Nintendo Wii and Wi-Fi...

Dear Nintendo,

If you're going to enable wi-fi play in your games, namely the fighting genre. Perhaps it would do you some good to have more of, and better optimized dedicated servers. Mostly so that the many players around the world who choose to play in a competitive fashion, can do so in a manner which involves little to no lag(enabling the most competitive, streamlined, and fun style of play...you know, the way that it was meant to be played). Also it would be nice to not have to sit in front of my television for 15 minutes trying to connect to someone on a worldwide scale, only to not find anyone yet for some reason there are leader-boards with data on them...meaning that someone probably left their system on for god knows how long.

Thanks...oh wait, not really Douche-Bags!

P.S. Since the Wi-Fi option is a giant joke, you might as well rename it to "Well, we needed to fill space on this Game, so we just threw some shit together and called it Wi-Fi...but It's actually just shit." And you could actually make it It's own interactive gallery having nothing to do with the game, at least then you're being honest and sincere with your customers.




So how many of you own a Nintendo Wii? *Cricket chirp* Alright...I only needed one hand to count that, j/k I was talking to an empty room! Moving on.

Why is it that Nintendo just doesn't give two shits about the community that backs them? They say that they're not competing with Sony or Microsoft, yet there are basic and yet simple things that a console made in this generation should have but seems to be not much of an issue to the company.

The main problem I and I'm sure many others have seen is the lack of good Wi-Fi capability. Naturally this should be something that is quite the standard in the current state of technology, and the Wii does in fact have Wi-Fi, but let's be honest, out of all the current generation of consoles It's sadly the worst. Hell It's worse than the PSP, a hand-held at that! At least on the PSP I can find people and have a competitive, and also a relatively stream-lined experience which usually amounts to fun because it just is.

So why even enable the players to have this Wi-Fi option? It doesn't do anything but add to the frustration of the day. You're lucky enough to get a connection to someone within 10-15 minutes, which is pretty absurd. Having established a connection luckily, and more often than not an extremely poor one. I remember playing Smash Brothers Brawl over Wi-Fi in my house, trying to have a game with my room-mate in the room next to me and it was god awful...we're talking ridiculous frame rate drops, hell any input on screen was delayed by at least 5-10 seconds. It's this bad trying to connect to someone 10 feet to the right of me, how is it going to get any better when trying to connect with someone miles away from me? Well it just doesn't, plain and simple.

Bottom line being that I care less and less about Nintendo every waking moment of my life. First they alienate the community by focusing solely on the "casual" market. Then try to make up for it by releasing games under their flag-ship titles which more often than not just aren't that good. Finally they try to appeal to the "hard-coresque" competitive audience(which if by competitive you mean Mario Party or Wii Sports just shut the hell up right now...went off on a tangent there, sorry)by stepping up and trying to release games with "Wi-Fi" capability, "play against your friends or challenge anyone in the world in competitive tournament style play...about 5 years from now when we finally connect to that guy in the house next door, with connectivity so slow that in between button inputs you could do things like: the laundry, walk your dog, or take the kids to school. Maybe when you get back, you'll be able to queue up more moves, man this 90 second battle has been going on for 5 hours already and I can't even manipulate time, amazing!" Really Nintendo? REALLY?!?!

At this point there are no excuses. But it's Nintendo, they don't care so why should I or anyone? The fact of the matter is that they should care, they have the resources for such an effort and I don't think we're asking for much. It's not expected that you get it right the first time but it's been what, 3-4 years since the release of the Wii, and still nothing? If you're going to offer something, don't give us some half-assed attempt to poorly emulate your competition, if you aren't going to be serious about it then don't even offer it up as a viable option, stop wasting our time with unnecessary bull-shit!

New Super Mario Bros Wii ---> First Impressions

Alright Nintendo, you got me and I'll admit to it. As some of you may know, the latest in the Mario franchise: New Super Mario Bros Wii debuted on Sunday(which is a really strange day for a game release in my opinion, but we're not here to talk about that).

New Super Mario Bros for the Nintendo Wii is an extremely fun game, and a worthy addition to the somewhat recently diluted Mario franchise(this is looking at you Super Mario Galaxy). Originally thought of as a port of the DS game, many fans didn't seem too excited to see this at E3 '09. I also had my doubts because of the heavy focus on multiplayer, which in most Mario titles are but this game specifically has 4 players(Mario, Luigi, and two Toad characters) simultaneously playing at the same time. I believed that at the time I dubbed it Mario: Four Swords(parodying the Zelda: Four Swords Adventure title), which to me didn't seem like it was in the wrong at all, I mean when you give 4 people(friends hopefully)the opportunity to work together one of two things inevitably happen: 1)everyone starts the game all happy and nice, but then it eventually degenrates into fighting amongst yourselves for the coins(any type of currency), or power-ups, and no one want to cooperate because not everyone is of the same skill level. 2)Everyone ends up having a good time regardless of what happens. In most cases the former happens more often than the latter, usually ending friendships too.

In this particular case however I was wrong, after having obtained a copy of it for myself I must say that NSMBW(New Super Mario Bros Wii)is probably the most fun/entertaining gaming experience I've had in a while! I would go so far as to say that It's encouraged that everyone plays this one with friends because it would be too boring alone. My roommates and I took it for a test run and we've just reached the start of the 4th world(after many ridiculous deaths and much laughter at one another).

NSMBW is very heavily influenced by Super Mario Bros 3(probably the best and most awesome Mario entry for the NES)with It's world structure which if you remember is much like a game board. A few things that return are the mushroom houses, and simple control scheme which involves using the Wiimote horizontally like a classic NES controller(D-Pad and two button interface). Yoshi, makes a return and is treated much like It's Super Mario World counter-part. Your main antagonists in NSMBW are none other than the Koopa Kids whom haven't been seen(at least by me)since SMB3, and Baby Bowser.

Level structure also brings back a feeling of nostalgia by recreating specific themes and types of gameplay from many of the classic Mario titles. Some new things added into the mix are a bunch of new power-ups(which I don't know the official name of so we just made some names up off the top of our heads): Freezie Flower, Propeller Suit, and Penguin Suit! Music which is usually a driving force behind the Mario games seems somewhat bland this time around(I've only heard about 4 songs so far), It appears to just be there for background since you won't be paying much attention to it anyway.

If I'd have to make an estimate, NSMBW would be around 7-10 hours of gameplay with a ridiculous amount of replay value. With 8 worlds to explore, each carrying their own little secrets you'll be playing this one for a very long time. It caters to the gamers who crave the feeling of nostalgia, and for newcomers who just want to dive into the fun of a classic Mario game with a fresh spin on it!