WII Punchout - Is it for us?

Hey Guys,

I love the bombcast, have been listening to you at my shitty job and you make it fly by you are an oasis in my week.

I love games always have done, on this weeks bombcast in particular the section where Jeff discusses the frustration he has with punchout, it has brought a thought to my mind.

I totally agree with Jeff and his frustration, BUT is it because punchout wii isnt for us.

in the first GDC podcast, someone mentioned the golden age of gaming, and someone else mentioned how that golden age is subjective to each individual and can take on a generational slant as it is subjective to experience and opinions.

I believe that nintendo with the WII have brought in an entirely new group of people, doubtless there are a lot of people out there who for them the first console they have ever owned is a WII, more to the point the first console they have even payed any attention to is the WII.

as a result they are very similar to 1980's kids playing punchout for the first time on the NES, they have no frame of reference.

add to this the fact that the big draw to the WII to this new group is simplicity, a game like punchout is ideal, Jeff made the comment that it is a very simple pattern learning game. I actually think that is precisely why Nintendo have made this game. Nintendo have captured a new audience, with the advent of the very simple controls of both the DS and the WII they have brought people who find 8 button twin stick controllers off putting, they have given them point and click controls and they have provided an access in to this world that us "CORE" gamers are so devoted to.

we grew up on a simple NES pad and it taught us the basics and as we moved to a snes with a few more buttons and then the dreamcast, playstation, N64 pads which are far closer to the crazy pads we have now, we have been slowly educated and developed into this.

punchout meets the WII target audience perfectly, Nintendo have looked back at what was successful when the NES was the pinnacle of gaming, and they have taken that success, drenched it in what is making people stop and buy a WII, be it motion controls or shiny fun graphics and they are amalgamating the two, and guess what? the new consumers are eating it up.

so it leads me to these questions for next weeks Bombcast

Is the WII really for us?

Can we really review and give opinion about these games, to these new gamers?

Is Punchout WII for us?

I think we've past the point of accepting that the Wii is a totally different product. The handhelds, PS3, and 360 our for us, the Wii is for your mom.

I guess this did kind of turn into a post about the wii, but I guess what really struck me about the bombcast this week was Jeff's frustration about them making the same dumb game.

I don't think nintendo are expecting us to like it, I think they are taking the past experience of punchout and expecting the new audience to like it.

Guess I did good to skip this cast too. With Nintendo and the Wii, it's damned if you do, damned if you don't. Nintendo shows Wind Waker after that "realistic" Zelda tech demo, everyone hates the "kiddy cartoon" new graphics. Nintendo shows Twilight Princess, everyone says how Wind Waker looked so much more awesome. Nintendo makes Metroid Prime, everyone hates they have forgotten the 2D gameplay. Nintendo makes Punch Out!!, everyone doesn't want it because it's like the old games. Nintendo makes AAA games, everyone blames them for not giving third parties a chance for profit. Nintendo slows down and doesn't hype the titles they do make all that much prior to release (Punch-Out!!, Excitebots are examples of that), everyone hates them for that too. Nintendo doesn't have a storage solution, everyone raves about it daily with every WiiWare release. Nintendo releases a storage solution, and we're all hush hush. And so on and so forth. The first year we talk about how it lacks third party support, then when it gets it in 08/09 and clearly beyond, again we hush hush. Seriously, half the time they're beaten on for one thing, and the other half for the complete opposite, while always forgetting to note the things they do well no matter what angle you look at them from.

For Wii Punch-Out!! specifically, I think any fan of the old titles will be eager to time trial all new patterns and see what extras they have stuffed into the disc. So, there's only one all-new character, so what? Super Punch-Out!! was pretty much a remake too. What did it have? New graphics, new patterns, new names. What does Wii Punch-Out!! have? New graphics, new patterns, the same names. Big deal? What would they do, change it into some Fight Night or Ready 2 Rumble style game? Then why use the franchise at all? Punch-Out!! still has unique gameplay that stands out from any other boxing or beat em up game, and can barely fit into the same genre at all, why mess it up?

That is the phenomenon of being at or close to the top, its the same in every other area not just the games industry, on the whole people will always criticize the company / sports person / tv show / team at the top of the game, its just the way it is, I guess nintendo just need to take comfort that if you are damned if you do damned if you don't its a fairly good sign you have made it, well that and the HUGE profits ;) and not that nintendo have any issues with insecurity over whether or not they have made it either for that matter.

a few years ago when they announced the wii, I could see that they had taken a gamble, but the DS was doing gang busters and the WII was effectively the Home sized version of the DS with added waggle, so they had a fairly good idea it would catch on, and it paid off, people are pissed at them because they have grown out of a hardcore following of sorts and now they are on daytime TV and being touted by mainstream celebrities, the WII is the video game darling of all the PR people who touted the Ipod years before it, people like technology and they like the WII because it is brilliant, its fun and its accessible, problem is it alienates us as CORE gamers because it doesn't always scratch our itch they way we want.

that said, Madworld, Overkill, Zak and Wiki, Zelda, and even resident evil 4 WII totally entertained me as a mad keen gamer so its not all bad, its just we have been edged to the periphery and the focus is soccer moms and this new audience, Nintendo hooked them in, now they have to educate them and keep them here to maintain the momentum.

I think you'll meet many core gamers in this forum alone who feel the Wii does scratch their itch, including myself, being primarily a PC gamer prior to getting the Wii. Not a bad amount of them considering this is one of the websites that barely caters to them at all most of the time.

For Nintendo specifically, as opposed to just the Wii in general, I really don't think they release any less "core" games than on their past systems. They always took their time with them. All that's changed is that inbetween those "core" releases they now put out several casual games that hardly take from the manpower and time of their "core" teams. I mean, it's not the Zelda and Mario teams, or Retro Studios and Monolith that make Wii Fit and Wii Music. And they certainly aren't on vacation. I think Nintendo fans have learnt to wait. It's not good, but there's no change.

I mean, if Nintendo changed so much for the worse with the Wii, and was so "hardcore" before, well, why didn't these "core" gamers buy their last system more and instead left it as a distant third place in that generation, despite not being the weakest of the bunch?

I am a HUGE wii fan, I just feel as I think Jeff does that sometimes the games are not targeted to me in the way they perhaps would have been before the soccer moms and grand parents crashed our hobby.

Sorry, was editing still. And how does Jeff feel about Excitebots I wonder, that game certainly does change up the formula quite a bit more, and Excite Truck was quite the departure from Excitebike also. Well, I know everyone around here will just bash it as kiddy anyway, and that none of those who bash it likely played Excite Truck and have read into what Excitebots actually brings to the franchise. Meh. Damned if you do, etc.

Something odd happened with the NGC that I didn't quite get, I loved my Cube, I thoroughly enjoyed stuff like RE4, killer 7, pikmin, and the four swords and crystal chronicles 4 way GBA stuff gave me and my mates a lot of fun filled hours, BUT I remember going out to pick up RE4 on the cube I had to go to 4 or 5 different retailers on several different shopping trips before I found anyone with it in stock, the Cube got buried at retail here in europe, I don't know if that was because of lack of interest or if Nintendo some how upset them but it was always a puzzle to me how poorly the cube seemed to do. I imported my first cube from Japan with luigi's mansion, it was a brilliant game which I thoroughly enjoyed, I then picked up a PAL system which I traded in a fit of rage one day when mario sunshines camera dicked me over constantly when trying to clime the chain link section up the back of the roller coaster, I yanked the little cube from under my TV and took it down to the local Gamestation for store credit, Fuck you mario and your awful camera.

I did go back to it later, it just got me so mad :)

I agree with you though nintendo are there to make money, and they have achieved that in an unprecedented way with the WII if you add the historic success and re sale of the gameboy format and now with the launch of the 3rd iteration of the DS upon us, they certainly know how to create interesting products and how to milk a market.

I just think its an interesting time, games are going mainstream and we are getting left on the sidelines. intrigued to see if a new platform emerges from MS or Sony that addresses this new group of gamers or if a new potential gaming giant will emerge, I remember when sony entered the market place, at the time there was the panasonic 3DO and the Philips CDI it was weird to have all these new brands and I certainly never would have pegged sony to do so well.

It would be cool to see a new manufacturer bring a new WII competitor to market and see how a new company would tackle the problem of making games and appealing to this new group of people who are entertained by pixels and puzzles.

"Sorry, was editing still. And how does Jeff feel about Excitebots I wonder, that game certainly does change up the formula quite a bit more, and Excite Truck was quite the departure from Excitebike also. Well, I know everyone around here will just bash it as kiddy anyway, and that none of those who bash it likely played Excite Truck and have read into what Excitebots actually brings to the franchise. Meh. Damned if you do, etc."

Indeed, I don't own it because it's near impossible to find here (same for Endless Ocean sadly) but I've played it several times and watched friends play and it really is awesome, so underrated in reviews, and Excitebots will probably follow the same route.