Why should WiiCare?

WiiWare - a land of opportunity, where small indie developers can stand toe-to-toe with the big boys like Square Enix and EA. This is where weird, interesting games should go to live. The Wii has a controller unlike any other in the industry, and games like Lost Winds and World of Goo show how to utilize it very well. Unfortunately, there are a few things holding WiiWare (and the Virtual Console, as well) back from competing with the "real" next-gen systems:

- No demos
- No standard pricing structure on WiiWare
- Lack of consistent release schedule

First, no demos. Now that Nintendo (finally) did something about the Wii's lack of storage (Yay for SD!), there is room on gamers' consoles for game demos. On 360, the demo is the same size as the full game, but purchasing the whole game "unlocks" the rest of the content. Wii doesn't need to do it that way. A shorter download time for a first level would be fine for A.D.D. types that still play Wii. If I want the full game, yes, I would wait to download again. It's not a big deal.

Without free trial demos, countless interesting games are getting lost in the shuffle while people buy tripe like Major League Eating: The Game. A demo will allow gamers to try something they normally wouldn't, because there's no risk. "Want to try Swords & Soldiers for ten minutes before you buy it? That'll be ten dollars. Hope you like it. No refunds."

The pricing on WiiWare is also all over the place, ranging from $5 (Texas hold'em Tournament), to $6 (Bubble Bobble Plus), to $8 (Final Fantasy IV: The After Years), to $10 (Let's Catch - What the crap?), to $15 (World of Goo). The prices don't seem to be based on anything besides what the developers hope people will pay. That, and probably development costs. But gamers don't care about that. They just want a good deal for their dollar.

Lastly, the release schedule. New XBLA games come out every Tuesday. New WiiWare games come out... whenever. There are new games released every week, but there is no guarantees that they are WiiWare games. It could be DSiWare, or a Virtual Console title, or WiiWare, or maybe, if you're lucky, a good WiiWare game. It's probably just another calculator or clock for your DSi, and no matter how cool it may be, it is not delivering on the potential of the technology. Pick up the slack, Nintendo! If Sony can do it with the slumping PS3, you can do it too. You have enough money. Use it for something that doesn't suck, for once!

Not better than the original

A sequel should keep the good parts of the first game, throw out the bad, and add new features, making the core experience even more enjoyable. Final Fantasy IV: The After Years does not do this.

This WiiWare exclusive takes all the old graphics, charm, and mechanics, and adds MORE random battles. I spent the entire first hour of playtime on the first dungeon (which was only two floors) because I had to fight a random monster every four steps. Just to be sure that it wasn't like this before, I popped in my old copy of Final Fantasy II (the American title for IV) on SNES, my newer copy of FF4 on the PlayStation, and I even tried my copy of FF4 on Game Boy Advance, and, sure enough, there were a LOT more battles in this Wii one. Battles aren't intrinsically uninteresting, but these particular battles have been the same for fifteen years. They're stale. The one new feature in battles, Band Attacks, has already been used in numerous other games, most recently in Sonic Chronicles on the DS. Two or more characters team up for one attack, making a stronger attack, but depriving both characters of the necessary MP. Woo.

This game would be great on a cell phone, where it was originally released, as long as there was a quicksave option. As it is... The After Years takes great characters from one of history's most beloved series and gives them one more adventure. But that's all. Square is treading a long-beaten path, and their storytelling had better be nothing less than sublime for them to expect anyone to complete this game and invest in the downloadable content. There's a difference between pure, brutal nostalgia (Mega Man 9) and a shamless cash-in like this, despite Square bringing back the cast that worked on the original game to make this pseudo-sequel. Their love of the past cannot be denied. This game can be.


...Of course this is all just based on the first hour of playtime. If I ever find myself going back to it, I'll be sure to let you know if there is any change in how I feel about it.

Llama out.

"Give me more money!" - Nintendo

So I downloaded Final Fantasy IV: The After Years on WiiWare today, and I was pretty pumped. Until I found out that to get the whole game, you have to download $3/each episodes that will come out at the rate of about 3 a month for the next 3 months or so... turning my $8 game (great deal) into a $30 game (not as great). Still, it's Final Fantasy 4 for the next generation, so I won't complain too much. But couldn't I have just paid the World of Goo price of $15 and gotten the whole game at once? Nintendo is doing this online thing all wrong. They're taking all the bad parts of online play (nickel and diming the gamers to death) and ignoring all the good stuff (why doesn't Punch-Out!! have online mulitplayer?).

Still, it's a cell phone game ported to the Wii that will eventually cost me about $30 if I want the complete experience. I'm buying... guess I'm a fanboy. Oh well.

Wii(Shovel)Ware

There are WiiWare minimum sales requirements. In North America, if a game is over 16 mb, it has to sell 6,000 for the developers to see a profit. Under 16 mb, they only need to sell 4,000. Considering that there are over 20,000,000 Wiis in the world, that doesn't seem like too many, even considering how few people connect their systems to the internet. The idea is that it will prevent developers from constantly releasing crap shovelware titles, clogging the WiiWare catalog with sub-par games. If only retail Wii games would abide by the same methodology... maybe we wouldn't have "games" like Imagine: Party Babiez clogging the shelf space while lesser-known gems like Klonoa and Zack & Wiki are relegated to the bargain bins.

Remember the Official Nintendo Seal of Quality, a symbol (and a new way of thinking) that helped revitalize the video game industry after E.T. destroyed it? Nintendo should bring that back, and make quality matter again. Nintendo's first-party offerings continue to be terrific, but one great new game a year won't keep your system going. Third parties need to step up, and Nintendo needs to reach down a hand a give them a boost.

Minimum-Wage Games = Fun?

Minimum-wage work is the bane of a teenager's existence, yet it is a necessary evil to for him to afford gas, booze, and freedom from being forced to survive under his parents' constant observation and oppression. It's not fun. It's work. How can a game company make a game out of it? They can, apparently, and they do. Here's a partial list I came up with of entirely un-fun jobs that have been converted to game form:

- Order Up! - fast food
- Diner Dash - waitressing
- Cooking Mama - cook
- Harvest Moon - farmer
- Courier Crisis - bike messenger
- Crazy Taxi - cabbie

How do game companies pick their games' subjects? "Hey, working the register at a gas station is accessible enough to be done by a trained monkey... Let's make that into a WiiWare game!" Strangely, even the games that don't over-emphasize the danger and excitement of these menial jobs (like Crazy Taxi's over-the-top presentation and gameplay) still have a large element of fun to them. Harvest Moon is a great example. In it, you are a farmer. You grow crops, trade with townspeople, till your soil... standard farm stuff. Still, thousands of gamers buy the newest installment each time it's released and sink dozens upon dozens of hours into their virtual farm. For what? They are left with no real, tangible carrots to eat, and they don't have the satisfaction of actually cleaning the horse manure out of a stall with a shovel. Is Harvest Moon better than real farming because there's no poop smell? Is it because the virtual progression of crops is so much faster than in reality? Is it because gamers don't get sweaty using a virtual hoe? Maybe.

Today's game market is so over-saturated by "me-too" titles that game developers will look to exploit any untapped subject in an effort to appear innovative. When Wii Fit was released, it was a huge success. It was the type of "game" that hadn't really been tried seriously before, and Nintendo's risky move paid off in a huge way - Wii Fit is now one of the best-selling games of all time, and it's still incredibly difficult to find the game on store shelves. Sure, Order Up is a fast food simulator, but how many times have you seen one of those before? It even embraced it's demographic by including a paper hat and a $20 price tag. It will not be a best seller, ever. But there still exist so many untapped game subjects and gameplay innovations that I, for one, would try anything once. You don't want the only new games in the future to be Madden 2021 and Tony Hawk 19, do you? You'd better not.

Turtle Power!

TMNT IV: Turtles in Time is going to be released on Xbox Live, and maybe also on WiiWare and PlayStation Network. It's based on the original arcade version (not the SNES one), and has updated 3D graphics. I own the original on SNES (I paid $20 for it too, that's a lot for a non-RPG Super Nintendo game!), and even though I could beat it in half an hour, it was still awesome! I try not to buy games that I already own... but I may have to make an exception for this like I did for Final Fantasy VI when it was re-released on Game Boy Advance. Woe is me!



...Heroes in a half-shell - turtle power! Sorry couldn't help myself. Everyone watched the Ninja Turtles show as a kid, but I got a bit of it on DVD on sale a while back and it doesn't really do it for me anymore. Puns are stupid, and that's all they spouted! Ugh, I used to be a dumb little kid too. Batman: The Animated Series is just as amazing and beautiful as I remember, however. And I just got the old animated X-Men series today too... hope it doesn't suck! I don't know how they determine which shows will stand up over time and still be at least palatable as an adult viewer. The Super Mario Bros. Super Show was a bad as Turtles, yet Sonic is still not bad, despite being voiced by Jaleel "Erkel" White. Now that there just don't make a lick'a sense!

WiiWare's next hit?

There is a "new" game coming soon for WiiWare called Bit.Trip Beat. It looks like Pong with Geometry Wars music. You can see a video here. It seems neat, for about 2 minutes. I was incredibly interested at first, "Oh hey, a Wii game that's trying something different! Maybe this game can be as good as World of Goo was. Maybe people will even pay for this one." (Apparently about 90% of the World of Goo downloads were stolen for free by Wii hackers) But, sadly, no... it's all style and no substance. I shouldn't get tired of playing a game before the preview trailer was over.

Maybe this is one of the reasons there aren't free demos on the Wii like on Xbox Live. Maybe it's because the Wii has a hard drive capacity that rivals and Apple II. Maybe they could come up with some kind of rental program where you can play the complete game for a day or two for a few bucks. Then you don't have to risk your $15 on some Wii Crap.

You know that the original Xbox Live Arcade games cost $2?! What happened to that? I miss that. But I never had Xbox Live on the original Xbox. I was like everyone else. I had a PS2.