Why you NEED A Wii in 2022! | Games, Hardware & History of the Nintendo Wii | Retrospective & Review

the year is 2006 and the era of the seventh generation of video game consoles has officially begun microsoft had already beat everyone else to the punch with their release of the new xbox 360 back in late 2005 but 2006 is where we saw the rest of our exciting announcements from the other two major players in the console wars nintendo and sony come november sony had finally released the playstation 3 which was their new powerhouse of a gaming console for the time which they hoped would put microsoft and their less mature xbox brand back in its place but unfortunately for sony that didn't go exactly as planned nintendo on the other hand well they made the wii the what but before we get into that we need to head back to 2001. the sixth generation of video game consoles was pretty rough for nintendo and their little lunchbox shaped console wasn't able to compete with sony's wildly popular ps2 and even microsoft managed to outsell nintendo with their brand new xbox the problem was at this point in history everyone was doing the exact same thing releasing more powerful hardware than ever before trying to appeal to the most hardcore gamers while offering the best graphics and games possible the problem is developers had more limitations to work around if they wanted to get their game running on the gamecube things like the little mini dvds and limited expansion options made the gamecube an afterthought for lots of studios on the other hand both sony and microsoft went with regular dvds to store their games and their systems could even play dvd movies which meant that more game consoles were going into living rooms and they had more people to sell games to on those platforms in the end the gamecube was a retail disappointment compared to the competition and for the next console generation something would have to change if nintendo was going to stay competitive through the next generation nintendo needed a revolution at the time nobody was really sure how nintendo's planning to compete with the follow-up to their gamecube there were some rumors that it would have a built-in hard drive use hd dvd media to store games even have a pressure sensitive controller why but of course in the end nintendo wanted to prioritize great experiences that everyone could enjoy over having the best hardware possible and that's where the entire selling point behind the week came from so let's go ahead and see how nintendo managed to win the seventh generation of home consoles with this at its core the wii was basically just a gamecube on steroids with some nice built-in upgrades like bluetooth support for wireless controllers an sd card slot and a full-size dvd drive that gave developers a lot more freedom than the old mini dvds did the wii is actually a really sleek little console and definitely more compact than the ps3 and xbox 360 while having no shortage of features that would make both sony and microsoft jealous like the built-in gamecube controller ports on the top which actually made the entire gamecube library playable from day one sony and microsoft also offered backwards compatibility with older systems on their next-gen consoles but in sony's case it costs way too much and probably burnt up your ps3 in the process and for the xbox 360 it was done through software emulation which was fine but it meant that you probably couldn't expect all of your games to run right off the bat but the wii didn't have to worry about either of these issues the ibm broadway cpu is essentially just a die shrink of the gamecube's old gecko chip that ran at a higher clock speed down from 180 nanometers on the gamecube all the way down to 65 nanometer and some later revisions of the wii this meant using less silicon which meant lower manufacturing costs higher profits and full backwards compatibility with gamecube games through hardware the wii's graphics chip codenamed hollywood is pretty much the same story as well an overclocked cheaper to produce version of the flipper gpu chip found inside the gamecube with an extra arm processor built in nicknamed starlet to basically add all the new wii features to what would otherwise be an overclocked and flat gamecube but either way the wii itself is probably the most boring part about the wii it's how late was it when i wrote that the other thing that really set the wii apart from its competition was the controller the wii remote it's kind of meant to look like a tv remote and there's something about its shape that just makes it really intuitive to pick up and throw directly at your tv no one was safe from this plastic motion sensing missile flying directly into their brand new flat screen unless they were using the included wrist strap but after some reports of early wrist straps breaking and failing to be a wrist strap nintendo also started including these silicone jackets that would help cushion the wemo upon impact what did that hit that aside though the wii remote was a pretty innovative controller it was one of the first controllers of its kind to include motion sensing technology and nintendo made sure it was going to be a core part of the gameplay experience and as anyone who's ever played wii sports can tell you it's actually pretty cool the wii remote could also sense where you were pointing it relative to your tv screen and this was another really well executed feature that made it really easy to interact with the wii the user experience revolved around pointing and clicking on stuff which made it very easy for people who had never played video games to use the console and that was kind of the whole point of the wii itself to get people who weren't really into gaming to pick up a remote and play game tennis or break a tv for the first time in their life by making these experiences more intuitive and accessible nintendo kind of managed to forge a market of their own that their competitors would try to have to scramble to compete with but did it actually work yes it did nintendo managed to outsell both sony and microsoft by combined 32 million units and keep in mind these are the competitors who have designed some of the most powerful and advanced gaming hardware of the time nintendo beat them with what was basically an overclocked and honestly overhyped version of the same console that they made last time perfect better yet nintendo started to get a little cocky when they realized that basically everyone is buying their system so they decided to try releasing the brand new we family edition it's basically the console you already love to hate but worse yeah the wii family edition take a wii remove the included stand and any sign of gamecube backwards compatibility and you have a new cost reduced version that you can bundle with wii sports resort just in time for the holiday season of 2012. coincidentally the same year my parents bought us a new wii to replace our old broken one thanks mom and dad now obviously if your name was sony or microsoft at this point these tricks that nintendo were pulling must have stung and you probably really wanted to get back at them with something that would put them back in their play what sony made their attempt with the playstation move and microsoft tried with the connect much like the wii they were meant to let you experience games in ways that we had never seen before and i mean ps move and connect weren't commercial failures and they each ended up getting their own decently sized library of compatible and exclusive titles but in the end they were not able to slow down the wii success but just in case nintendo decided to ruin their competition even more by launching the wii motion plus accessory in 2008 which plugged into the bottom of your wii remote and added extra motion sensing functionality which was used in games like wii sports resort and replay motion later in 2010 nintendo actually integrated these features into a regular sized wii remote which they called the wii remote plus and that's what i have here i don't have it and that's what i have here aside from that what i think is most important about any platform is the games and obviously being a nintendo console the we had a really strong lineup of first party tiles that made good use of the features built into the system games like super mario galaxy and brawl practically defined the generation even if they did have their fair share of problems once you boot up the wii you'll find yourself dropped into the wii menu which is a pretty basic user interface that does what it's designed to do really well just take the wii remote point it at the screen and click on the channel that you want to go into it's stupid simple and that's basically the beauty of it before you actually start playing games through the disc channel though you should probably head into the me channel and make your own me for saving data the wii was the first console to use these me's from nintendo and obviously these little guys have gotten pretty popular over the years you know pretty much every nintendo console since the wii has used me in some form but we're not seeing them as much today on the switch unfortunately this right here is my me i made him when i was like five years old and i'm pretty sure you can see the resemblance but anyway i went ahead and threw in wii sports and as you should all know by now this game is way more fun than it has any right to be especially if you have two or more people and the wii remote does a pretty good job tracking motion and everything works really great here for these arcadey type games another game that i should talk about is super smash brothers bra it was the third installment in the series and the first release exclusively for the wii and i can't explain why but i've always had such a soft spot for this game i know it usually doesn't get the same praise as melee and ultimate and i'll be the first to say that it doesn't deserve a whole lot of praise you know it's unbalanced and kind of slow for a brawler but it also brought so many new and cool things to the series that ended up being a huge part of the game it's got a reasonably fleshed out character roster and a grittier more realistic art style that i actually prefer over the previous games if gran turismo was a title that really showed off some of the graphics capabilities of the playstation 3 then brawl in some ways is the wii's gran turismo aside from the aforementioned native gamecube controller support it was also one of only a few games that was distributed in a dual layer eight and a half gigabyte dvd it's obvious that nintendo put a lot of work into making this game an experience that pushed the limits of what was possible with the hardware and i think they did an amazing job with it one last one that i'll talk about is we play motion which despite what the court of public opinion may say it's a pretty good example of what you can do with the wii motion plus some of the mini games on here aren't all that great but a few like the stone skipping game actually do a really good job at showing off just what the new controllers are capable of seriously this game is great i wish i could do real competitive stone skipping like this it's just cool so i think it's pretty clear that i've always been a big fan of what nintendo had to offer with the wii but what did other people have to offer well the wii was always known for being a console with one of the most active homebrew scenes in recent history you thought i was going to talk about third party titles didn't you because it's really easy to hack into and start experimenting with third-party software with the homebrew channel installed and an sd card you can pretty much convert your wii into a complete emulation box that can play everything from atari 2600 and ms-dos games to nintendo 64 and gba roms in just about an hour with the homebrew channel installed and an sd card you can pretty much convert your wii into a complete emulation box that can play everything from atari 2600 and amazon games to nintendo 64 and gba roms in about an hour i think it's a really neat alternative to something like a raspberry pi because i don't think you'd have a whole lot of luck getting wii and gamecube games running on a pi 4 with decent performance with the wii it's all done natively on the hardware so this pretty much unlocks the entirety of nintendo's library all the way from the wii obviously the system's as old as the nes and in my opinion this is all pretty cool for a 15 year old system another option that you have is actually emulating the wii itself and playing these games on your computer dolphin emulator is obviously the standard for high quality wii in gamecube emulation but until you actually try it for yourself you probably wouldn't realize how incredible these old games are to play in an emulator in higher resolution just as an example here are a few games that i ripped from my wii and brought over to dolphin to emulate on my main pc i'll get started with ssbb and here it is running on regular wii hardware and captured over component it looks alright in fact i bet it looks pretty decent if you're watching on a phone screen but standard definition video hasn't aged all that well but with that said if we move over to dolphin running at 4k internal resolution with this really cool hd texture pack that i got from the dolphin emulator forms the differences are immediately apparent this game seriously looks like it could be a brand new switch release at this point it's just incredible when you realize that this title was originally released in 2008 i've always loved owning physical hardware and building a real game collection but i do have to be honest here this is one area where emulation can make a massive improvement to the experience and i think it's just a no-brainer and just for the heck of it here's we play motion and seriously nintendo how did you make such a beautiful game and then limit your console to 480p output so anyway i guess what i'm really trying to say here is that the wii is a great game console and even with some fierce competition nintendo was able to show off that they were still one of the great innovators of the console wars also your pc is probably a better we than a real wii so you should buy a way to rip the game so you cannot play them on the console itself so let me know in the comments what you all think is the wii still worthwhile console in 2022 what kinds of experiences did you have with the wii back in the day and do you still enjoy some of the games on the platform well i think i can personally say that i really do even with its flaws it's pretty hard to complain about the nintendo wii anyway with all that said i think i'm done here so if you thought this video was interesting you should go ahead and check out my buddy matt's video about his experiences with the wii over on his channel i think he had some really interesting things to say and he did a great job diving deep into the development history of the wii so if you want to check that out i'll put a card up in the screen and a link down in the description so with all that said thank you guys very much for watching the video

Channel: Lowest Logan

Views: 213,322

Keywords: nintendo wii, nintendo switch, nintendo gamecube, nintendo wii u, nintendo 3ds, sony playstation, microsoft xbox, nintendo emulation, nintendo homebrew, wii emulation, gamecube emulation, dolphin emulator, cemu emulator, wii sports, super smash brothers, 6th generation, 2022, 2006

Id: omvBj9F30Ic

Length: 13min 49sec (829 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 01 2022