Wii worth it?

December 21, 2009 5:51 PM

The new Super Mario game has made me want a Wii. I've played some of the sports games with my nephews and the motion aspect gets old quick for me. So my question is, are there any games that are just button mashers that I might enjoy? Does it even make sense to get one if I really only want to play old school type games on it? (I thought Super Mario Galaxy was boring for example).
posted by vronsky to Technology (26 answers total)

Do you have any other systems? If you don't have a DS yet, I think it's a pretty outstanding platform that has a lot of the more classic style games
posted by Think_Long at 5:53 PM on December 21, 2009

is the new Mario game likely to come out on XBox 360?
posted by moorooka at 6:01 PM on December 21, 2009

What kind of games do you generally enjoy? Super Smash Brothers is essentially a button masher, but it gets kind of old when you're playing by yourself. Some other party games like Mario Party are like that too.

But more games exist rely on the motion control than games that use just the buttons and if you're not into that kind of gimmick, then it may not be totally worth it to get a Wii. On the other hand, Game Cubes and their games are dirt cheap and have a ton of button mashing games (though, Wiis can play game cube games too).
posted by Geppp at 6:01 PM on December 21, 2009

paper mario very rarely uses the motion control and is a ton of fun.
the king's story motion control is very different than the sports motion control, same for swords and soliders

look for wii games where you can use the classic controller or the gamecube controller. those will have no motion control.

moorooka - first/second party nintendo games and games that use nintendo characters will never be released on other consoles (unless nintendo goes out of business).
posted by nadawi at 6:05 PM on December 21, 2009

Many games you can switch off motion control entirely. But for your liking, you can download tonnes and tonnes of old games on the virtual console. I myself have Street Fighter 2 and Samurai Shodown II. There's also metal slug, etc. etc. There are plenty of games that rarely use motion control to the point that if you're comfortable with the n64-type controller, you'll be fine with it. There's also tonnes of crap, but it's easy enough to avoid.
posted by smoke at 6:14 PM on December 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

I've liked Lego Star Wars and De Blob the most.
posted by plinth at 6:14 PM on December 21, 2009

Another option (if you so dare) is to enable homebrew on the wii. If you google around for it, it will allow you to play ROMS on the wii. Alternatively, the Wii Virtual Console has a host of great old games that use either the wii-mote sideways or the classic controller (or a gamecube controller, sometimes).
posted by ThaBombShelterSmith at 6:17 PM on December 21, 2009

Response by poster: "Do you have any other systems?"

No but I grew up with pretty much every Nintendo system made up to the gamecube. I also had a Dreamcast.


"What kind of games do you generally enjoy?"

off the top of my head, I love the old mario games, and old side-scrollers like Life Force. I loved the original super mario cart (N64), Starfox, the SSX series, Soul Calibur... I guess I like more arcade type games. I don't like having to download a walkthrough like we had to do for parts of Super Mario Galaxy. I never really got into long rpg's like Zelda.
posted by vronsky at 6:18 PM on December 21, 2009

Mario Kart Wii has control schemes that don't use motion control. Actually, a lot of the best games use motion control in a rather minor way; for example, you might shake the controller to do something, but otherwise you use "normal" controls.

It'd be helpful if you were more specific on what you mean by "old school" games (different people have different concepts of the term, naturally), although one thing that might be relevant to you is the virtual console, where you can pay to download boatloads of games from Nintendo and other platforms.
posted by miraimatt at 6:29 PM on December 21, 2009

Since you like older games, you might want to check the list of WiiWare games and list of virtual console games (region-specific). If you get a used Wii, you could get some free downloadable games and extra Wii points.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:13 PM on December 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

Whether you get the Wii or not, it sounds like you would enjoy a DS as well. There are tons of stellar games out for the DS that will make you feel like you're back in the NES/SNES days. (New Super Mario Bros is pretty frickin' good, too, if you dig on side-scrolling plumbers.) The best part of getting into the DS now is the large, mature (as in console lifecycle) game library.
posted by secret about box at 7:31 PM on December 21, 2009

The incredibly awesome Cave Story will be coming out next year (evidently). That might be up your alley.
posted by brundlefly at 7:59 PM on December 21, 2009 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: "It'd be helpful if you were more specific on what you mean by "old school" games"

I guess what I meant by that was not motion control miraimatt. The last game I really got into was the original SSX on a friends playstation (and later on gamecube). That was what, 10 years ago? I haven't really had a game system hooked up since then.

I don't like games that you have to stop every 5 minutes and solve some dumb puzzle. I don't usually enjoy run and gun games, but I did love Shadow of the Empire on the N64.

Thanks for that link flt. Surprised at how many of those I remember playing. Might be cool to d'load them and try to beat them again.
posted by vronsky at 8:36 PM on December 21, 2009

Paper Mario is great. Only uses the motion stuff rarely, and when it does, it makes sense.
posted by arcticwoman at 8:39 PM on December 21, 2009

The thing I like about the Wii is that while there is a ton of shovelware crap out there, there are unique gems that you really can't play on any other system.

Boom Blox is a game that completely took me by surprise as to how fun it is, for example. Basically, it's precision "knocking stuff down" and a riot to play. I've always loved golf games, even back to EA's PGA golf on my 286 with an EGA card back in 1991, so the wealth of "real" golf games on the Wii are quite a treat. No More Heroes is kind of a button masher/GTA type game, and is really off the wall to boot. I quite enjoyed it.

More traditional control scheme games like Paper Mario and New Super Mario Brothers are both very good as well. I was never into the whole Smash Bros thing, but my daughter has played all of them extensively with her friends and deems the Wii iteration the best of the bunch, and there's nearly a riot every time it's played here with her friends over, so that says something I guess. If you liked the old Mega Man, you'll love the WiiWare one, and there are quite a few old-school style games on WiiWare as well.
posted by barc0001 at 10:13 PM on December 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

Yeah, the WiiWare Mega Man is pretty bad ass. Hard as hell, though.
posted by brundlefly at 10:29 PM on December 21, 2009

Muramasa could be described as a bit "old school". It's a side-scrolling hack-and-slash game with hand-drawn graphics (which are stunning) and a whole lot of button-mashing. It's not the greatest game ever, but it is fun and there's not a lot out there like it.

Other than that, and Mario Kart, and the less boring parts of No More Heroes (which is also a button-masher with some old-school elements), I haven't found that much greatness on the Wii. I haven't tried hooking it up to the net yet, though.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 1:02 AM on December 22, 2009

There seems to be a bit of resurgence in what you might call "old-school" (2D, side-scrolling) gaming at the moment, which is pleasing me greatly.

Apart from NSMB Wii there's also:
A Boy and His Blob
Klonoa
LostWinds 1 and 2 (on Wiiware)
NyxQuest (also Wiiware)
Not to mention Virtual Console games (Sonic, Mario, Donkey Kong Country etc, and shoot-em-ups like Gradius etc). There's a new version of Bubble Bobble on Wiiware, too.

I'll second Muramasa and Boom Blox (though I have Bash Party, not than the original). Then there's Blastworks, which is a side-scrolling shoot-em-up with a game editor/creator. Next year, along with Cave Story, there looks to be a whole raft of clever looking 2D type games coming (either at retail or on Wiiware). A couple that interest me are And Yet It Moves and Super Meat Boy, and there's one where you play as a shadow that looks nice, but I find I can't remember the name right now.

At the moment, I really like Bit.Trip.Beat (Wiiware). It's a cross between pong and a rhythm game. It's terrifically inventive.

Do you like point and click type games? Zak and Wiki is great. Then there's Broken Sword, and the Phoenix Wright games are coming to Wiiware, too, I think.

I'd say the answer to your question is yes, it's worth getting a Wii. Even if you only want to play the older games on the Virtual Console, it'll mean you won't need to have several old consoles lying around, cluttering up your living room.
posted by Life at Boulton Wynfevers at 4:18 AM on December 22, 2009 [2 favorites]

"is the new Mario game likely to come out on XBox 360?" No.

I didn't like Super Mario Galaxy (or Sunshine) at all. I like Super Mario World and Super Mario 3 (and earlier iterations on the Nintendo platform) and love the NSMB game for Wii.

As a bonus, you can download all the other SMB games via the Virtual Console and play those all in one place. We used to keep a Super Nintendo and original Nintendo out all the time... now it's all on the Wii. It was a little irritating to pay $5-10 for those games when we already (each, in some cases) owned them, but the convenience has been well worth it.

(Then use a source like Gamefly to try out some button mashers)
posted by getawaysticks at 5:46 AM on December 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

The Super Mario games as others have mentioned are all available on Virtual Console and they are still fun as hell. Running through all of SMB3 earlier this year really made the 14 year old version of myself super happy and proud.
posted by mmascolino at 6:27 AM on December 22, 2009

I play Pinball Hall Of Fame: The Williams Collection more than any other Wii game in my collection. It's unbelievably awesome.

Nthing the Super Mario VC games, still fantastically fun after all these years. Excitebike rules, too.
posted by porn in the woods at 7:25 AM on December 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

The Virtual Console download games are for lack of a better word incredibly well curated. At this point a good chunk of your old favorites are available for the Wii through that channel.

There are a number of very fine games for the console, Twilight Princess is fantastic, but relies on motion for some actions so you might not enjoy it as much as I did, same with the new metroid's.

The main appeal of the Wii, for me are the first party titles, so look those over and decide if they are worth it to you.
posted by BobbyDigital at 8:00 AM on December 22, 2009

This is not really in line with what the OP is asking about, but for anyone else who's interested I'll say that the Metroid Prime Trilogy collection is really wonderful. Like the Orange Box for Wii.
posted by brundlefly at 9:25 AM on December 22, 2009

I personally really like No More Heroes and I do think it falls under the "button masher" category, BUT it's a next gen button masher. If you dislike the motion stuff as much as your responses seem to be saying, I don't know if I'd really recommend No More Heroes (even though it's freakin' FUN AS HELL and you're playing a Mary Sue geek as hell character fighting with a light saber that you charge up in a sort of, er, suspicious fashion and I'm all, "Oh, my god, he's like ME, except cooler and in shape and shit, but looook he loves kitties and action figures and Mexican wrestling and and...oh, man, did he just say 'moe'??")

It definitely has its button masher moments since that's pretty much the basic groundwork for a lot of the fighting, and all you're doing is going around kicking ass and taking names (or ranks, I guess) but you do it in conjunction with the nunchuk. Like when you first looked at a wiimote and you go "wtf, are all these goddamn buttons tucked away here and there for?" well, say hello because you'll be using a couple of those.

Also, there's the whole "slicing" with your wiimote, because you'll be instructed to slice left, right, up, down as you run through levels beating the shit out of enemies. Then there's holding the wiimote up and down to block up or block low or to attack from above or attack from below (not really elements you can ignore, since you need to block an attack accordingly to where the enemy is blocking or attacking from). If you lock weapons with an enemy, you have to spin your wiimote wildly to counter then again follow up with the game mandated slash up, down, left or right. Oh, and what about if you happen to stun an enemy and decide to pull a wrestling move on him? That requires you to flick your wiimote and nunchuck in the directions the screen tells you to to properly execute a throw move. And remember I mentioned recharging your weapon? You'll have to remember to shake your wiimote to do that. I don't mean this as a dis of the game at all. In fact I think all these things make for a pretty fun and engaging game.

Could you go through that entire game not doing any of those? Maybe? But then it'd be a really frustrating game to play especially when you realize your hitting the same dude over and over again because he's blocking up and you have to hit him from below. And I don't know, I wouldn't play the game if I didn't want to bother with all those little details that make it.

But yea, I'd say start with downloading some classic games from the Virtual Console. And like others have said above, you can also probably dig around and find other games that aren't really all about the motion control like Paper Mario or Super Smash Bros. Brawl . You could also try to find some "collection" style game compilations that bundle together classics like The King of Fighters Collection" or Metal Slug Anthology (though the review sounds a little ouch).
posted by kkokkodalk at 9:36 AM on December 22, 2009

I love my Wii, and one of the things that I love about it is that you can buy used Gamecube games for about $5 at most video game stores and there are still hundreds of great GC titles I haven't played yet.

Gamecube games like Mariokart Double Dash, Alien Hominid, Soulcaliber II and X-Men Legends (though we've moved on to Marvel Ultimate Alliance for Wii now) and Animal Crossing probably total up to half or more of the total logged playtime on the Wii my wife and I own.

When you combine that with the downloadable classic games from older consoles (and, if you're willing to tread the ethical grey area involved, the fact that it's quite easy to install emulators on the Wii and run old NES and SNES games from an SD card), the Wii offers endless gameplay hours without even touching a single honest-to-goodness Wii game.

Not to mention the fact that there are, indeed, plenty of great Wii games being made that don't focus on the motion sensing capabilities of the Wiimote (though you shouldn't write off entirely games that do).
posted by 256 at 11:35 AM on December 22, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks for all the advice and game suggestions everyone :) It really helped. I went out and bought a wii and the new mario tonight. I don't have it hooked up yet, but the virtual console and the fact that it will play gamecube games really sold me.

porn in the woods - my roommate and I used to play Firepower every night at a local deli when I was in college. I loved that game! So I will definitely be getting that collection. Thanks for the suggestion.
posted by vronsky at 9:48 PM on December 23, 2009