There’s a theory about Nintendo that goes something like this: Nintendo has the best IP in video gaming, the characters with the highest Q score. Mario, Wario, Zelda, Kirby, Metroid, Donkey Kong, Pokémon, you name it. Add up all the Mario-themed games alone and you’ve got the best selling video game franchise of all time. If you have an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, take a look at the controllers. We have Nintendo to thank for popularizing what’s there: the four-way d-pad (the Nintendo Entertainment System), the diamond configuration face buttons (the Super Nintendo), the thumbstick employed to navigate 3D worlds, trigger buttons and force feedback system (the Nintendo 64). For all the talk about missed opportunities — that Nintendo ought to take Mario and Co. multiplatform — you could argue Nintendo wouldn’t be Nintendo without its focus on how we play, as much as what we play.
Which brings us to the Wii U, Nintendo’s attempt to sneak what it calls “asymmetric gaming” — playing the same game from different perspectives — into our living rooms. On paper, the system doesn’t look so different — a 3.5-pound base station that could pass for a slightly longer, curvier Wii. Flip it around and you’ll spot its new HDMI port (better late than never). Plug in the Wii-style sensor bar, dust off your old Wii Remote or Balance Board and you’ll find everything syncs and works just as it did before. Slide a copy of New Super Mario Bros. U into the slot-load optical drive and you’ll discover what it’s like to play a Mario sidescroller in stunning high definition for the very first time.
But the showpiece this time is the Wii U’s tablet-like GamePad (capital G, capital P), sporting a vivid 854-by-480-pixel, 6.2-inch touchscreen sandwiched between a d-pad, face buttons and left/right thumb-sticks. It’s thicker than most tablets, but substantially lighter (just 1.1 lbs), and the extra plastic gives your hands comfortable grip room, even if the glossy finish warrants the usual grumbling about fingerprints. It’s also packing motion control sensors, haptic feedback, duai speakers, shoulder buttons, left and right rear triggers, a microphone, an infrared sensor, near-field communication support a front-facing camera and a rechargeable battery (it even has its own power adapter).
DISPLAY
What else can the second screen do? Say you want to play a little New Super Mario Bros. U or Batman: Arkham City while someone else watches Tv. Knock yourself out The GamePad can double as the main screen in most games. New Super Mario Bros. U is mirrored on the GamePad’s screen by default, and in Arkham City, you just tell the game to pipe everything to the controller. The distance the base station can stream to the GamePad is limited — about 24 feet — but stay in range and you’ve essentially got the best looking, best controlling handheld on the market (including Sony’s PlayStation vita).
Keeping track of two screens could have been a mess, but it’s actually pretty intuitive. Once I stopped trying to follow both screens (it’s almost instinctive to want to) and just followed the audio-visual cues in the games I sampled — Nintendo Land, Batman: Arkham City, New Super Mario Bros. U and Ninja Gaiden 3; Razors Edge — everything came together. It’s also kind of liberating having that second screen in more traditional games, making information you’d normally pause the game to access available at a glance, say the map view in Arkham City, or the list of combo moves in Ninja Gaiden 3.
The Wii caught everyone by surprise six years ago. Many expected it to fail. Even now with nearly 100 million systems sold worldwide — tens of millions more than either Microsoft or Sony — you’ll still find people dismissing the Wii as an underpowered, overhyped game system everyone bought but no one plays.
Whether that’s true or not, the Wii U already feels like a much more robust and fascinating idea, one that shows even more promise, in my opinion, than the Wii did in 2006. That’s partly because the Wii U is still a Wii (a radically more powerful Wii with a second screen that floats around your living room, true), and motion control still factors big in the Wil U’s future.
SPECS
Specifications
1.8 x 6.8 x 10.5 in
WIreless Controller
8 GB Drive Capacity
25 GB Disc Capacity
HDMI (v1.4), RCA video Outputs
Accelerometer, Gyroscopic, Camera Motion Controls
Which brings us to the Wii U, Nintendo’s attempt to sneak what it calls “asymmetric gaming” — playing the same game from different perspectives — into our living rooms. On paper, the system doesn’t look so different — a 3.5-pound base station that could pass for a slightly longer, curvier Wii. Flip it around and you’ll spot its new HDMI port (better late than never). Plug in the Wii-style sensor bar, dust off your old Wii Remote or Balance Board and you’ll find everything syncs and works just as it did before. Slide a copy of New Super Mario Bros. U into the slot-load optical drive and you’ll discover what it’s like to play a Mario sidescroller in stunning high definition for the very first time.
But the showpiece this time is the Wii U’s tablet-like GamePad (capital G, capital P), sporting a vivid 854-by-480-pixel, 6.2-inch touchscreen sandwiched between a d-pad, face buttons and left/right thumb-sticks. It’s thicker than most tablets, but substantially lighter (just 1.1 lbs), and the extra plastic gives your hands comfortable grip room, even if the glossy finish warrants the usual grumbling about fingerprints. It’s also packing motion control sensors, haptic feedback, duai speakers, shoulder buttons, left and right rear triggers, a microphone, an infrared sensor, near-field communication support a front-facing camera and a rechargeable battery (it even has its own power adapter).
DISPLAY
What else can the second screen do? Say you want to play a little New Super Mario Bros. U or Batman: Arkham City while someone else watches Tv. Knock yourself out The GamePad can double as the main screen in most games. New Super Mario Bros. U is mirrored on the GamePad’s screen by default, and in Arkham City, you just tell the game to pipe everything to the controller. The distance the base station can stream to the GamePad is limited — about 24 feet — but stay in range and you’ve essentially got the best looking, best controlling handheld on the market (including Sony’s PlayStation vita).
Keeping track of two screens could have been a mess, but it’s actually pretty intuitive. Once I stopped trying to follow both screens (it’s almost instinctive to want to) and just followed the audio-visual cues in the games I sampled — Nintendo Land, Batman: Arkham City, New Super Mario Bros. U and Ninja Gaiden 3; Razors Edge — everything came together. It’s also kind of liberating having that second screen in more traditional games, making information you’d normally pause the game to access available at a glance, say the map view in Arkham City, or the list of combo moves in Ninja Gaiden 3.
The Wii caught everyone by surprise six years ago. Many expected it to fail. Even now with nearly 100 million systems sold worldwide — tens of millions more than either Microsoft or Sony — you’ll still find people dismissing the Wii as an underpowered, overhyped game system everyone bought but no one plays.
Whether that’s true or not, the Wii U already feels like a much more robust and fascinating idea, one that shows even more promise, in my opinion, than the Wii did in 2006. That’s partly because the Wii U is still a Wii (a radically more powerful Wii with a second screen that floats around your living room, true), and motion control still factors big in the Wil U’s future.
SPECS
Specifications
1.8 x 6.8 x 10.5 in
WIreless Controller
8 GB Drive Capacity
25 GB Disc Capacity
HDMI (v1.4), RCA video Outputs
Accelerometer, Gyroscopic, Camera Motion Controls