Wii Will Rock You

I never asked for a Wii or expected to get one, but I can’t say I wasn’t happy to see it on Christmas morning in 2010. It wasn’t exactly a surprise—our parents had asked me and my brother “hypothetically” what games we would want if we were to get a Wii. My grandmother gave them some money and told them to buy one, but I was never completely clear on why. I didn’t protest, of course. One of the games we got when we first got the console was Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. I was ecstatic about the idea of a Star Wars game that I could control by swinging the controller like a lightsaber and gesturing as if I were using the Force. Unfortunately, it was rather short and had very little replay value. The games I was much more impressed with was Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime Trilogy, which I have played and replayed over and over again since getting them.

Super Mario Galaxy is reminiscent of Super Mario 64 in terms of basic game mechanics. You play as Mario, your main objective is to collect stars from various worlds, and your overarching goal is to rescue Princess Peach from the evil Bowser. How it differed was that, as the name would suggest, it had an outer space theme to it, which I thoroughly enjoyed as a longtime sci-fi fan. It also allowed the player to play as Luigi, who has always been my favorite of the Super Mario Brothers. It also had some creative challenges unlike anything I’d seen before as well as power-ups not seen since the 2-dimensional Super Mario Bros. games.

Metroid Prime Trilogy, a meta-series within the longer Metroid series dating back to the original Nintendo Entertainment System, is also a sci-fi game. Well, actually, it’s three sci-fi games on one disc, as the name, as the name implies. The first two were originally available for the GameCube, and I have them in that format, but the conversion to the Wii format strongly enhances the experience.  Instead of using a control stick and a button to aim, the player simply points the Wii remote at the screen to aim. It takes some getting used to, and my aim was very shaky at first—I kept spinning myself around without meaning to, which made it very difficult not only to shoot the creatures that were attacking me but also to move in the direction I wanted to as I explored the planet Tallon IV. However, before too long, I started to become acclimated to the new controls, and I haven’t played it on the GameCube since. Between the aiming controls and the first-person perspective of this adventure game, the only way the experience could get any closer to actually fighting monsters and exploring planets in a high-tech suit of armor would be if the game required me to move my legs in order to traverse the planet’s surface instead of using a control stick for that. It’ll probably still be a while before games get to that level of realism, but until they do, the Metroid Prime Trilogy is probably the best sci-fi adventure simulation experience available.

My Journey Towards the Dark Side

With the exception of the Sega Genesis (which I still don't know why my parents bought), I had always had Nintendo systems. I’d never wanted a PlayStation, a PS2, or an Xbox, and I didn’t really want any other Sega systems. I was under the impression that all high-quality games were put out by Nintendo. I still believe most are. But early in my sophomore year of high school, my friend Kabir suggested to me that, being a huge Star Wars fan and an RPG gamer, I would love Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I figured he was probably right, but the problem, as I told him, was that I didn’t own an Xbox, my home computer wasn’t a gaming machine, and the game wasn’t available for any other systems. To my astonishment, without my asking, Kabir said that I could borrow his Xbox to play the game. I was ecstatic. I promised to take good care of it, and I quickly became addicted to the game.

Knights of the Old Republic is unique among RPGs and Star Wars games in several ways. Its setting is different from those of most other Star Wars games—four thousand years before the time of the movies. The technology is basically the same as that seen in the movies for whatever reason (it’s never really explained, so my only conclusion can be that once a civilization reaches a certain level of advancement, technology basically stands still), including starfighters, space cruisers, lightsabers, blasters, and droids; however, all of the characters are different—after all, even Yoda only lived 900 years. One of the things that sets Knights of the Old Republic apart from a lot of other video games is that the player can choose whether to be good or evil (whereas in most video games the player must be good by default). The main character is created by the player, who chooses what the character’s gender is, what he/she looks like, and what physical and mental abilities he/she has, among other things. The player also chooses from among several possible conversational responses when he/she talks to other characters in the game, and different responses often lead to different outcomes for events in the game. Between the dialogue options, the character design options, and the morality option, the game has enormous replay value. You could play the game 36 different times and never do it the same way twice—no exaggeration. I know because I’ve played it approximately that many times.

Of course, after my first time, I gave the Xbox back to Kabir—I would’ve felt bad about keeping it much longer. I ended up buying my own Xbox and my own copy of the game, along with the sequel. I also got myself Star Wars: Battlefront (essentially a Star Wars-themed large-scale shooting game) and its sequel, which also weren’t available on Nintendo systems. In so doing, I expanded my horizons a bit and opened my mind up to the possibility of gaming on other systems.