Nintendo Switch Topic; #byebyenx

[Kriven]

The Wii U is home to some of my favorite Nintendo games in years... Pikmin 3 is probably my favorite game of all-time. I've dumped hundreds of hours into that thing.

But Nintendo's games have taken a serious hit in terms of appeal. Mario Kart 8 is breathtakingly gorgeous and polished to a blinding sheen, but it lacks any real content beyond traditional racing and watered-down Battle Mode... I mean, Balloon Battles have been an important part of the franchise since the very first game, and seeing them cast to the side is disheartening. Battle isn't even fun in MK8. That's not even getting into all of the bizarre character omissions (Bowser Jr. and Diddy), the fact that previous Mario Kart entries not only had Balloon Battle but a variety of other Battle modes (Shine Battle, Bomb Battle, Mario Kart DS had that awesome Mission Mode). Mario Kart 8, by comparison, feels entirely empty.

The same thing happened to Super Smash Bros., especially being split up across two different devices. Mario Tennis (both the 3DS game and the new Wii U one) are shadows of what Mario Power Tennis and Mario Tennis 64 were (hell, they've completely ditched the idea that the portable counterpart is an academy RPG, which I always loved). We've got only one single Mario Party game to think of, and where are the rest of the Mario sports titles? Where's Sluggers U? Strikers Ultra Charged? Where's our Pokemon Stadium/Colosseum/Battle Revolution? The recent Star Fox game was yet another retelling of Star Fox 64, entirely abandoning the rich cast of characters developed in the previous franchise entries (arguably during the series hey-day) and providing a divided game environment with abysmal controls. We've seen more remakes and ports than ever before, most of them hardly different enough to really justify. Animal Crossing, a franchise which hasn't missed a beat since it showed up on the GameCube, has been relegated to the 3DS for the past four years, and seen only two very poor obvious cash-grab spin-offs since. WarioWare got some weird pseudo successor that doesn't really play right, Metroid is MIA, F-Zero has been replaced by the efforts of an indie team, Fire Emblem lost its soul somewhere along the way and decided to become Final Fantasy Tactics, Paper Mario continues to disappoint its fans by knowingly avoiding being what they want it to be, Mario & Luigi is falling into the same vortex of vapid bullshit as its predecessor series, and our only Super Mario games have been "Get to the Flag Pole!" games, with the coveted Mario Adventure Platformer nowhere to be found.

Most of Nintendo's franchises have been given more polish than they've ever had, and that really shows! When you play the game modes that they do have, they're great and a lot of fun. But they also have a lot less substance than previous entries in the same series, long-running series with franchise staples. The Super Mario spin-offs have dried up into the Mario & Sonic at the Olympics games, which cuts away close to ten games when compared to previous platforms, a number of their franchises are just completely ignored, and a number more are just not at all what they should be. And now you've got Nintendo tossing their hat into the Full-Priced Port ring with Mario Maker, Woolly World, and Hryule Warriors--cheapening the value of the Wii U's few genuinely appealing titles. There's a dirth of quality third-parties that, even during the Wii era, we have never seen before. You used to be able to count on something good from Namco at least once in a Nintendo cycle... Tales of Symphonia on the GameCube and Wii, the GameCube had Pac-Man world, the Wii got the awesome remake of Klonoa, the GameCube edition of Soul Calibur II... I think the Wii U really only gave us Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventure, a glitchy game that wants so badly to be Pac-Man World 2.

The good third-party titles are all Indie games... Shovel Knight, Guacamelee, Shantae, Armillo.... and three of those are multiplatform. The majority of the Wii U eshop bears a striking resemblance to the Google PlayStore, with its Spiky Walls and Angry Bunnies. How are people supposed to find the games that aren't broken memefests?

Nah man, I love my Wii U. I love Pikmin 3 and Tropical Freeze and Hyrule Warriors and 3D World and Runbow. But Nintendo's position for this console generation really isn't defensible. It's come to a point where people are more excited about Virtual Console releases than anything else.