new and clever ideas.


Category #3: Metroid
Predicted Verdict: Hurts

The new controller can help Samus and the Metroid brand, but this all depends on whether Samus will be 2-D or 3-D. If Samus is going to eventually hit her 2-D stride (this idea was dabbed upon with Metroid: Other M) then this new controller will not help in the least bit. The only potential I see is for maps—and its not enough of a reason to made the controller wide enough to toughen the fast reflexes sometimes required for 2-D Metroid games. If Metroid reverts back to full-fledged 3-D like in the Prime days, then it can definitely help with maps, weapon selection, and moving the fangled thing around searching for clues and details about her environment. That might justify the screen—but Metroid to me works best with simple controllers, and a simple adventure into a vastly unknown atmosphere.


Category #4: Pokemon
Predicted Verdict: Helps

This controller and Pokemon were meant to be together. Pokemon was never a fast-paced franchise, but instead a franchise built on strong and very lengthy RPG adventures full of items to collect, monsters to find, and quests and adventures to fulfill. With the extra screen, you can modify your Pokemon team without displaying what you have on the screen—making for some awesome 2-player action. You can use the screen for maps, the Pokedex, organizing items, gambling at the casinos, trading with others, altering the looks of your Pokemon, sending/receiving messages from other trainers, making phone calls, and just too much more for me to place in this already-long paragraph.

Category #5: Kirby, Donkey Kong
Predicted Verdict: Hurts

See category #1. These are simple franchises that only need simple, small controllers for fast-paced action, fast-paced reaction, and a simple pick-up-and-play experience.


Category #6: First-person shooters
Predicted Verdict: Hurts

None of the XBox 360 gamers want to hear this, but I speak the truth: The Wiimote is hands-down the best controller configuration for shooters in the history of gaming. If you could work the sensitivity within the movements of the Wiimote, you could have made an assortment of shooters that feels better and plays better than shooters done with regular controllers. But, only ONE Wii game got the configuration correct: Metroid Prime 3. This vastly underrated game amped up the action and proved to the world that the Wii can make great shooters given the right amount of effort. WiiU’s controller will obliterate everything they got right the past generation by giving us a fat controller that removes all realism and freedom of movement offered by the Wiimote. Thank goodness the WiiU is backwards-compatible.


Category #7: Star Fox
Predicted Verdict: Helps

Imagine controlling your airwing with the WiiU controller, making it like the wheel of the ship, and then using the back buttons to launch your fire. Then use the touch screen to check up on your friends and use the extra buttons for more heavy artillery. Then use the circle pads to alter the camera of the game and get a good look of the environment around you. Star Fox can definitely benefit from this.


Category #8: Mario Kart
Predicted Verdict: Helps

While I am a racing purist, preferring the classic controllers to race against others, the WiiU controller can instantly be turned into a driving wheel, and all you need are the back-shoulder buttons to drive and apply the brakes. As long as it can fix the small glitches that the WiiWheel experienced, then Mario Kart will be a heck of a good time on the WiiU. Potentially.

Category #9: Fighting Games
Predicted Verdict: Disastrous Hurt

Look at the controller. Now try to picture yourself creating a 7-button combo while holding that controller. That's all the evidence you need.


Bottom Line: The WiiU controller is definitely a hit-or-miss piece of hardware that can make the upcoming Nintendo system or completely destroy it. On one hand, you have to hand it to Nintendo for trying to introduce different ways to play the game, but at the same time some already-awesome ideas are sacrificed and risked. It was a pure miracle that the Mario Galaxy games were borderline-flawless, because the revolutionary Wiimote was not meant to interact well with platformers. Maybe all we gamers want is a simple SNES-like controller? Maybe the focus should be on improving the software?

Either way though, this controller isn’t all bad news. While some genres might be reckoned and tarnished (with fighting games suffering the most), some classic franchises like Zelda, Star Fox, F-Zero, and especially Pokemon can enter a new realm of quality if the controller and all the new features are utilized correctly. Only time will tell if this indeed happens, but one thing is certain: the WiiU controller is about to turn the Nintendo universe topsy-turvy.

P.S. One sequel that NEEDS to happen with this new controller:







Pokemon Snap 2.

Nuff said.