When few months ago I was writing my thoughts on Metroid: Other M, I mentioned that my friend gave me his Wii to play with (pause for dirty jokes) and that I was planning to play the rest of Metroid titles on it. I tried. But what I learned is that – playing on Wii has been one of the worst console experiences I’ve had.
Whenever you play on a smaller screen (like I did now) or a bigger screen (like what I did several years ago), playing on Wii always feels incredibly clunky and awkward. Actually, let me rephrase that – playing any “serious” game, that is not a party game or collection of minigames, feels clunky and awkward. All those Just Dance, Wii Sports titles, things that are about non-serious and more physical fun work perfectly fine. Of course, they are still laggy and weird, but it doesn’t really matter there. It also doesn’t really matter if you are playing something that has simpler requirements for running and controlling camera – titles like Silent Hill: Shattered Memories or on-rail shooter games feel sluggish and less nice than they could be, but still usable. Yet, as soon as we get to things like Metroid Prime, where you need to do quick FPS maneuvering with platforming and switching modes and weapons, and things fall apart.
Which isn’t helped by the fact that the Wii remote just swallows your batteries like no tomorrow, that Wii, even at the time of release, was incredibly low-res and awkward to play on then modern screens, since it didn’t support HDMI output, and bigger the screen, uglier everything looked.
And it got me thinking – instead of Raspberry Pi emulated weirdness of NES and SNES mini, what I’d actually be interested in seeing is a Wii mini (pause for another dirty joke). Just a small cheaper console size of the IR bar, that already includes the main titles that worked perfectly fine and are still liked by people like the already mentioned Wii Sports. Except running in at least 1080p. There won’t be a need in many peripherals as well, with Wii remote+ being the only thing that is necessary. Given the amount of terrible plug and play consoles that terribly emulate Wii, I bet something this simple and elegant would actually be popular. And all the good “serious” games are getting ported to newer Nintendo consoles anyway.
P.S. Oh but Metroid: Prime itself is awesome, if slightly dated in several ideas. Shame I just got frustrated with Wii so much I couldn’t finish it. But maybe some day, on a more suitable console…