PixlBit

 Tonight I feel like talking about one of my favorite consoles the Wii. This system was mostly ignored by and even bashed by a lot of so-called hardcore gamers during its life and unfairly so. Yes the graphics couldn't keep up with the XBox 360, and PS3. Heck, it didn't even look as good as an original XBox. However, the system had tons of great games on it that could appeal to anyone. People who ordinarily wouldn't touch a video game, and those who hadn't touched one in a while even wanted to try it.

The first time I played a Wii was the first time I had played a PS3 as well. I don't recall the date, but both weren't out very long. I first played the PS3 and aside from an F1 demo, I wasn't that impressed. I had played the original Resistance that day and thought it was good, but it also happened to be the first day I had played the original Gears of War on 360 as well. So yeah that kind of soured my impressions of Resistance slightly. Then I played the Wii. If I recall my friend had Wii Sports, Excitetruck, and I think there may have been 1 more but I don't quite recall. Anyway the first thing I tried was Wii Sports and I was blown away. It was such a simple game, but it was so much fun. Anyone could pick it up and play and it proved that graphics never make a game. After Wii Sports I popped in Excitetruck and again was blown away. Sure it didn't look as pretty as Motorstorm on PS3 which I had just played, but it was a lot more fun.

I didn't get a Wii of my own until a few years later when I moved to Missouri. I think it was around 2008. When I got it, I bought Nights, Super Mario Galaxy, and Excite truck. Wii Sports of course was the pack in so I had that as well. Unfortunately I had a bum system with a screwed up disc drive so I had to ship it back to Nintendo (there was no way I could exchange it for another since they were sold out everywhere) and wait about a week to get it back. Needless to say I was really excited to get it back....that was until I tried it out. Nintendo had sent me my system back, only this time it was in worse shape then I had sent it. I couldn't even put a disc in this one. So I had to ship this one back and Nintendo shipped me an all new unit. I was a happy man when I got this back and it worked perfectly.

Over the years I've built up a pretty respectable Wii collection Aside from countless amazing titles from Nintendo, there were quite a few greats from 3rd parties as well. Stuff like Soul Calibur Legends, SSX Blur, Mad World, Tournament of Legends, The Conduit, and Sonic Colors have all given me countless hours of enjoyment. They even had some surprisingly well put together Call of Duty titles on it as well. When I bought Modern Warfare 3 on it for cheap I was expecting a severely watered down game that was a shell of the original, but I was mistaken. There were also a lot of great classic games on the system as well. It saw great compilations from SNK, Sega, Data East, and American Laser Games. Then came games like Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands, and Star Wars The Force Unleashed. While they looked and played similar to the 360, and PS3 versions, the games themselves were quite different. This made it a real treat to those who played through the games on the more powerful systems and wanted more. The system also played Gamecube games so it increased its library even more when factoring in all of its games.

There were a few things I disliked about the Wii. Mainly the fact the the online experience sucked. Come on friend codes? The shop on it had a huge selection of both new and classic games, but sadly these were tied to your system, and not your account.

I still love my Wii after all this time and consider it to be one of the greatest consoles ever. Yeah it was filled with shovelware, but what highly successful system isn't? All true gamers need one of these in their collections. At the least get a Wii U which plays all Wii games and has a great library itself.