It makes me sad that so few games utilized the potential of the WiiU gamepad. There was this game called Zombie U that managed to really show how incredible it could be. There was a mode where players would be in a zombie wave survival arena except 1 player would instead be controlling the spawns via a map on the gamepad. They could see where the other players were, where the weak spots were, and had their own progression tree to unlock better zombies.
thanks for the recommendation. my teenage son is obsessed with the Wii U, he asked for one for Christmas two years ago. neither of us had heard of this game though! i picked it up for 16 on amazon just now.
The problem with the Wii U is it wasn’t just another underpowered Nintendo console. It was an underpowered Nintendo console that games had to be completely different or specifically designed for to truly take advantage of.
Here’s my thing, so many Wii games that leaned too heavily into the Wiimote were annoying. I don’t necessarily believe games leaning more into the game pad would’ve made them enjoyable experiences. I think it’s just nostalgia. We remember things like Wii sports because it was fun and everyone had it, not because it used the Wiimotes.
I’m wondering if a lot used it in minor ways so you forget easily. I remember Brawl would use it when you selected a character, but I may only be remembering because it was a meme on TikTok for a bit. I remember one microgame in Warioware using it when you answered a phone which was funny.
I remember hearing that red steel had a multiplayer mode where your objective was played out of the Wiimote’s speaker to keep it secret from other players
The Famicom had a modem with online shopping and horse race gambling. It also had a floppy disk module with a ram adapter that also added an extra audio channel. Zelda 1 and 2 debuted on this. It also had 3D goggles, the predecessor to the Virtual Boy. It also had an entire keyboard that plugged in, and a cartridge packed with sprites, tiles, sound effects, and example code you could hack up and save to another add-on: a cassette tape recorder that saved your game projects encoded in audio.
The Super Famicom had a radio receiver that clicked onto the bottom that downloaded new games from space.
The Game Boy had an entire cartridge pin for audio passthrough so future tech built into cartridges could preprocess sound and send it straight to output.
The N64 also had a floppy-disk loading module.
The GameCube had a module that plays DMG, GBC, and GBA games (but more importantly turns the GameCube into an actual cube).
The NES had an expansion port on the bottom.
The SNES also had an expansion port.
The virtual boy…existed.
The N64 had an expansion port, a ram upgrade, and a controller memory pack.
The gamecube had an expansion port, and a handle.
The Wiimote has a speaker inside, that only 1 game ever used (that I played).
The WiiU had the WiiU gamepad.
The Switch had the IR sensor, and HD rumble.
It makes me sad that so few games utilized the potential of the WiiU gamepad. There was this game called Zombie U that managed to really show how incredible it could be. There was a mode where players would be in a zombie wave survival arena except 1 player would instead be controlling the spawns via a map on the gamepad. They could see where the other players were, where the weak spots were, and had their own progression tree to unlock better zombies.
thanks for the recommendation. my teenage son is obsessed with the Wii U, he asked for one for Christmas two years ago. neither of us had heard of this game though! i picked it up for 16 on amazon just now.
The problem with the Wii U is it wasn’t just another underpowered Nintendo console. It was an underpowered Nintendo console that games had to be completely different or specifically designed for to truly take advantage of.
Here’s my thing, so many Wii games that leaned too heavily into the Wiimote were annoying. I don’t necessarily believe games leaning more into the game pad would’ve made them enjoyable experiences. I think it’s just nostalgia. We remember things like Wii sports because it was fun and everyone had it, not because it used the Wiimotes.
You must’ve only played 1 wii game because pretty much every game used that speaker
I’m wondering if a lot used it in minor ways so you forget easily. I remember Brawl would use it when you selected a character, but I may only be remembering because it was a meme on TikTok for a bit. I remember one microgame in Warioware using it when you answered a phone which was funny.
I remember hearing that red steel had a multiplayer mode where your objective was played out of the Wiimote’s speaker to keep it secret from other players
The Famicom had a modem with online shopping and horse race gambling. It also had a floppy disk module with a ram adapter that also added an extra audio channel. Zelda 1 and 2 debuted on this. It also had 3D goggles, the predecessor to the Virtual Boy. It also had an entire keyboard that plugged in, and a cartridge packed with sprites, tiles, sound effects, and example code you could hack up and save to another add-on: a cassette tape recorder that saved your game projects encoded in audio.
The Super Famicom had a radio receiver that clicked onto the bottom that downloaded new games from space.
The Game Boy had an entire cartridge pin for audio passthrough so future tech built into cartridges could preprocess sound and send it straight to output.
The N64 also had a floppy-disk loading module.
The GameCube had a module that plays DMG, GBC, and GBA games (but more importantly turns the GameCube into an actual cube).
wow that is interesting as hell. would be fun to play with all that stuff!
At least half of those were definitely used.
Don’t forget the rumble packs. N64 had one, not sure if there were others.
Logitech had a rumble mouse. The only game I know used it was black & white
I loved Black & White! Always tried to play benevolently, but with enough frustration I ended up razing everything
Three ports, actually. One for network, one for the GBA player, and one that wasn’t used as far as I can recall.
Not totally useless!
Crusty wiimote sounds are a staple