> our much skinnier (admit it) avatar

Only because they don’t make avatars that go as fat as I might require…

You should get Wii Fit - when you first use it, it does a BMI test, and adjusts your gut accordingly…

I say this as a Nintendo fan (so it doesn’t bother me THAT much), but this is actually a little depressing. Wii Sports, while a shitload of fun, is a bit gimmicky and has the depth of a puddle, whereas SMB is a thing of beauty.

I find it hard to believe that people will still be playing Wii Sports in 24 years time.

I’m with you on every word, Pete. Wii Sports is a hoot, but is it as “important,” culturally-speaking? Does it have any elements that can be considered iconic? (Super Mario Bros. has, without having to count, dozens.)

The good thing about this is that it means the Wii is an immensely popular platform…so much so that it’s outselling the previously impervious NES. I guess that’s the unspoken result here.

But…yeah. Super Mario Bros. represents my childhood in more ways than one. I understand I am no longer a child, and things change, but will Wii Sports represent anyone’s childhood? Is that even a possibility? The best selling game of all time is now a game that connects with very few gamers (if any) on a personal level.

It’s almost bizarre.

The importance of Wii Sports isn’t so much to pop culture, in terms of inconography, but I think it’s arguably proving to be more sociologically important. I have friends and relatives who would never have owned a ‘regular’ console, but who have taken to the Wii with a crazy fervour - despite only owning a game or two. They play together, in short bursts, rather than alone for hours.

So it’s unlikely to define a childhood, but that’s okay because a) it’s young non-gamer couples in their 20s as much as anyone who are really taking to this, and b) it’s appealing to people who don’t really WANT their lives defined particularly by video games.

The fastest selling DVD in the UK now is Mama Mia. Which is kinda the same thing - no memorable iconography, no lasting influence, and a sales base that generally doesn’t consider itself ‘into movies’ and thinks dialogue is made up by the actors as they go along. Neither is the choice of the connoisseur, but of the individual who wouldn’t know Halo from a hole in the wall. The importance of both is in reaching massively beyond the niche.

Still, will people be playing in 24 years time? I’m gonna bet yes…interactive bowling, golf, tennis, etc. of some kind? Something fun and easy to dip into, that doesn’t need honed gamer skills to master? Absolutely. Wii branded? Not likely. But if Nintendo are still going, and have a game system in the top three, ‘Nintendo Sports 2032’ seems entirely possible.

Oh yeah, I can understand entirely WHY it’s happening, it’s just that it seems strange to me. To have a franchise with so many globally-recognizable elements ousted by a collection of mini-sports games just comes as a bit of a shock.

Probably because I’ve known for a long time (I think we all have) that Super Mario Bros. was the best selling game prior to this…and even to non-fans that makes sense. That chubby little stereotype is everywhere, and even if you haven’t played the game for over a decade you can hum all of the music.

So far it to be replaced with something essentially faceless, I really had to step back and say “Wait a minute here…”

Can you rationalize the popularity of Wii Sports, and its eventual unseating of Super Mario Bros.? Of course you can. I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said. But it raises some very interesting questions about the type of gamers playing today and their expectations.

I just find it fascinating, and also a bit of a shock.

Yeah, I can see why it’s incredibly popular. I had a few people round a few days after its release in the UK back in 2006 and it was obvious that the Wii was going to take off just on how Wii Sports garnered enthusiasm from both men and women.

>Still, will people be playing in 24 years time? I’m gonna bet yes…interactive bowling, golf, tennis, etc. of some kind?

My point was that people are still playing, modding and enjoying Super Mario Bros in exactly the same form it was released in back in 1985. It’s a near-perfect platformer, whereas Wii Sports will be refined over two and half decades to become “Nintendo Sports 2032”.

It was “nice” to me, that Super Mario Bros was the best-selling game of all time, because the gaming community agrees that it’s also one of the very best. Wii Sports doesn’t garner the same appreciation.

Likewise, it would be “nice” to me, if something a bit more credible than Mama Mia was the best-selling DVD of all time.

But you can’t argue with popularity.

> To have a franchise with so many globally-recognizable elements ousted by a collection of mini-sports games just comes as a bit of a shock.

I guess this is the real shock, actually - the one to the gamer base. Every other medium, more or less, was already dominated by a chart of popularity over importance - publishing, TV, movies, music. Games were still cliquey enough for popularity and importance to be more closely related - and now Nintendo have changed that.

The real news is arguably the widening of the gene pool - that gamers are now going to have to put up with normos polluting their marketplace to a level they’d previously not had to deal with…

> My point was that people are still playing, modding and enjoying Super Mario Bros in exactly the same form it was released in back in 1985.

Ah, I see. I guess that seems like a relatively small audience to me. Someone somewhere is always using an emulator to play some title or other. When the ZX Spectrum version of Terminator 2 is still being downloaded and played, then pretty much everything is.

Still, I don’t dispute that Sports would be played massively less than SMB.

> whereas Wii Sports will be refined over two and half decades to become “Nintendo Sports 2032”.

Did they stop making Mario games? I may have missed a memo…

>Games were still cliquey enough for popularity and importance to be more closely related - and now Nintendo have changed that.

Spot on. In my original post, I started to write about how this was Good News, but deleted the paragraph, for whatever reason.

It’s true, though. It’s evidence that Nintendo succeeded with the Wii in a way that it HASN’T succeeded since its very first console. (Which, itself, also widened the video game audience drastically.) And that’s a really great thing.

No doubt there are people out there who disagree…as you said, “the normos” as coming. I see people whining all the time about how many “mini-games” there are for the Wii. I guess they don’t realize that those titles are for a certain type of gamer—a gamer who really, genuinely enjoys them—and that nobody is required to buy them. But as long as Nintendo keeps churning out top-notch unfuckingbelievable games (Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart Wii, Metroid Prime 3…) alongside their base-expanders, there’s no reason to do anything but embrace the change.

There’s a lot of complaining about Wii Sports not deserving the title, but I really think it’s just misdirected shock, rather than true outrage. At least, I hope it is…

>Ah, I see. I guess that seems like a relatively small audience to me. Someone somewhere is always using an emulator to play some title or other. When the ZX Spectrum version of Terminator 2 is still being downloaded and played, then pretty much everything is.

To ANYWHERE near the same degree? I wasn’t aware that the ZX Spectrum version of Terminator 2 had been re-released (in near identical form) on 3 other consoles to great sales and acclaim. I wasn’t aware that people were loading speed-runs on YouTube for the first level. I also wasn’t aware it was still available to buy.

>Did they stop making Mario games? I may have missed a memo…
The difference is that while Mario is refined (and drastically altered with the advent of 3D gaming), his older games still have enough originality to be playable on their own terms. It’s less about improving the form, more about subverting it (which is where stuff like Mario Galaxy comes in).

Wii Sports (if the franchise continues past #2) will probably end up being very similar to other sports franchise (such as Fifa or Pro Evo). Refining controls, improving graphics, but becoming missable if you are already have an earlier release.

>But as long as Nintendo keeps churning out top-notch unfuckingbelievable games (Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart Wii, Metroid Prime 3…) alongside their base-expanders, there’s no reason to do anything but embrace the change.

Agreed. To be a Nintendo fan requires a ton of patience. There’s no less unfuckingbelievable games on the Wii at this point in its lifespan, compared to the Gamecube or the N64. And Super Mario Galaxy may just be my second favourite game ever.

I’m looking forward to Wii Sports Resort and am sure it’ll be a great seller, but I can’t see it coming anyway near my top ten.

>but I really think it’s just misdirected shock, rather than true outrage.

Quite. As I said, I’m not making placards or anything as it’s indicative of how popular the Wii is, it’s just a shame that something so close to my heart has been dethroned.

> To ANYWHERE near the same degree?

Did I say it was?!

Pete, I wasn’t arguing with you. At all.

>his older games still have enough originality to be playable on their own terms.

Some of the most fun I have with the Virtual Console is with Super Mario World…a game I must have played through and explored more times than any other when I was a kid. And it’s no less satisfying now than it was then.

>There’s no less unfuckingbelievable games on the Wii at this point in its lifespan, compared to the Gamecube or the N64

And when Pikmin Wii and Punch-Out Wii come out (both confirmed, the latter with an official teaser!) it may even pull ahead.

>Super Mario Galaxy may just be my second favourite game ever.

Dare I ask?

My apologies.

I assume you picked the ZX version of Terminator 2 as an example of “another” old game. You’re right in saying that this is a small cross-section of gamers who still enjoy old games, but the block capitals were simply to emphasis that that the popularity of Super Mario Bros endures like very few other old games.

The Wii Virtual Console which includes Super Mario Bros (in NES form) has had more than 10 million games downloaded. Super Mario Bros is somewhere at the top of the list of the most downloaded (with the sequels close behind).

>Dare I ask?

It’s so horrendously unoriginal, it’s not worth mentioning.

On a completely unrelated note; How’s the Zelda retrospective coming along, Phil?

> I assume you picked the ZX version of Terminator 2 as an example of “another” old game.

Very specifically one that, to me, hardly anyone would want to play. And yet a few still do.

I don’t doubt the massive endurance of SMB to gamers one iota, but to your question ‘will people still be playing Sports?’ my response is ‘Well, people play all sorts of old stuff’, ‘it’s a big success now so a fair bit of nostalgia playing seems likely’ and ‘that market is pretty niche-y’.

Which I think is fair enough, but is not to really disagree with anything you said - just to suggest that ‘importance’ is relative. I certainly never meant ‘Hey, Mario’s only played as much as every other old game, even the obscure ones’. Not at all.

>How’s the Zelda retrospective coming along, Phil?

You won’t believe this, but I actually intended to work on the next installment this weekend. I think I’ll have enough to say about the next three that I won’t require another “breather” before the series is finished.

No, really.

You didn’t just remind me that I never finished the series.

Honestly. I was going to sit down and do it THIS VERY WEEKEND.

I swear it!

The other thing not taken into account here is… what about the many and varied re-releases of SMB? (Mario All-Stars, the GBC “SMB DX”, the GBA “NES Classics” release and the Virtual Console release all leap immediately to mind). Once you add ALL OF THOSE in, where does SMB stand? [And I think it skews things to exclude such rereleases]

Oh, and look at the number 4 title on that chart as it stands, and ask how that stacks up to Mario in terms of influence, and how it stacks up to Wii Sports in accessibility to “Non-Gamers”…

> Once you add ALL OF THOSE in, where does SMB stand?

Probably under Tetris if you take ALL versions of a game into account…

Is now a good time to say that, compared to Sonic, Mario always left me a little cold?

Ah, piss off.

> Mario always left me a little cold

Didn’t get round to fixing your heating either? Bloody plumbers…

How many times do we have to tell you Capps? You’re not a Princess and you’re not trapped in a fucking castle!

> Probably under Tetris if you take ALL versions of a game into account…

Well, I wouldn’t count Tetris 2 (weird/non-contiguous pieces), Tetrisphere (guess), nor any other variants that don’t include both the A-Type *AND* B-Type games from the original, with the same range of settings (same as I wouldn’t include the SMB2-Japan/Lost Levels in SMB’s figures, despite how much it reused. Cosmetic differences are one thing, gameplay differences quite another).

> ZX Spectrum version of Terminator 2

I owned this! Well I owned the Spectrum +3 version at any rate. I don’t remember it being particularly anything. Although that could well be because I was crap at it and the huge benefit of that generation of machines was games were so cheap that if you didn’t get on with one you could buy a bag full of others and forget all about it.

I did spend hours and hours playing the Spectrum version of Robocop.

Oh and bring back text adventures.

Although keep Justin Lee Collins as far way possible.

Oh and bring back text adventures.

They’re still thriving, albeit free ones - but the best of those are as good as or better than any of the commercial ones from the 80s:

http://ifwiki.org/index.php/FAQ

> I did spend hours and hours playing the Spectrum version of Robocop.

Me too. The in-game music is still stuck in my head…mostly because it was some kind of pre-existing thing that I’ve since heard elsewhere. (Including an Ariston ad, I think.)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=nqEBj2JEaxk

Ocean’s Terminator 2 was considered impressive at the time, I think. It did thing of changing game genres for each level which is now kinda frowned upon - top-down driving, side-on combat, self-repair puzzle stuff…oh how diverse it was.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/terminator-2-judgmen…

Ah the +3. Happy, geeky days. Will anything thrill like Chase HQ in my life time…?

Re: Text Adventures

Thanks for the link John. I did go through a face a few years back of playing old titles. My favourites are all the Magnetic Scrolls titles from the late 80s. They had a the double-benefit of not only make you think, but being well written and with a dark humour to them at times. I used to return to ‘The Pawn’ and ‘Jinxter’ at least once a year until my Mum decided in her infinite wisdom to throw away the codebook for Jinxter (which resembled a mock newspaper with a few risque stories), then sometime in the late 90s the floppy disk drive in my +3 sparked into flame and my text adventure days were over.

Re: Terminator 2/Robocop

Robocop was a bit like that too wasn’t it? It didn’t change genres each level but it wasn’t a straight side-scrolling shoot-em-up cross platform game either. It did attempt to replicate the shoot through the damsel’s legs into the crook’s crotch scene from the movie, although it was always easier to just blast around her in the game version.

Movie spin-offs in those days often had very little to do with the films, but would sometimes throw-up some great games. Short Circuit was one I was given with the +3. The first part of the game involved breaking out of Novatech. You moved between rooms trying to find the green pass card for the green door, the red one for the red door etc. Then in the second part that could be played stand-alone it became a side scrolling shoot-em-up where you had to jump over puddles and road-kill and blast things with your laser.

Re: Chase HQ

I’m waiting for the movie-adaptation.

> It did attempt to replicate the shoot through the damsel’s legs into the crook’s crotch scene from the movie, although it was always easier to just blast around her in the game version.

Indeed. Though in fact you couldn’t shoot through the girl’s skirt because that counted as her sprite and killed her.

And yeah, we had puzzly photofit levels in there, too…

Yep I remember that one well, it was a pretty classy movie tie-in all told. Much like many of my +3 games when I came back to them in when I was a few years older I suddenly had the ability to get much, much further. I can remember Level 5 of Robocop frustrating me for months on end.

Regarding the comparisons of Wii Sports and Mamma Mia! above - I would argue there is one crucial difference. Whatever you think of the longevity of the title, Wii Sports was revolutionary in terms of defining what you could do - or at least, begin to do - with motion control in home videogames. Mamma Mia! is revolutionary in absolutely no way whatsoever.

> Mamma Mia! is revolutionary in absolutely no way whatsoever.

Except box office. But yeah, you’re quite right. It’s Nintendo’s Halo – the killer app for the Wii – but it’s also at the vanguard of a new type of gaming.

>It’s Nintendo’s Halo

Be nice.

I take it I’d be lynched if I also said that I preferred Wii Sports over the original SMB?

(And this is from someone who is a fairly hardcore gamer. True, I’m not exactly well up on my first person shooters, but you don’t clock up over 100 hours on Final Fantasy X without being a hardcore gamer of some kind…)