Too much nostalgia

There is a new Punch-Out game coming for Wii. It let's you use the classic controller, nearly all of the characters are re-hashed from old Punch-Outs, and the only thing that looks to be updated is the graphics. And the jump from SNES sprites to Wii graphics is not that huge of a jump, honestly. Next month, millions of people will pay $50 for a game they already have. There won't be an online component to school middle-aged Wii players across the country. There probably won't even be a multiplayer component aside from a few party/mini-games. You will memorize patterns and use your reflexes to defeat boxers you've already defeted while moving up through ranks you've already attained 20 years ago.

Nostalgia is nice. Street Fighter IV took the best of the old, polished it to perfection, and added new, improved features. Punch-Out is taking the best of the old, and polishing it to perfection... and that's it. There are supposedly only two new fighters in the whole game, and the only one revealed so far is the incredibly boring-looking Disco Kid. He flashes white before he punches. Oooohhh innovative! Not.

Nintendo fans are so starved for "hardcore" games that they will gobble up any game that even appears to allude to the company's former glory in the 8- and 16-bit days, even when the games bring absolutely nothing new to the table. I understand the mentality of remaking a game. It's a guaranteed seller in a market in which financial risks are increasingly hard to justify. Okami's poor sales single-handedly shut down an entire studio. Still, while Nintendo fans may not always crave something completely different from what they've played before (who wouldn't want to play the next Metroid or Mario?), they do want something better than what we've already seen. Without progress there is only stagnation, and the Wii is starting to stink.