Hello, and welcome to The Back Page Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, we are joined by the now extra crisp sounding Ashley Day. Ash, how’s it going? It’s going wonderful. Thank you very much. It’s lovely to be back. Did our attritional bullying in subsequent episodes force you into buying a better microphone? What happened there? Nobody is harder on me than me when it comes to criticism. So, when I heard the episode, I was like, oh yeah, I really need to invest in something other than a PlayStation 5 headset for doing podcasts. I enjoyed the bullying, to be honest, because it’s just attention. I’m that kind of person. If you’re acknowledging my existence, I’m happy. Oh yeah, it’s great to have you back. And yeah, this is a great episode to have you on as well, because it’s all about the Wii U. We have been threatening for a while to do a Wii U Hall of Fame, or perhaps a Wii U Hall of Infamy. Matthew, how are you feeling about visiting this subject finally as its own podcast episode? Having to sort of unpick some old wounds, return to some terrifying moments from my past, but yes, it should be an interesting exercise. I actually think it’s a pretty obvious exercise in terms of how it will end up, but let’s see. Yeah, absolutely. So yes, we’re gonna pick out 10 games that represent the Wii U strengths essentially. And much like the LucasArts Hall of Fame, or the, well, actually I suppose the LucasArts one is the only one we’ve done, so weirdly, Ash, you’ve come on on the two Hall of Fame format episodes we’ve done. Yeah, so basically we’re gonna go through not the entire library of Wii U games, but a massive chunk, some highlights, some lowlights, partly for the lols, admittedly. But like out of that, we will construct a 10 game Hall of Fame, so it should be good. Ash, how are you feeling about that episode idea? Does that capture your imagination? For people who don’t know, I was working at Nintendo UK for the entire lifespan of the Wii U. I joined a few weeks before it launched, and I left a few weeks after Breath of the Wild came out, so I was there for the whole thing. So, you know, like Matthew, this will definitely stir some memories for me. And I think even if it is fairly obvious what lists we will end up with by the end, hopefully there’s some good kind of anecdotes and insights we can share along the way. O&M closed like two years into Wii U, so you were far more engaged with the latter half of the console than I was. I was like very much a punter for a lot of the stuff we’re talking about, so your perspective is invaluable. Well, the first two years is probably like 70% of the catalogue. Right. Yeah, there’s a little bit of that because I compiled the list for this and I feel like I went through it in sort of like Philip Glass music fast motion that we used like lifespan. So that was my experience. Yeah, one of my best sort of E3 memories, Ash, is you smuggling me onto Breath of the World at the Nintendo booth when I was on PC Gamer. That was rad as hell. That’s why I was so sad when you left Nintendo because I no longer had anyone who could do that for me. It was tough, but yeah. Cool, so Ash, having you on is a good opportunity to reflect on the magazine Games TM a bit more because I think that this is a magazine that’s got a lot of fans even now. And I worked on it for under a year, but you were like a much bigger part of that magazine’s life than I was. So I was curious to revisit that a little bit. What are the issues you worked on that you’re proudest of or that stand out looking back? The obvious one is I was there for issue 100 and very, very much involved in putting together that issue, including doing… It was a strange one in that we did a top 100 games list, which is a fairly obvious thing to do at that landmark. But we also did a hundred covers, a massive split run with each of the top 100 games constituting a cover. Which was a really strange way to do a top 100 because your instinct is to pick the hundred best games, the hundred greatest games. But then when you need something that looks good on a cover, certainly that starts to change your editorial. So we ended up with a fairly strange list with some things that probably in our hearts wouldn’t be in a top 100. And at the same time, we had, mostly we had free reign. I got some really personal picks in there. So my favorite game, Shining Force III on the Saturn, I threatened to quit unless we put it on the list. Good use of power. I don’t think anyone really cared. They were like, you don’t need to threaten to quit. We’ll just put it on there. But we also had the managing director of Imagine who got quite involved and he wanted to see more kind of like very, very early classic games like Elite on there. We ended up with 100 covers that looked really good and a very kind of strange top 100 list, but I think I made it a unique top 100 at the same time. And to say that I got games like Shining Force III and Nights Into Dreams and Crazy Taxi onto the cover of Games TM in whatever year it was, like, I don’t know, 2010, 2011, that’s kind of a very proud personal achievement for me. All Sega games, actually, that I’ve just mentioned there, giving away my true colors. I get written off as a Nintendo fanboy, but I’m a Sega fanboy, really. They just don’t make any consoles anymore. Did Moon or Tulip make the cut? Oh, absolutely not. I think that’s around about the time I was just discovering those games. I think I probably would have unsuccessfully argued for Chibi-Robo around that time. That was certainly a really striking character to put on the cover, from an art perspective. Yeah, good color. I do remember, within weeks of joining Games TM, they were doing a Game of the Year awards, and Chibi-Robo had come out in the UK that year. I was very seriously arguing that it should win for best sound design. But I was on this mag with people who were only playing Xbox 360 games, and here was this new guy coming in and saying, we should give Chibi-Robo a Game of the Year award. It wasn’t taken seriously, and I think I wasn’t taken seriously as a consequence for several months after that. Then they got used to me and they knew what the deal was. Well, obviously as a Frontier Developments employee, I endorse elite being on one of those covers, Ash. What about other issues aside from that, Ash? My passion on the magazine was running the retro section. I more or less did that from the day I started to the day I left, which was about five years. That was a really good excuse to just get in the coverage that really appealed to me on a personal level because nobody on the mag really cared what I did in that section and they just left me to it, which was an enormous privilege really when you come in as a staff writer and you’re given a section all to yourself. They just say, here’s 30 pages, do whatever you like with it. That’s quite rare, I think, in print media and it’s kind of cool that we were making a print magazine in the age of the internet. So actually getting in touch with classic game developers was easier than ever. Really, I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn just tracking people down and PRs were pretty good for the Japanese stuff. PRs were good at getting us in touch with legendary game developers who seemed quite happy to talk about their games. So I ticked off some fan favorites. We interviewed Yuji Naka about Knights. One of my favorite games, Mr. Driller. I just emailed Namco one day and said, can we do an interview about Mr. Driller? It was like 10 years old at that point. It wasn’t really a going concern for Namco, but they were really cool. I’m like, yeah, of course you can. The guy still works here, let’s do it. Well, it’d be good if his name was Mr. Driller. Mr. Driller, yes. Mr. Driller Guy. Driller Sam. So, yeah, that was a lot of fun because I was just in a position to be able to put my favorite games front and center in a magazine, which again, I think is a pretty rare thing. And it’s amazing how the PR barrier really dropped away whenever you were talking about classic games because they didn’t need to control the message so much. I remember at the height of Gears of War popularity, I just emailed Cliff Bozinski out of the blue and said, do you want to do an interview about Jazz Jackrabbit? Really didn’t think he would get in touch, but he emailed back straight away and said, yeah, I would absolutely love to do that. No one ever talks about Jazz Jackrabbit. He went back to his family home and dug all of his concept art out of the loft that he’d drawn when he was a school kid, like on his desk at school. And we got an amazing feature out of it. So it was really a great time for that kind of coverage. And I’ve been out of games media for a while now in any real sense. And I wonder if it’s quite as easy today as it was like 10 years ago, when there are so many more online media outlets nowadays, a classic game developers getting bombarded with opportunities that they can’t all say yes to. I think I might have been there at like the perfect time, especially when a lot of these games hadn’t already been written about. So you’ve got to be the first to tell these stories. Yeah, I look back on that really fondly and I’m just yeah, just really proud of what we did. That era of the mag that you were on, particularly like the sort of like, I guess, first half, most of it really. Like, it was like the best games mag in the building minus retro gamer maybe, like maybe those kind of two were on a par. But at the time, I think it was a bit stubborn about like the mags I worked on and being quite territorial. But in retrospect, they were clearly like the best, most characterful, most complete mags. And I think like the retro section just added so much color that if you cut it off from the rest of the mag, the rest of the mag would be a bit, would be a lot more trad. And I think that, yeah, it was a place for kind of like weird treasures to sort of, you know, to sort of like get their moment in the spotlight. And I think you did a great job with that. So I think it was, I think it was really good for my career as well to be on Games TM, because I think secretly I really wanted to be on Retro Gamer and just be writing about retro games all the time. But being on a magazine that also covered modern games in every format and a magazine that was fairly well respected, it did get me that kind of broad discipline across all kinds of games. And I was lucky enough to go on cool press trips, which is a big part of the job. And I remember the guys on Retro Gamer were always a little bit, some of them were a bit resentful of that. They were like, oh, we were just sitting here in the office all day. And in your first week, you’ve gone off to Las Vegas to cover the new Rainbow Six game. I didn’t really care about Rainbow Six, but when you’re like 25 years old and you’ve never had any money and a publisher goes, do you want to go to Las Vegas? You’re like, hell yeah, I want to go to Las Vegas. Going around the gambling tables in your ripped jeans and your three t-shirts that you’ve owned for 10 years is a bit of a, it’s a very typical like games journalist experience, I think. T-shirts splattered in KFC barbecue sport sauce, no doubt, you know. Were you there? Were you watching me? Well, that’s just like, that was my version of that event, basically, that kind of event. Yeah, I know I agree with you, that part of it was sort of exotic and exciting. I do even remember people griping about the number of trips he went on, actually, even though that’s a memory I even have at the back of my head somewhere. Yeah, for sure. Any other sort of issues that come to mind, Ash? One day, I think we’ll have to do an episode about cover meetings and putting a cover together, perhaps. I think you might have done something similar already, or at least touched on the topic. That’s a topic of simultaneously great pride and great trauma that we don’t have time for today. But I do remember when we did Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts, which was just called Banjo-Kazooie 3 at that time, and Rare designed the cover for us. They did a bespoke render of Banjo-Kazooie with a wrench messing around with the Game CM logo. Beautiful art. Absolutely beautiful. It was amazing. Yeah, I think Rick Porter, our editor, got to go and visit Rare, which he was super happy about. I won’t say who, but I remember someone in a managerial position at Imagine, can I swear on this podcast? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I remember someone at Imagine saying, there is no way we are putting that twatty bear and that twatty bird on this cover, which really took the wind out of our sails, it must be said. But it happened. I think eventually everyone saw good sense when you have an exclusive of an exciting new game and you’ve got a piece of art that was made especially for you, you can’t turn that down. I mean, yeah. Despite whether you like Banjo-Kazooie or not. Well, that’s the thing is that that was objectively amazing art and great access. But yeah, I’ve touched upon it briefly, but a bad cover meeting is one of the key reasons I left Imagine. You know? Yeah, I’d actually refrain from talking about it for quite a long time because it’s kind of like, it is like a touchy subject or nor would I expect most people would argue that it resulted in better covers, generally speaking. I think it all came down to the talent. The only positive is when you like stuck to your guns and you and you managed to push through a cover that you really believed in. Yeah. And therefore coverage that you really believed in. But yeah, going through the wringer to get to that point is one of the hardest first world problems that we had. Yeah. The thing is, as well, when I got to future, they were like, well, you can pick your own covers because you’re the editor. And I was like, well, great. That’s how it should be. Yeah, I suppose on that subject, Ash, how did you find Imagine changed over time? What was it like in 2011 around the time you left versus 2006 when you started? So the big difference is that when I started, they had so many games magazines. Imagine Publishing had splintered off from Highbury Publishing. And as a small indie publisher, they’d launched some competitor titles of their own. So 360 Magazine, I think they’d launched a magazine called Next 3, which is covering PlayStation 3 stuff. They’d acquired Retro Gamer. So they had a few games mags. And then Highbury went under and imagine acquired all of Highbury’s games mags as well. So they got Games TM, Play, X360, Power Station, a Cheats magazine, their Go Play, a magazine just about the PSP, if you can imagine that. So they did like this mass recruitment drive where they must have hired about 10 staff writers all at once, of which I was one of them. And you just came into this world of like, wow, like this is a huge office full of people very much like me, which is an unusual feeling, like even working in the games industry years later, you don’t really get that same feeling. You don’t you don’t feel like you’re surrounded by entirely like minded people because people come from all walks of life. So it was it was quite an exciting place to work in those early days because of the, you know, the culture at the company, you know, we’re all very young, first time in this kind of job, Friday afternoons off, which I think we spoke about last time, so we’d all end up down the pub. And you were a really like tight knit team, not just on your magazine, but across the whole editorial department. And the big difference is that by the end, I could see the writing on the wall for the number of games magazines there had dwindled steadily over those five years. And I think now, you know, 10 years after I left, 11 years after I left, if you look at what was, you know, the imagined publishing parts of future publishing, I think there’s only retro gamer left from those days. And when I left, there were, you know, there were a few reasons I left. One was mostly that, you know, I’d hit my thirties and I couldn’t survive on games journalists’ salaries anymore, just couldn’t. But one of the other reasons was my friends were all gone because, you know, mags were closing down, people going elsewhere. And I could just see this trajectory of, oh, I’m going to end up kind of alone here. So it’s time to make a move. And that’s when I went to Nintendo. That rings true with my experience as well, where I was only 25 when I was editing Games TM and when I left. But by that point, you know, you’d gone, John Denton had gone, Andrew Hanna had gone, you know, people I worked with on Play, like Tom Leclerc and Chris Reynolds and all these people who sort of, you know, obviously Steve Burns, these people who sort of defined my era of Imagine were just sort of gone. And then it just didn’t quite feel like the same company anymore. Dave Scarborough was still there, I like Dave. But it felt like also a thing of I didn’t think Games TM would last forever either. It felt like I was sort of stepping stones escaping from collapsing magazines, basically, which Matthew kind of maybe that rings true with you a little bit too. Well, I stayed on them until they collapsed, that’s the difference, I didn’t have the foresight to get out. Yeah, for sure. But I also reflected as superpons to time, Ash, especially like being in my thirties where I think like, you kind of like, me maybe sort of miss how easy it is to be to make friends in that situation, you know what I mean? Like, as an adult, like a grown ass adult, you don’t make friends with people who have the same interests as readily, it’s a lot harder. So yeah, I missed that greatly. Yeah, good times. That’s the thing, right, just to be very sentimental for a moment, you know, all those, you know, all but one of those magazines is now gone, unless you count the fact that play came back, it’s not the same play, but it looks cool. So all those mags are gone, but like the friendships remain, like so many people from Imagine, I still talk to, sometimes on a daily basis via like, you know, WhatsApp and Facebook and what have you. And that’s, you know, you can’t take that away. That’s such an important part of my life and I’m really grateful for that. I don’t know if I would have like such a great network of friends had I not gone into games journalism. Yeah, so even being a future wasn’t really, wasn’t quite as sociable, wasn’t quite as cheerful, the teams are a little bit more like islands, I would say. But yeah, imagine was very much like everyone is at the pub from the editor in chiefs, you know, staff writers and sub editors and stuff. So yeah, like I totally, totally get you on that. How’s Team17 treating you these days? Are you going to send us a key or two for dredge? Shame. I’m sure I can sort out some keys for dredge. Yeah, Team17, what can I say about a publicly traded company that I work at? It’s great fun. It’s a very different sort of job for me compared to what I’ve done in the past. I’m much more in a, to be honest, quite a senior managerial position. So although we’re publishing things that are very fun, like my day to day is actually quite serious. You know, I spend most of my day in spreadsheets and contracts. It’s a surprisingly adult job and I fear that one day they’ll realize I am about as far away from an adult as you can possibly get. But you know, Team17 is a really kind of special and important company for me. Like I’m from Wakefield, you know, the same place that the company originated in. I grew up playing Amiga games. I spend most of my days at Team17 trying to get them to bring back Alien Breed or do some sort of Alien Breed collection. I am determined that one day that will happen, but I kind of have to do that in between doing the things they actually want to pay me to do. And yeah, just to go into like hype mode for a second, we’ve got a really good year or so ahead with some great games and yeah, Dredge is one of those. There were a load of previews that came out this week and it was amazing to see like most of the gaming press like really getting behind it and saying like, this is a game you’ve got to keep an eye on, which as I’m sure you know, Sam, you’re in a similar business to me. You can’t take for granted that every indie game published is gonna capture the imagination of people and get people writing about it because there’s only so many journalists and there’s seemingly like a million games coming out every year. So when you’ve got something that people are willing to give up their time to play and write about, that’s really exciting. Yeah, absolutely. No, I definitely still feel you on that one. Plus like the excitement factor that I definitely get from working with, for a publisher is that when you work with smaller devs or indie devs, they are genuinely pumped to have people go to bat for the thing that they’ve made, that they’ve poured years into. Yeah, it’s really rewarding. And also the amount you learn about game development from being publisher side is just so, that’s like so interesting. That’s my favorite bit of the job, is like learning how this thing works and then realizing how little I knew when I was a games journalist. I think about this a lot. And if only the economics made it feasible, I would love to have done this job first and then gone into games journalism because I think my access would have been better, my understanding of how games are made would obviously have been better. And I think I would have had a much better grasp of what questions to ask in interviews, to be honest, but it’s not really feasible to go from publishing to games journalism for various reasons. It’s a shame. Have either of you been watching the Double Fine documentary? Not yet, but I’ve seen your tweets, Matthew. They sound exciting. I’m absolutely obsessed with it because unlike you two, I am completely outside of the process. Something like that, which feels genuinely frank in the way they’ve put it together, is just like an amazing insight into just sort of how fucked the development process is, like how chaotic and messy it can be. And especially if you really know, as you do with the Double Fine documentary, what the end product is, like Psychonauts 2, you can sort of see them land on ideas that will make it in the final game and then like dismiss them in the room or in the moment, and then spend two years going down a dead end only to return to it. And you’re like, you fools, you had it right the first time. That’s what you’re going to do. Honestly, I’ve seen enough games developed from start to finish now that I can confidently say the same as other people have said before, is any game that gets finished and released is kind of a miracle because it’s so difficult to make games. The odds are very much stacked in favor of people failing. Even the most seasoned developers, there’s so much wastage in the way games are made because it’s all experimental. Every time you make a new game, there’s certain things you can bring in, certain learnings and technology from previous games, but really, you’re reinventing the wheel every single time. And you start off with a plan and there’s no guarantee that that plan will result in the intended experience. So often you’re having to go back and restart things or add on a lot more time than you expected to in order to really polish it up and get the product that you need. So for someone to make a great game, truly like a breath of the wild of this world, you really can’t take it for granted. They are divine miracles, as far as I’m concerned. We should talk about that documentary in more detail at some point, Matthew. Yeah, we should both get it watched and dig into it because I’m just absolutely loving it. I think it’s amazing and amazingly brave of themselves to open themselves up like that. It doesn’t feel like a PR exercise at all. That’s what’s kind of cool about it, though, right, is that I think so often, even on this podcast, we’ve bemoaned the lack of access that publishers give people to understand how games actually get made. And so when things like that are put out, you should absolutely go and watch them and understand them. Yeah, you’ll never write like they phoned it in or these lazy devs or this. The solution to people writing that shit on social media or whatever is to just prescribe them. You have to watch 36 episodes of this and you’ll come out the other end and you will never question it again. That’s really good. Okay, cool. Well, yeah, looking forward to some of Team17’s output this year than Ash. That’d be cool. It’s awesome to hear about what you get up to these days. I’m glad it’s going so well. Just to actually very quickly call back to your last time on the pod, because you were about to release kind of your Metroid-y, not bullet hell-y, witch shooter thing, which I know Catherine has been playing. The Night Witch. Yes, and Catherine was playing that and very much enjoying that recently, and she’s telling me about it, because I think they covered it in their Magic Week on RPS. Oh, yeah, they did. I shared that article with the developers, actually, and they were really pleased to see it. Yeah, that’s one of those games where anytime I see anyone talking about it, it warms my heart, because I think, obviously I’m going to say that every game we publish is excellent. But The Night Witch, I think, is one that really deserves attention, especially listeners of this podcast, because they are people of great taste. Did you mean on our Discord? Yeah, not lately. So Ash, you listen to the podcast, I think. I don’t know if you still do. Yeah, I do. Okay, good. Do you have any thoughts on our recent output, anything you’ve heard where you’re like, that’s fucking egregious or anything where you’re like, I agree with that. Anything that sort of highlights for you? Nothing egregious that I can remember, but I think usually if there’s something like, I don’t know, if you guys were to say, Balan Wonderworld is a big pile of crap, I’d be all over you on Twitter and you know that. There’s some things that just, they can go unsaid. That’s good. Well, now we know who covered Yujinaka’s bail. It was Ashley Day, so that’s good. How are you feeling about the whole Yujinaka situation? It’s deeply upsetting to me. Like I genuinely do love him as much as you can love a person you don’t really know. I’ve met him several times, interviewed him. He’s never ever tried to criticize me for hogging a game for too long at a trade show. So I think he’s a stand-up guy. He’s just a very impatient man, impatient in queues, and patient to make a fortune, just impatient. I thought you were going to say he never ever committed inside trading when I was interviewing him. Oh dear. I didn’t directly ask him about that. So we may know, but I’ve completely lost track of what the question was to be honest. Oh, about the, just the podcast, your thoughts on it basically. Yeah, so I think the episode former I am the biggest fan of is the one I’m continuously surprised to hear you suggest isn’t that popular or is divisive and that’s GamesCourt. All right. You think that’s good? I think it’s awesome. Like whenever you do a GamesCourt episode, I’m like, right, this is getting listened to straight away. I absolutely love it. But you don’t find the actual assessment of the games incredibly flimsy because I don’t have the, neither of us have the necessary the retro brain that- It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter. Not to, I mean, I am a massive collector of old games and I pay sometimes eye watering amounts of money for things that, you know, if my family knew what I was paying for old games, I think they would stage an intervention. So I, you know, that is to say that I do have a very good idea of the value of things, but that’s not, that’s not what makes that show entertaining, or that form entertaining. It’s what makes it entertaining is the, the like mythology that you’re continuously building up around the concept of the games court. It reminds me of your old podcast, Matthew, the rotating platform. You had a format on there, space arc. Oh yeah, yeah. Where you were canonizing games by adding them to an arc that was leaving a dying planet. And it was fun to hear, you know, what kind of games you were willing to take on the arc. But it was even more fun to hear about the, the people that were being left burning in the lava. And how that story evolved over time. It’s, yeah, it’s just, it’s very entertaining. And that’s what podcast should be. Well, I’m glad you like it. I always thought that people preferred the drafts to the, to games court. But then the last games court we did was really popular. It was the biggest episode all month. They beat out the best, beat out game of the year that we did last year, beat out best games in 2014. Like it was, I think people actually are really starting to engage with the format. And someone pointed out to us that this is a format that’s truly yours, that no one else does anything like this. So that is true. It’s funny actually, because recently we got a submission that was every single Shining Force game someone had bought. So that’ll come up in the next games court. And I thought, oh fuck, I’m gonna hear about it from Ash on this one. Cause I know nothing about these like 15 games or whatever. So we’re- Maybe we’ll get Ash in as like a special bonus judge. Bonus judge? Completely unbiased. They’re all great and they’re all worth the money. Whatever they paid, it’s worth it. Yeah, I like the idea of that as Ash is like the Smash Bros trophy judge, you know, just sort of like throw him in case of emergency kind of thing. Well, I’m pleased you’re still enjoying it, Ash. It’s great to have you back on here. So shall we take a great, oh, sorry. So shall we take a quick break and then come back? Oh, fuck you, all right, it’s Saturday morning. That’s not actually said in the afternoon, isn’t it? I think I’ll keep that in the podcast now, Matthew, because it’s quite funny. Okay, let’s take a quick break and we’ll come back with the Wii U Hall of Fame. Welcome back to the podcast. So, The Wii U Hall of Fame. Before we get into it, before we pick our 10 games to represent the Wii U’s lifespan, we’re gonna do a little bit of setting the scene here, the old preamble, classic Back Page pod nonsense. So, the big question I think about the Wii U is, has the sheer volume of Wii U games migrating to Switch overwritten the existence of the Wii U somewhat? Will anyone reflect on Mario Kart 8 as a Wii U classic beyond a handful of people? Matthew, I feel like I know how you feel about this, but maybe Ash, you can kick us off. And what do you think of this? The number of ports, is that like erasing the identity of the Wii U by migrating all these games onto a more successful platform? I think to a certain extent, it actually is, yeah. Like, because I feel like the, you know, the vast majority of the Wii U’s best games are more accessible on the Switch. And they’re often improved on the Switch as well. If you do own a Wii U, you know, I considered getting the Wii U out of the loft in preparation for this podcast. And I just couldn’t, I didn’t have the energy. You’ve got this huge console, you’ve got the game pad. If you’ve got a lot of digital games like I have, you’ve got a massive kind of external hard drive plugged in. So you’ve got like three power supplies and it’s just a headache thinking about it. That’s the one you always forget is the external hard drive power supply. Absolutely. That’s what happened to me this morning, actually, because I did plug my Wii U in because it was part of the Patreon stretch goal that if we hit some arbitrary amount, I would get the Wii U out. So I did and I plugged it in and I played a couple of games I haven’t played before. And then, yeah, I did forget about the external hard drive and I was like, oh, why do they not make just flash memory work with this thing? It’s just such a nightmare. Every single part of it is designed to make life harder than it should be. The screen gets so manky as well when you store that thing. Like it’s grim. My sticks were sticky. That sounds filthy, but it’s not. So yeah, I do think that, and it was funny as well, when it came to actually looking at my shelf and being like, what don’t I have on Switch here? I think it was like three games ultimately, or like four games if you technically count Splatoon as well. So yeah. I will say, and I’m sure we’ll talk about this in more depth, there are of course experiences on Wii U that will never fully translate to Switch, if at all. So I think there is still value in that second screen experience that may never be duplicated or emulated ever again. And that’s, I don’t know what you want to do with the Hall of Fame list, if it’s just like pretending the Switch doesn’t exist and these are the best games, or if it’s like these are the games that have the most value to play on Wii U today. The ones that have the value, I think, would be the ones that really take advantage of the gamepad. I think it has to be considered in the context of Switch personally, because it isn’t self-contained. And it’s not like instantly, everything is instantly better on Switch. There are definitely some things where the second screen means the superior mechanical version of this game is still on Wii U. That was definitely part of my thinking anyway. Do you feel the same way about the Wii U, its existence being overwritten by the Switch ports somewhat, Matthew? Do you think that is just something key to consider? It just doesn’t seem like a very self-contained console. It does feel like it’s been ransacked a bit. It’s not like… The classic example is the Dreamcast, which has a similar story in terms of success and is locked away, but has a lot of things which are only on it and are so distinctly of that time and of whatever the Dreamcast sensibility is. And the Wii U has some of that, but almost by porting so much stuff to the Switch and showing that they could live outside of this quite unique hardware, it kind of diminishes that idea of the Wii U as this. There was a lot of talk about this can only be done on Wii U and then it turns out it couldn’t. And if anything, it got better when you remove that thinking. It doesn’t feel like a special kind of curio machine, like some older sort of failed consoles do. It’s not like the Saturn, for example. Like it’s not got the range of software that you can’t get elsewhere. And that is what defines that to a large extent, I think. Especially once the eShop is truly gone. That’s where a lot of the interesting remaining exclusives are. Even then, there’s not that many of them, to be honest. Interesting, yeah. So I suppose that kind of, I think, answers the next question a little bit, which is what’s the Wii’s reputation these days? Has it gotten any better or worse since its lifespan ended? And I suppose, Ash, something I would throw in here is, do you not think that the quality of Switch ports that the Wii U has yielded adds to its reputation somewhat? As in, they’ve added so much value to the subsequent Nintendo console. Does that not mean that in retrospect, we have to see this as viable in itself? What do you think? I think over time, through the lifespan of the Switch, a lot of people have woken up to what the Wii U did that was cool. The kind of sheer quality of the Nintendo developed experiences that are on there are up there with some of the best things Nintendo have ever made. And you do have to recognise that. And as those games have come to the Switch, I think people have been recognising it. And I think also what they were trying to do with that second screen experience, particularly the off TV play, that was a stepping stone in their thinking towards the Switch. I don’t think you get the Switch unless the Wii U exists as this kind of experimental prototype. And so you’ve got to give Nintendo credit for that. I think possibly some of, I don’t particularly want to get into the reasons why the Wii U failed. The name, I have to acknowledge, has something to do with it, but I think also the price. It was very expensive compared to the Wii. I think it’s failings. What I’m trying to say is it’s failings and not really anything to do with the games. Matthew, what are your thoughts on that? Because I know that you had some discussion in the Discord this week about working on Nintendo Mag when the Wii U hit and what that represented. So do you want to take it from there? There’s a problem with Wii U is like what it was when it was kind of alive and what it is now. It’s quite different things. And in the moment, whatever the weirdness of the kind of hardware itself, like Ash says, there was that quality of games. It woke up a kind of side of Nintendo, like a more core side of Nintendo, which they’d kind of strayed from in Wii a bit. And you suddenly had these incredibly lush, I would say more traditionally like Nintendo core games, but also like the idiosyncrasies of like the Wii U itself in terms of like Miiverse and the characterful decisions in its like interface and its actual like console behavior. When those things were active, they obviously are dead now, were really exciting and kind of gave it this sort of community, which was fun on Nintendo Mags. I mean, I said on the Discord, like this was the console that killed Nintendo Mags, which is technically true, but that’s like a wider commercial failure thing rather than anything inherent about the machine. But I do think like the important thing is like, it’s like a bubbling time. It’s like what was really great about the Wii and the whole Wii U experience you can never have again. Like even if you still have it, you can’t plug it in and enjoy it as it was enjoyed at the time. Yeah, I suppose like, do you think that the, do you agree with Ash’s point that Wii’s reputation has maybe incrementally improved since then? Cause I think your point about core games and that being a divergence from what they were doing on Wii U, sorry, on Wii is true. And maybe something the console didn’t get enough credit for at the time that they weren’t making these things that felt more trad. How do you think his reputation stands these days? I obviously love the Switch and I love what it’s become. But when they announced it and when they first were showing it off and everything, it didn’t scream like this is going to be a mega success that it became. It wasn’t worlds away from the weirdness of the pitch of the Wii U. It had the same kind of golfing power compared to what everyone else was doing, which a lot of people attribute to Wii U struggling. It’s just really off the… Just as you’re coming into Xbox One and PS4 to have a thing which can barely compete with 360 in some of its ports seemed particularly egregious to some people. And these things are true of the Switch. The Switch has a very similar kind of power gap between it and what other people are doing. But just by the success of it, it forces people to kind of engage with it. It forces people to kind of meet it halfway. It forces developers to meet it halfway. And that could have happened with Wii U if it had been big enough. I don’t really see what’s completely different other than a certain something that happened, whether it’s a huge marketing success or the particular launch games or the promise of Breath of the Wild that kind of like turns, give Switch the initial foothold that the Wii U never had. I’ll say a couple of things there. I think portability and form factor, they were the key things, I think. It just, that was incredibly appealing to people. And sheer volume of software, right? Obviously having Breath of the World out of the gate. And I think Wii U was kind of confusing in the sense that you had this game pad, but you couldn’t take the games with you. That was a little bit of a half measure, you know? Yeah, but I thought, you know, if you… I know, say if you strip away all that, because obviously all that is really important, but fundamentally, what Nintendo were doing as game makers was not different on Wii U to what they did on Switch. Like, they were as good as they needed to be on Wii U. And they’ve just continued that run. And to your point, that’s why those Wii U games that have been ported to Switch have sold so incredibly well, particularly Mario Kart 8, which I think must be one of the best-selling like traditional games of all time. Yeah, it really wasn’t about the games. I think it was about the hardware and making what the hardware did fit into the lifestyles of the games-buying public. And I think the Switch tapped into that so much better because it was just so much easier to communicate the value of the hardware. Yeah, I don’t want to say like, you put these things side by side and you’re like, you know, these were like separated at birth and one ended up being successful and one didn’t. Like I appreciate one has many more flaws, but it’s not like, in terms of what they actually do, it’s not that different. Like I wonder what is the Wii U story if it launches day one with Mario Kart 8 and getting just the kind of buzz and like, you know, because by the time Mario Kart 8 does turn up, it’s too late, you know, even like a year or a year and a half into Wii U, like the Wii U’s fate is kind of decided, I feel. No, it’s a good point. I think that like, I remember back to the time where I bought Wii U and it was galvanized by going to E3 2013, playing Bayonetta 2 and Mario Kart 8, you know, Mario Brothers, sorry, 3D World and, you know, just this Wind Waker HD. And it was just really convincing array of stuff that made me think, you know, I need to own this. So went and bought one and it got back from E3. And so, you know, that’s, I remember clearly in the moment thinking this is exciting, but yeah, because it just didn’t have that instant foothold. You never got to see people make use of the features in ways where they could truly, you know, kind of like light up your imagination. I think it’s weird, actually, I was playing Star Fox Zero this morning, right? And that’s not particularly beloved Wii U game. But as I was like looking at the two different perspectives of like a cockpit view on the game pad, and then like a kind of wider dogfighting view on my TV screen, I was there thinking, well, this is something that Switch can’t do. And so, you know, obviously you do have the detachable controllers, the lovely form factor, all that stuff. But there is that thing of like, well, there is something Nintendo-y here baked into the very concept of the hardware that the Switch doesn’t have. That actually kind of like, and that alone, I think, makes the Wii U worth respecting in some way. It is innovative. It’s just because it never had the support, you never got to see people bring the best out. I think that first kind of six months of the console really has a lot to answer for. And I felt it particularly working at Nintendo because we launched the system and then there was nothing for months. And when I say nothing, I’m not exaggerating. There was nothing. It was a very long drought. I remember there was nothing to do in the office. Like we’d go for two and a half hour lunches because there was nothing to do. And we were so bored and we were like, honestly, I remember being quite worried. I went into the Wii U launch very enthusiastic as I do with all Nintendo consoles. But once the dust settled and we were looking at the release schedule, I was like, this, there’s really like, there’s nothing here to get people excited and to motivate them into, you know, give them the faith that they can buy this console knowing that there’s great games coming. I remember, I think it was Zen Pinball 2 came out on the eShop and we spent in the office, we must have spent about three weeks just hammering the Spider-Man table on Zen Pinball 2 and doing nothing else because there was nothing, there was no work to do. There were no games to get our heads around. I think it was when Lego City Undercover came along. That was finally the moment where we were like, ah, like a game, a game we can sell that isn’t on other platforms, isn’t a port of something that came out two years ago on the Xbox 360. And I think that first six months, I think they lost a lot of momentum and then they bounced back. They announced Wind Waker HD. They had that awesome E3, like you say, Sam with Mario Kart and Bayonetta. But by then, PS4 was coming along and I think they just never have made up that lost ground really. Yeah, it’s tough. That’s so wild. The idea of you just sitting around playing Spider-Man. I’d love if that’s what was happening in like Nintendo of Japan too. Everyone’s just got Spider-Man bimble mania. Matthew, do you think there’s anything about the Wii that you miss in the Switch or anything you’d like to see carry across into future Nintendo hardware from this? I mean, I did love Miiverse. I thought it was just such a uniquely Nintendo take on a kind of social network. Like the way it was kind of pulled into games was really cute. And they’ve been able to like mimic it, you know, the functionality in Splatoon 2 and 3. You can like basically draw what are Miiverse posts, but the idea of it being baked in, like the one thing which is like a bit of a bummer about the Switch is it’s so utilitarian, you know, in its kind of like interface, you know, it just plays games and the games are amazing and it gets on with it. And, you know, I kind of appreciate the un-fossiness. I definitely, I’m not advocating for a return to the like the brutal loading screens between options menus on the Wii U, which makes it like quite foul to use. But just the character, like the Mi Plaza with everyone running around and the noise of the Wii U, like when I do turn it on, like that weird kind of like tingly background music, the kind of like the weird kind of synth bells or whatever that play in the background. It just has, it has a Nintendo character, the Switch just has none of really. It’s almost like embarrassed. Like is there a single Switch banger tune, like on console tune that anyone can hum? No, there isn’t. But do you remember how bad the operating system loading times were before they patched it? Oh, it was awful. Because of all the stuff they jammed in. But it’s bad now, but it was originally like, I mean, that thing was just horrible to use. That’s interesting. I think that like, yeah, it’s sort of, I turned it on this morning and had this feeling of, oh, this is so sincere as an interface for a console. Like, say just that sort of odd soundscape of the me sort of making noise in the background and the drawings and things like that. And you’re like, well, this is almost like, I don’t know, in a world that has sort of people playing Call of Duty and stuff, I could see why this was just rejected outright as a vision of the internet and online interaction. Everything is just much colder elsewhere, but that was one area where Nintendo could kind of make their own mark and make something feel warm in a way that was quite, yeah, quite pleasant, I would say. How about you, Ash? Is there anything you miss from the Wii U that you wish you could see in future Nintendo hardware? Yeah, we’ve touched upon it, but I miss Miiverse so, so much. It is the most positive, friendliest, most creative social media platform there’s ever been, in my opinion. And I used to love just scrolling through and seeing the amazing illustrations that people had done just with that squishy game pad and the stylus, an incredible community on there. It led to awesome memes with, like, why can’t Metroid crawl? It’s like a real, that is a definable moment in video games culture that wouldn’t happen without the Wii U and Miiverse. And they integrated Miiverse into their games in some really interesting ways as well, like ways that sadly now when you go back to those games, you still, even on the Wii U, you can’t really experience them in exactly the way they were intended. Like loading up Wind Waker HD and it’s like, here’s a Tingle bottle and you can put messages in it and send it to other players, except you can’t do that anymore. So you’re literally carrying around in your inventory this item, which is just like redundant and has no purpose in the game. It’s a bit of a ghost world in a way. That’s funny. Yeah, okay. That’s interesting. Oh yeah, it’s nice to hear you’re sort of lived in perspectives on this stuff. I do agree with the positivity. Yeah, it’s just such a key element. And I think that as time goes on and social media becomes more and more unpleasant, I mean, just this morning, fucking Twitter’s turning off two-factor authentication on your phone or some bullshit. And it’s like, I don’t know, it’s just some kind of escape from this. Some version of this is not as heinous. You know, that does seem quite appealing by comparison. I’m really pumped for Lucy’s next game, the video verse that she’s working on. Because that pulls a lot of cues from Miiverse. So we’ll have a nostalgic hit of Miiverse in some form. I’ve literally never heard of that. I think I clearly need to get on it. It sounds great. Did you not listen to our visual novel episode, Ash? I don’t think I did. Occasionally, I will say there’s an episode I skip. I skipped the Hitman one. Never played a Hitman game. If it’s not games caught, I’m not interested. That’s the- Exactly. Yeah, I need layers and layers of deep Matthew Castle Island fiction. Oh, yeah. Well, that is an individual novel episode. Yeah, Lucy was a great guest though. So yeah, I recommend listening to that. I’ll have to go back to that. Yeah, she talks a bunch about the game. So yeah, definitely check that out. So yes, Ash, I suppose, obviously as someone who had some inside perspective of what was going on with the Wii U throughout its lifespan. Talk a bit about that and you mentioned the launch, it was super, super slow. Over time, did it get better, then worse again? What was the journey there? There are a couple of moments very early on where a alarm bell started to ring for me. One was my job interview, where the marketing director said to me, we really need somebody who can explain the Wii U to people. I thought, hang on, you might have a problem here. But of course, I was like, yeah, I can do that. I can single-handedly market this machine. Don’t you worry about it. That was an early alarm bell. Then the launch, I was there for, there was a midnight UK launch, where we had Chandra on stage at HMV Oxford Street. I remember going to that and it was really like, there was basically no one there. That was another thing where I was thinking, hang on a minute, if Nintendo aren’t willing to put the money behind this launch, do they know something? Whoa, whoa, whoa, they got Chandra. Did he get paid for that? I’m not sure. He would have done it for the glory. The demos that played at that launch was the rest of the O&M team because I was there behind the scenes with Joe and we were playing the other characters in the Nintendo land demos and things like that. If you contrast that with the way they announced Switch, remember they announced Switch in a live stream, and then either the day after or the next day, you could go to an event in London where it was like a professional E3 in London and you could play every game. It was great. That was a really good event. You can really contrast how confident Nintendo were in the Switch compared to launching Wii U. I think they knew in hindsight that it was going to be a bit of a fallow period. And yeah, like I was saying earlier, that kind of feeling really started to sink in as we saw the release schedule. And then, as a fan working on the inside, my relationship with the Wii U kind of went in peaks and troughs as these glimmers of hope would start to come along. So yeah, they announced Wind Waker HD. I remember when they announced Hyrule Warriors and it was our most watched Wii U trailer at that point. I’m thinking, oh, well, this is it. Hyrule Warriors is gonna save everything. And no, that’s just because it was a Zelda game. It was a difficult time. I also remember one of the previous PR managers who since left the company and had been there in the Wii days which were insanely successful. I remember him saying to us, I’d rather have been here in the Wii U days because you’re promoting the kind of games I actually want to play. It’s more like the GameCube era where you’re a bit of an underdog and you’ve got Nintendo in like survival mode where they know it’s an uphill struggle, so they’re just pumping everything into the creativity and quality of their games. That does make it really exciting when those games do eventually come, you can hold your head up high and be incredibly proud and feel confident shouting about them. So when those glimmers of hope came along, particularly going to E3, I never went to E3 as a games journalist. I just never really got the opportunity, but I went several times with Nintendo and it was always very exciting because they made their stages at E3 almost like a theme park. And in many cases, they would center them around a single game. So for Breath of the Wild, going into this enclosed space that felt like you were in Hyrule and it had the sounds and it had like wind, like indoors. Just really like a special experience that obviously can’t translate to anyone sitting at home playing on their Wii U. It was a privileged experience. But it did make it very exciting and you would get a little bit carried away thinking, oh, well, yeah, this is gonna save Wii U. Super Mario Maker is gonna save Wii U because you just can’t do this kind of game on any other platform. But it was all a little bit too little too late in retrospect. But none of that takes away from how exciting it was for me to be like on the inside as a fan. I think I’ve told these stories before, but rubbing shoulders with Miyamoto. Going swimming with him. Going swimming with him, having a curry with him. Going to E3 and seeing Animal Crossing guy like asleep on an office chair behind the scenes on the E3 booth, asleep with a 3DS in his hands is like a beautiful memory. Like a really strangely cherished memory that I have. Probably also worth mentioning that by mostly by coincidence, I ended up working at Nintendo with one of my mates from back home, like legitimately one of my best mates, and we worked on the same team together. That was a really surreal experience to be like both of us going to E3 for the first time and just completely like fanboying out together. Was that Jonathan? Yeah, Jonathan. Did you meet him? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, we’re both from Wakefield and we worked at Game Station together in like the year 2000. I like the idea of the pair of you standing over a sleeping Iguchi going, we’ve made it. Yeah, that was pretty much it. I remember that first E3 as well. What Nintendo would do with their employees before E3 started, they would give you a private showcase of all the new titles that were coming up because Nintendo is so secretive, you didn’t know what was being announced before you got on the plane. You found out the day before everyone else and you were told this is the messaging, this is why it’s going to be important to Wii U this year. And for that first one that we went to in 2013, the briefing was actually done by Iwata, which definitely wasn’t always the case. And we got into this auditorium inside a big hotel in Los Angeles. Everyone’s filing in. It’s mostly Nintendo America employees, a few Europeans. We’re very excited, me and my mate Jonathan, and we see that the entire front row is completely empty. So we’re like, right, we’re getting on that front row. That’s where we’re sitting, you know, get a prime view. And we’re sitting there, we’re thinking, why is nobody else getting on this front row? Absolute idiots, they’re going to miss out. And then as everyone was settled and ready for the show to start, some doors opened at the side and filing in Iwata, Miyamoto, Reggie, and we were in their seats. And it was brilliant. They just came and they sat next to us and they said nothing. And we were sat with the big boys. I was thinking, oh my god, I’m getting fired. So yeah, that kind of like naivety and fanboyism while working on the inside, it made for some special memories for me. So it all worked out for me. I love it. Such a gutsy move. It’s pretty amazing. That’s great. How come you didn’t stick around during the Switch days, Ash? Were you just ready to move on, do something else at that point? Yeah, I’d been there a while by then, about five years. Much like imagine, the culture of Nintendo UK was changing. Great friends had been and gone. Jonathan had gone off and done something else. Lots of other friends had moved on. There was a bit of a management change as well. A lot of senior UK people who’d been there for decades started to move on and were replaced by Nintendo Europe employees. It suddenly overnight became a lot more corporate. I think that was because they knew as they were coming up to the launch of Switch, they couldn’t muck about. It had to go well. They put a lot of their best people in place and people who were connected more to Nintendo of Europe management and Japan management. Which was great. It was exactly what the business needed. On a personal level, yet again, I was thinking the kind of people and the culture, which is really important to me, is changing. It’s never going to come back. Once people have gone, they’re gone. At the same time, some life things happened. I wanted to move home. I’d lived down south for half my life at that point. I wanted to move back to Wakefield. A job came up at Team17, more or less in Wakefield. It just seemed like the right time to go and do that. I remember Ryan King, who Sam definitely knows. I don’t know, Matthew, if you know him. I don’t know if you’ve ever spoken about him on this podcast before. Another kind of magazine legend in the UK games mag industry. I remember going for a meal with him and telling him that I was leaving Nintendo to go to Team17. He said, how is it that every single job you get is always exactly the job you should be doing? Right. I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for that. I took that as a great compliment, but also a bit of an acknowledgement that I am pretty lucky here. I’ve had a kind of career where I can just go and do the things that I enjoy with people that I like. So I’m quite thankful for that. It’s all worked out really well. Good for you, Ash. Thank you. I wish you well in your new role as Yuji Naka’s attorney. That’s a good transition for you. Again, always the thing you’re meant to be doing. Okay, great. Let’s get into the Hall of Fame then. First of all, lads, for some reason, I didn’t have Hyrule Warriors on the list. I’ve just added that to 2014. Sorry about that. I don’t know how I managed that. I don’t think I missed any other major ones. Crosses fingers. Let’s see. So how we’ve done this, we’ve got a rundown of all the notable games we’re going to go through in release order. This is mostly based on European release. You might see a couple of things come up slightly earlier than where they’re supposed to be. I tried my best to compile this factually, but I just realized that Captain Toad, Treasure Tracker, is in its Japanese release year and not. It’s a UK release year. Either way, it’s mostly chronological. It’s not every game, and it’s certainly not every Forgettable port. There are an absolute ton of those. But it’s a range that covers the key beats and throws in a few punch lines too. Going into this, Matthew, is there anything else we should establish about the criteria? What we should do? What approach we should take in building this 10-game Hall of Fame? Do you think that a Wii Hall of Fame needs to have a one-of-everything approach? Or do you think it’s more about, like, do we build a library that accentuates its strengths in a landscape where the Switch has got a lot of its best games? What do you think? I think we have to be accepting that, like, these won’t necessarily be the 10 best games on Wii U, but they’re the 10 games that are most indicative of Wii U. Some of the very best experiences, really, I just don’t think of as Wii U games anymore in, like, any way, shape or form. I don’t know if I ever really did. Like, even at the time, they didn’t feel like this could only happen on Wii U. If you were to take the meta-critic of our eventual list, it might be a bit wonky compared to what you expect. It’s not the 10 highest-scoring games, it’s the short version. Okay. Ash, what do you think? I broadly agree. I think there’s a couple where, you know, a couple of the games that did get ported to Switch where I have such fond memories of them, it’s going to feel wrong not to include them. But I think, you know, if what you want is an interesting list with value, I think we need to concentrate on what can the Wii U bring today in 2023 that is, you know, is worth buying one for or is worth dragging out of the loft for. And will help stand the test of time another 10 years from now when inevitably I think a lot of these games still will not have been ported to anything. Hmm, okay, interesting. I’m not sure there’s 10 games that will get me to drag it out of the loft. That time may have passed. Okay, cool, let’s get into it then. So, yeah, there’s no exact order here other than release order, and the games I’ve picked are, I think, probably the ones that are most worthy of conversation, or again, there might be a few punchlines in here. Let’s start with Batman Arkham City Armored Edition, which asks the question, what if we released Arkham City, but Batman had electric fists? Matthew, thoughts? I mean, that is literally it. That is all this game has going for it, is he has electric fists, and added some of his gadgets onto the game pad in a way which made them fiddlier than they were in the base game. Also, this fits into the weird category of, you only get one of a trilogy on the Wii U, which is inherently unsatisfying, because you’re playing full price brand new game when everyone else is buying pre-owned copies of Arkham City for like 10 quid on the 360. C also, Mass Effect 3. That’s the funniest example, isn’t it, Mass Effect 3? Yeah, but they did actually make the effort to port these though, right? Like they did have the interface and stuff. That was something they did at least, you know? Yeah, I always felt, it was a little bit flimsy, the whole kind of, oh, this is so much better that you can steer the Batarang looking down instead of like, all that changes is your neck cranes down. It’s not like any different. What’s your broader take, Ash, on ports of 360 PS3 era games to Wii U? Yeah, I think Batman and Mass Effect 3, they’re emblematic of, I don’t know if they’re emblematic of a strategy Nintendo had to court the Xbox 360 generation, or more likely it’s that they’d courted developers who were willing to support the system, but were not willing to spend a lot of money doing so. So it was relatively easy to put these games on there. But it was just, either way, it was a flawed strategy. No one was buying a Wii U to play games that came out several years earlier on other platforms, often at full price as well, I might add. So Batman Arkham City is, I think it’s legitimately one of the best games ever made, but it’s not a canonical Wii U game. Yeah, I think that actually some of these ports did them no favors of making, creating comparisons to the PS3 and 360 in people’s heads, which is not ideal. Okay, it’s a no from us, dog. Next one. You can say that after everyone. That’s gonna be a fucking, yeah, would definitely be kill that catchphrase for good. Dog first. New Super Mario Bros. U, available on Switch. Now Matthew, I know you don’t have loads of love for this series, neither do I, to be honest, but what’s your take? This feels like a sort of remnant of Wii or Nintendo, like very stripped back. I always found them quite charmless. Like mechanically, they’re absolutely fine. They’ve got some lovely level designs. I really do like the mission mode that they added for the Wii U version. Just really nice tasks that draw out the kind of intricacies of Mario’s like moveset. I always felt this felt very unloved compared to the 3D Mario games, and I just can’t get over that. This allowed Nintendo to say, hey, we have a brand new Mario game at launch on our new console, but there’s something a little bit hollow about that sales pitch because it is a hangover of that kind of Wii and DS era. It’s the casual Mario lineage. I think it’s a perfectly fine Mario game. It’s solid, it’s fun. It looks really nice actually, I think, for the time, and I wish it had had more of those. There’s a world that almost looks like a canvas painting. Oh, it’s like the Starry Night painting. Yeah, that world really stands out as a bit of an oddity among the rest of the game, and I wish they’d double down on that and gone for a more kind of, if every world had been based on a different kind of painterly art style, that would make it a really interesting Mario game. So I don’t really know what happened there. Yeah, perfectly good game. If we’re honest, probably the best game in the launch lineup. Oh, I don’t know about that. Interesting. Well, yeah, we’ll see. But yeah, like, who cares? Okay, it’s a no for that one. Plus you can just go play on Switch, so that’s fine. Okay, surely this is our first entry, Nintendo Land, mini game compilation that shows off what the hardware can do. This is the one that leant heavily into the sort of asymmetrical experience, which you could arguably only get on Wii U in its Mario Chase, Animal Crossing Suite Day and Luigi’s Ghost Mansion. You finally saw some of the kind of magic of Pac-Man versus, but in a way which is sort of baked into the system so everyone can enjoy it, i.e. games where one person has a private view on a game pad and that gives them power or vulnerability in some cases, and you are against everyone on the TV. I think Nintendo Land is full of great ideas. I think it has loads of, it taps into all the weird functionality of the game pad. Second screen aside, it’s a touchscreen, there are gyroscopes, there’s some other interesting stuff going on with it. The big mark against it is that it requires so much other stuff to fully enjoy in terms of extra controllers and nunchucks. It’s a really unsexy day one experience of opening it up and then it’s like, oh, I need all this other shit to sort of enjoy this. I could really understand punters not liking that. Obviously on a magazine in an office where we were laden with remotes and nunchucks, we could play this game as it was meant to be played, full house in all the multiplayer modes. And I probably played this way more than I played Wii Sports in hindsight. Like I think this is like a definitive Wii U game. Yeah, I think I played this twice in its intended form at your colleague Matt Elliott’s house, Matthew, years ago. But I did think it was real magic and it was the first time I think I really took the multiplayer gamepad experience seriously because I saw it used in such exciting ways. So even if it doesn’t extend massively past this, it certainly was, I could see why it’d be exciting at the moment. And a big nostalgic play as well, this could have been a world of me’s, but they actually did quite a lavish job of bringing in all this weird Nintendo IP, there’s a big Pikmin component to it and Takamaru’s Ninja Castle for all the fans. But not all the games are gold. Some of them I would have liked a lot more of. I quite like the one where you tilt the controllers to steer Donkey Kong’s little mine cart around. I could have played more of a substantial game of that, but it was good enough. What about you, Ash? Were you a big Nintendo land guy? Yeah, kind of. I do remember having some… I took the Wii U home that Christmas. I remember having some family gatherings where people who don’t normally play games would get into it. And in some ways, it was the Wii Sports of the Wii U. It was something that really showed off the unique hardware features and was designed for people of all skill levels to play together. But that was somewhat contradicted by these Smash Bros. style deep cuts of Nintendo references. In some cases, it only appealed to even the most hardcore fans. The Takamaru’s Castle thing. That’s a Famicom disc system game, a Japan only release. So I was delighted that something like that was being referenced, but I don’t know what it achieved on a business level for Nintendo. And I think Nintendo Land now is kind of, it’s almost like a glimpse into a parallel dimension of what if the Wii U had taken off? What if people had really enjoyed all of the unique hardware features? Would we have seen a Nintendo Land 2, 3? Would we have seen these ideas evolve? And become more kind of refined and interesting as it went along? It’s kind of an evolutionary dead end really. It didn’t really happen. And that makes it historically quite interesting. So I would say like this, even though I don’t think it’s the best game in the large lineup, I think it’s the one that most deserves to be on a Hall of Fame. Okay. It was our most played one. That’s, I think maybe that’s what I’m equating with best. But I do like the idea of an alternate history where we end up with Monita as a playable character in Smash Brothers. Well, we’ve got our first game there. I feel like this one’s probably not going to make the cut. Rabbids Land. I don’t know what this is. I can probably guess what it is from the title. Okay. Okay then. That’s a no from Matthew Dog. Tank, tank, tank. Which we used to joke is what was happening on to this console. That’s really good and dark for someone who was working on an official Nintendo magazine. Is this good, Matthew? We had to do an advertorial for Tank, Tank, Tank. I think this was a Namco Bandai thing. The only thing I remember about is it used the camera on the GameCup pad, because I remember it had a camera too, to like project your face into like maybe you fought a boss monster that was like a photograph of your own face or something. Oh, it was rubbish. I think we played it for like the length of time that we were contractually obliged to play it for the advertorial. Okay, so that’s a no. Ash, any contradictory opinions on this or? I will say funnily enough, this is an arcade port of a very obscure arcade game. And last week, I saw the arcade game in an arcade at the seaside. And I was very excited to see it. I wasn’t excited enough to play it. Fuck yeah, this is why we bring you on this podcast. Your deep knowledge of arcade machines, then lived in experiences of seaside towns with arcades in them. That’s a good combo. Zombie U, which did seem like, if you think about the limited handful of third party support kind of titles on Wii U, this is definitely one of the more significant ones. Matthew, was it a big deal to you that Ubisoft had chucked a bunch of money behind something like this? This is sort of the red steel of Wii U. Not just because of the Ubisoft link. People kind of play it as a kind of core game and go, eh, I’m sure the Wii U will do more than this or better than this down the line. And actually, in the long run, it’s proven to be not true. You know, like actually it’s quite indicative of what the Wii U is capable of. In the same way that I think over time red steel proved that is really what a first person game would feel like on Wii back then. I’m not trying to defend red steel in that. I’m just saying that is how it worked. I actually think this is a contender in that this is its definitive platform. Like they ported it elsewhere where it made no buzz at all. It’s got this like interesting kind of Dark Souls-y, you know, you die, you have to go back to where you died and kill your now zombified self to get back your equipment, which I always thought was quite cute. And I do think the idea of pulling you into the second screen for like inventory management and looking at the map, while the action continues real time on the top screen does lean into attention that is part of the kind of zombie survival fantasy. At the time didn’t blow me away, but has sort of grown in my estimations as not a horrible Wii U game. Yeah. Ash, I’m going to guess that you quite like this game. I love this game. I remember when I was still on, oh, this is a weird memory. When I was still on Games DM, I flew out on a press trip to Nintendo Europe to see and play what would have been the launch lineup of Wii U. I also on that press trip had my first job interview for working at Nintendo, which was really strange. So we like ducked away from the kind of PR machine for a while and went and sat in the Nintendo Cafe and I had my job interview, which felt a little bit like a conflict of interest, but let’s not worry about that very much. It’s 10 years ago, it’s fine. So, but I remember playing Zombie U at that event and then speaking to one of the PR people at Nintendo and I was saying, like, I think you seriously need to get behind this third party game. Like, this is the game for hardcore gamers that kind of shows off what’s interesting about the Wii U. I don’t think they ever really got behind it, although I think there might have been a hardware bundle, like a very limited one at one point. One of the things I really loved about this game is the kind of like the risk reward nature that the game pad brought to it. So I remember you would manage your inventory on the Wii U game pad, but the game would carry on in real time while that was happening. So you were like looking down at the second screen without being able to see the kind of dangers of the zombies on the TV screen. And that was a really interesting concept and it got my mind racing in terms of, oh, well, what will Resident Evil on Wii U be like? Well, it didn’t really happen, did it? But I think it’s a legitimately great game. It was eventually ported to other systems, but I think it inevitably lost a lot of what made it special. Bonus points as well for technically being a sequel to a 1980s Amstrad CPC game called Zombie. That has no bearing on the quality of the game, but I’m gonna give it bonus points anyway because it appeals to my particular quirk. So yeah, I think this is a really cool game. Again, it’s kind of like, oh, what could have been if every developer had invested this much imagination in using the Wii U, we could have had all sorts of interesting games. Yeah, well worth a revisit, I think. I think this should go in for now, Matthew. Maybe it’ll come out when we do the sort of long list at the end and decide, but I think it’s… I’ve marked this in red on my plan, something that is probably worthy of inclusion. In it goes, then. That’s two games so far. Nano Assault Neo, I don’t really know what this is. Matthew? Twin Stick Shooter, set on sort of 3D microbe, you’re on like organic cells and matter, made by Shinon, who made often very shiny, like downloadable games on Wii and Wii U, who I was never very into, I must admit. I think they had a very nice engine that they made that worked and gave like passably pretty games on Wii and Wii U, but I never really thought they held up as actual games, but they were championed by people who were hungry for graphics. It’s my big Shinon take. That’s a big Shinon take, that’s what we’re here for. Yeah, it’s just kind of there, I think, in my opinion. I think it’s a perfectly fine game, but I think when you compared it to something like Super Stardust HD on PlayStation 3, I think it didn’t quite have the kind of arcade chops or gameplay sophistication stand out. It was, yeah, serviceable with nice graphics, perfectly fine game, but not something I would be returning to now. Okay, that’s fair. Next up, the 007 Legends. Come on. I only put this here because, first of all, I regret discovering this because it would have been a great gag Christmas gift for me to give this to Matthew on Wii U. That would be, I’m so sad. I didn’t think of that before we came up with this episode. So I just wanted to note that at some point this did happen. It does have a sticker on the front saying, featuring Skyfall. And you’re like, that’s so of its time. Amazing. Yeah, I could have got you that, Matthew. You could have got me Quantum of Solace on Wii. It would have been great. Sort of like a great switch. Okay, next up then. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Wii U Edition. Now I flagged this because I know they made a big deal about Tekken in the marketing for the Wii U, like in the E3 conferences we discussed before, Matthew. So was it a big deal that Tekken had arrived on Wii U in some bespoke form? I can’t really speak to it. As like, you know, I’m not a fighting game guy at all. It didn’t create much of a buzz on the team. You know, it felt like Nintendo were close to Bandai Namco and so they put a lot of effort, you know, obviously they go on to work quite closely with them, but they literally make Smash Brothers. So did people care about this, Ash? I can’t remember. I don’t think so really. I mean, again, perfectly good game. I think it kind of added, it did its job at the time in terms of fleshing out the launch lineup and adding some kind of hardcore legitimacy to the platform. But I think also at the same time, Tekken at that moment in time, for most gamers, I think it was starting to feel like a thing of the past. And it was only really the truly like hardcore fighting game fans that were clinging on to it. Yeah, I don’t think it’s that important in the Wii U story. Even the name puts you off, you know, Tekken text, you’re like, oh, it’s like a spin, is it a spin off? It’s like a side thing. Like if you compare that to like the buzz around Street Fighter 4 and 3DS, which really felt like special and exciting and people were really behind it, like just worlds apart. Okay, so right, that’s fair enough then. So we’ve got two from 2012 as we move into 2013, the Fallow for a while post-launch year for the Wii U. So Marvel Avengers Battle for Earth. Now this is like a quite cheap looking 3D fighting game. That’s a no, isn’t it? But I think it is. I don’t even remember this existing. I’d completely forgotten it until this exact moment. Yeah, I don’t remember anything about it. Okay, in the bin it goes. So Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. I don’t really know much about the Monster Hunter series until you get to like the sort of HD age. So Matthew, any thoughts on this one? I mean, I’m more interested on Ashley’s thoughts because every time Monster Hunter kind of happened during my time on Nintendo mags, Nintendo were, I think, publishing it or distributing it in Europe. And so we really get behind it and we’re like, we’re determined to make this the thing it is in Japan was always the kind of messaging. I like Monster Hunter 3 enough. I wasn’t like, I’ve never been a huge, huge Monster Hunter guy, but I definitely played later ones more than this. But I mean, do you remember that stuff coming from Nintendo, Ash? Yeah, I did the PR on this. Oh, right. In the, like, I don’t know, three or four months I actually did a PR at Nintendo before I moved across. And I can’t remember exactly if the 3DS version and the Wii U version were coming out at the same time, but there were basically variations of the same game. And I remember I’d never really got into Monster Hunter in the past. And I felt in order to do a good PR job, I really… Like, this isn’t a game that you can casually dip a toe in the water. You need to understand it. And I played so much of the 3DS version at my desk, day after day. I actually got a bit of a telling off for it from my boss. They were like, yeah, maybe you should not play games all day. And I tried to explain, look, this is the kind of game where you really need to understand it. And I think I did. I did form an understanding. I’m actually playing Monster Hunter Rise with a mate at the moment on Game Pass. So I think, you know, job done for me on a personal level, whether it contributed much to the value of Wii U at the time. I think the story of Monster Hunter Ultimate on Wii U and 3DS is more part of Capcom’s story of very slowly, but surely ingratiating Monster Hunter in the West and introducing it to people very like quite strategically, I think, step by step, right up until Monster Hunter World where it exploded. So it’s an important part of that story. I don’t think it’s particularly important to Wii U in hindsight. No, if anything, I associate Monster Hunter with 3DS more from my time with it. That was the version I played, if I played any, so. Yeah, that’s fair. Yeah, still I never cracked a world myself. I’ve sort of got it when everyone else had moved on from it. So that’s tough one day for Monster Hunter. Maybe there’ll be a Monster Hunter episode in our, like two years down the line or something, Matthew. Okay, BitTrip presents runner to future legend of Rhythm Alien. I don’t know what this is, but I was reading a list of games that were like significant digital games on Wii U, and this came up as one of them. Do you know what this is, Matthew? Yeah, I’m not a big BitTrip guy, much to Ash’s annoyance. This is the one where I famously gave BitTrip runner one, like a really mean score because I was in a foul mood when I reviewed it. I believe we had words about that at a press event once, Ash. The most games journalistic I’ve ever heard. Nintendo dweebs. Ash, thoughts on this one? So, yeah, I mean, just quickly, the BitTrip series were these downloadable games on Wii that kind of fused like a retro aesthetic with hyper casual experiences. They were a bit of a mixed bag, but runner was one that people really kind of latched on to one of these infinite runner sort of games. It wasn’t infinite. There were level ends to it with a bit of a, like you had to get into a rhythm as you played in order to be good at it and it involved a lot of trial and error. I think it had like one of those like instant restarts so that you really, if it got its hooks into you, you became quite addicted to instantly restarting and perfecting your runs on this game. The sequel is kind of just more of the same really. I liked it, but it wasn’t, you know, it’s not particularly special in hindsight. I think, did it have Charles Martinet in it? Yeah, he was the narrator of the sequel, yeah, which is a mark against it. He comes up a lot on this podcast lately, I must say. Okay, so not going to the Hall of Fame, Ash? No. Okay, then we move on. This is an interesting contender, Lego City Undercover. Now this is obviously widely available on other platforms, so a kind of like, sort of a Travellers Tales attempt at like an original, you know, non-licensed Lego game that is roughly similar to GTA, although you play the side of law enforcement. I think this is considered a very special Wii U game, but Matthew, I’m curious, how much do you think its specialness is tied to the Wii U? How much of it is inherent in like how it played versus other platforms? I really liked it as a game. I think what ties it to Wii U is purely like the exclusivity there at the time. I think the fact that this has been ported elsewhere, I mean, maybe I’m being unfair and have forgotten some amazing gamepad functionality. I think it had the map on the gamepad and things like that, but it was great. And it was, you know, in terms of like a big third party exclusive that actually really landed and especially given it, like, I think we had doubts about it because it wasn’t tied to a license. You were just like, is the Lego universe strong enough? And actually that is one of its great strengths. It’s free to be, to joke about anything. It parodies like a whole genre of films rather than a specific one and does it really well. Like it’s a legitimately funny game. I think I included it on my Game of the Year list for that year. Yeah I wouldn’t say it’s like, like if we had nine games and we were struggling to fill a tenth spot, like I like it enough, but I don’t know whether it’s like an inherently Wii U thing to me. I remember this felt quite important at the time when we were in that drought period and this was something kind of new and exclusive and interesting to look forward to that we could we could actually talk about and say you know this is going to be a cool experience. I also remember how like into Lego we all got while we were promoting this and while we basically had lots of spare time because there were no other games coming. So I think we got a few kind of promo boxes of Lego in the office and ended up building those and it spawned this like couple of years where every lunchtime we would go to the local toy shop and buy more Lego. And after two years, my mate Jonathan had on his desk, his work computer was like pushed to one side because his entire desk was a fully fledged Lego city with like 10 buildings and cars and everything. I’m not really sure why that was tolerated in hindsight because there was clearly a lot more time spent playing with Lego than there was doing work in those days. I think just everyone knew there was like there was nothing else to do. What was going on at Nintendo UK, man? It’s wild. No one doing anything. I don’t have any stories of like debauchery or anything like that. It’s just like sitting around making Lego all day or going for a fry up for two hours. It’s funny because every time you tell an anecdote like this, I’m like, it makes sense they restructured around the Switch in retrospect. That kind of makes sense actually. One of the rules from Germany, no more Lego cities on desks. That’s funny. I think this is a borderline no then. I think it’s like a special game in the Wii U’s lifespan, but not inherently tied to the Wii U as some of these other games might be. Interesting. Game and Wario. This yielded a great Smash Bros level, but is that a reason alone for it to make the cut, Matthew? I have a similar relationship that I have to this to Nintendo Land in that we played it a lot in the office. It has a couple of great multiplayer modes. It has something which is a little bit like Monkey Target in Monkey Ball, where you’re flicking these little characters onto a series of aerial targets above the sea. Rememorable for two reasons. One, the little creatures in the fiction of WarioWare are called Fronks, and the message, release the Fronks at the start of the round, that is just funny. That is a funny word to see a lot. And it was really vindictive, because they were floating in water, so if you put too many Fronks on one side, the whole thing would tilt, and all the Fronks would scream as they fell into the sea. Just a classic little bit of magic there. I think the problem with this one is it’s kind of the… This is Wii U’s WarioWare, and the actual WarioWare bit of it isn’t actually very good. There’s a mini-game where you’re playing WarioWare on the gamepad, and your mum comes into your bedroom, and you have to kind of like hide the controls to make it look like you’re actually in bed. But I wanted a proper WarioWare, that isn’t the form I wanted WarioWare to appear in, as like a mini-game in a wider mini-game collection. It’s certainly a gamepad showcase, this game, but is it just a worse Nintendo Land? I don’t know. This is the only physical Wii U game I still own. I cannot bear to part with it. Oh, okay. You know, partly that’s because it offers all of these experiences that you can’t get anywhere else. I do think, I prefer it to Nintendo Land. I’m not going to say it’s better. I prefer it. The Fronk game that you mentioned, I really love. I also love this kind of like a pictionary style drawing game where it gives someone on the gamepad a category you have to draw, then the other players see it on the TV and have to guess what it is. I think there’s a little bit of voting involved as well in terms of what’s best and what’s funniest. If you’re playing with the right group of people, that is hilarious. My circle of friends, if we get together where there’s a Wii U set up, that game gets played even today. If you get together in your loft. I think Jonathan’s still got his Wii U set up. We used to play at his place. It really helps if you’re playing with someone who’s bad at drawing, of course, and you’re just in stitches. So your mileage may vary depending on who you’re playing with, but I think this is a pretty cool game. I had this highlighted in red as like, I wouldn’t be upset if this ended up in there with Nintendo Land. Like it’s an inherently Wii U game. Like it can’t work anywhere else. Quite a good one where you have to pretend to be an NPC in a crowd of AIs to steal stuff while everyone’s watching the TV. A bit like Spy Party. That’s good. So Ash, you’ve got the tie breaking vote on this one. Do you think it goes in? For now, I think so. Okay. So this one I’ve got in slightly the wrong order, I think. But it does roll out, I think, as a few digital games before there’s a fiscal release in 2014. This should be, should be slightly later in the 2013 list, I think it starts in October that year. But Wii Sports Club. Matthew, we talked about this before, about how this kind of like reheat of the kind of like Wii era casual games didn’t seem to, you know, sort of do much on Switch. Thoughts? The pitch of like, hey, you know, that thing you got for free with your Wii, well, now you’re going to buy installments on Wii U and it hasn’t doesn’t look much better. And it used Motion Plus. But like the core of those games, they did what they did. I just felt this was very unnecessary update and delivery of this. Bake it in or just give it away for free or something. Like haven’t you made enough money from Wii Sports? That’s fair. That sounds like a no, Ash. Yeah, I mean, just put Wii Sports Resort in your Wii U and play that. It’s by far the superior game, to be honest. Fair enough. OK, New Super Luigi U. I think it’s like an extended expansion, basically. So just for people who weren’t there at the time, this was the year of Luigi 2013. You weren’t there at the year of Luigi. It’s like a big time culturally for our species. Yeah, this is a no, obviously, because we won’t put the main game in. Any reflections on this one, Matthew or Ash? Similar thoughts to the other Wii U one, except this one was really fucking hard. That’s all I remember. Yeah, these were like the hardcore, like, oh, so you think you’re good at this game? Like level packs, really. And with a strict time limit, I think you got like 99 seconds or something like that. I think it’s a much better game than New Super Mario Bros. U for those reasons. But again, you can just get on the Switch. Next up then, Pikmin 3. Now this seemed like the game to me where I was like, oh, I can exactly see how the gamepad and this would work. But how much is it is what it does well tied to the Wii U, Matthew? Weirdly, the thing which really made this for me was the pointer controls. You can use the gamepad as a map to like look around and send Pikmin off in different directions. It’s definitely good for multitasking. But like my fondest memory of this is the pointer controls. I guess the question is, are the Wii remote pointer controls technically better than the motion controls of the Switch update? But I remember thinking this was absolutely brilliant. This is the game that made me like Pikmin. I wasn’t really a fan of this series and I thought this was just like one of the best things I played on Wii U. I loved the look of it. I thought the HD visuals and the textures and how shiny everything was. This was just a really glorious thing with a decent amount of Wii U functionality. Oh yeah, it was definitely like the thing I looked at and thought, oh, this is what Nintendo can do with HD visuals, is it? This is amazing looking water and environments and stuff. What about you, Ash? Yeah, I would just echo what you two have said. The first time that I appreciated Nintendo in HD and that kind of Pixar quality, like charm, they can have, and curiously how the Wii motion controls made it a much more viable game than anything the GamePad could bring. So even though it was a Wii U exclusive at the time, does that make it a definitive Wii U game when it’s so tied to the Wii? I don’t know how I feel about that. Equally, I’ve never played the Switch version, so I don’t know how well it translated. It may be that the Wii U version is still the definitive version. It’s a really cool game. Again, if we were stretched for 10, I’d be very happy to have it on there. I’m going to pop a maybe next to that one. Yeah. Okay. Angry Birds Trilogy. What a weird moment this was. I remember being on GameStamp at the time and they seemed to make a weirdly big deal about the fact that Angry Birds, a phone game that everyone had played already, was coming to Wii U. Thoughts, Matthew? No, this isn’t going in. It’s just fucking Angry Birds, isn’t it? Yeah, let’s move on. Okay, next up, The Wonderful 101. This is a really interesting case. Obviously this is now widely available everywhere else, but certainly there’s a big amount of Wii U gamepad screen functionality here that’s inherent to the experience, arguably. Thoughts, Matthew? I’d say this is an absolute Hall of Fame essential. The best version of it. Maybe not performance-wise, but it’s not like the later ports are like shining on that front either. The scenes that are built around something going on on the TV and you controlling the wonderful 101 in like an interior world on the gamepad, while there’s not as many of them as you maybe remember there being, they are brilliant. The idea of steering a spaceship that’s driving around on the TV screen by kind of walking over controls in the spaceship interior on the gamepad. A real wow moment. So big and flashy. I mean, everyone knows my thoughts on this game more widely from the Platinum episode. I think this is like just, you know, Kamiya doing what he does best. So yeah, big, big fan. Yeah, I tend to agree. I think this is the kind of game that Wii U was made for, to be honest. I find it a very difficult game to play because you’re trying to get your head around that kind of Platinum, like hardcore combo gaming at the same time as working with completely unique controls. But at the same time, that makes it a really rewarding game because as you skill up, you reap the rewards of that and you get the satisfaction. I think it’s a great game. Okay, awesome. We have our fourth Hall of Famer so far. Rayman Legends is a really interesting one where I felt like it was slightly compromised on other platforms by not having the Wii U experience. Should this go in, Matthew? This is a big yes from me. As a platforming game, I loved what they did with this kind of rebooted 2D Rayman. This one was way more imaginative and colorful and varied than Rayman Origins. But the Wii U gamepad use and the idea that there was this sort of second collaborative player who could play as this kind of little goblin called Murphy or little fairy thing called Murphy and like interact with the level and kind of hold obstacles back or like carve out routes through cake sponge that you then walk through. The way they automated that and made that work on every other platform outside of Wii U was sort of fucked. Like this is where that game should live and it’s where it’s at its best and it’s, yeah, I love this game. Again, solid third party support from Ubisoft on this one. Ash, are you a fan of this game? Yeah, a big fan of this game. I thought it was great. I agree that it definitely loses something in all of its various ports. I also remember the frustration of how many times it was delayed. You know, not just as a fan waiting for it, but as a Nintendo employee wanting something to shampoo. I was like, oh, for God’s sake, please release this game. I can’t really add much more, except I really love to remember the kind of musical rhythm stages, where they would do parody songs. I think there’s one based on Black Betty by Ram Jam. That’s the sort of level, like for me, I would load up the game just to play that stage, because it’s just so much fun, really inventive. Well, in it goes then. Excellent. So, The Legend of Zelda, The Wind Waker HD, not released on Switch as of yet, rumored many times, probably will be at some point, probably in the dying days of the Switch, I would imagine. Now, excuse me as I have a shithouse take, but I played this again this morning, and to my eye, the slightly overbearing lighting in this makes it a little less handsome than the GameCube version, to my eye. It looked very crisp, still looks nice, I think the GameCube version has a slight edge in its original visual style. What do you think, Matthew? Am I being a dickhead with that kind of take? It’s an acceptable take, it’s not one I agree with. I thought this was quite lush, how it filled the screen, I think the colours are really rich. It definitely has a different look, you’re right, this very bloom-y kind of lighting, but it was a look of its own. I thought it felt suitably HD. When they announced this and we saw it in the trailers, it was such a wow moment and really felt like the life paddle was being applied to our chests for a couple of months on the magazines. We were like, this is something we can really get behind. Use the Wii U gamepad in some interesting ways, using it for the inventory. There’s a lot of subtle streamlining in this game, if you actually play it, put the two side by side, tiny little things like speeding up certain animations that you’re going to be doing a lot, like firing the hook shot, it all adds up into a quicker experience. The fact that it has that fast sail that you can use to speed up motion, it shrinks the triforce fetch quest. There is some really good massaging of the original game to really make it shine. Of course, the defunct Tingle Balls as well. Well, it’s not been on Switch for such a long time now that it does feel inextricably tied to the Wii U in a specific way, so I think it probably needs to go in, but on the basis that it is so shiny and streamlined. I don’t think everyone is 100% on board with it being better looking per se, it looks different. But still, if you want to play a modern version of it, absolutely no argument that it’s definitive. Yeah, I think this is the definitive version of one of the best Zelda games ever made, so I’ve got no problem with it being in. On a personal level, I’ll also say this came along just when I needed it in life. I found myself between houses when this game came out because we bought a house and given notice on our flat and it didn’t really work out. We ended up temporarily living in an apartment above a proctologist’s practice with an en suite bathroom that smelled so bad I was convinced, and I mean convinced, that there was a dead body under the floorboards. This was a really dark time in my life, brightened up, considerably brightened up by this really beautiful remake of a beautiful game. So on a personal level, it saved me from depression, I reckon. Did you not feel jealous when Link came into property in this game? Yeah, let’s say yes. I mean, how can you not be jealous of Link? What a life he’s got, drinking grandma’s soup. I just love the contrast of a dead man is literally below my feet and da. Those two things contrasting. Okay, it goes in. That’s six games. Well done 2013. It, you know, really going well so far. Sonic Lost World, I played this again. Sonic moves too fast for it to for him to even function in a Mario Galaxy like sort of like spherical approach to level design. Absolute pure chaos. It’s a no from me dog, Matthew. It’s like the only 3D Sonic. I don’t mind. Oh, because the music. Oh, yeah. Because it is. It’s yeah. Sonic Rips Off Mario Galaxy, obviously no way near as good. I definitely overscored this in O&M. The music is so good and there is a level set on giant fruit. That’s two big ticks from me. Yeah, I mean, it has to be pretty potent to get me over the hurdle of the whole Sonic of it all. Yeah, it’s sort of like it’s on other platforms now as well. I don’t think it’s. Yeah, it’s don’t put it in the Hall of Fame. But I’ll probably put a bit of its music in this episode somewhere. Okay, good. Yeah, I can live outside in a tent sort of thing. Ash thoughts on this? I know. You probably expect me to love this and. No, I don’t actually. No, I don’t. I don’t love this. I was really looking forward to it. I liked the idea of being inspired by Mario Galaxy, but it felt a bit flat to me and all the a lot of the classic problems that 3D Sonic games have. Yeah, I was disappointed. Okay, fair enough. So moving on then Deus Ex Human Revolution Director’s Cut, another slightly odds sort of like port from a 360 or PS3 game, but they did make an effort, I believe, to integrate this the controls quite, quite well. And they did, you know, they, they also changed the game to add some like non-lethal boss options, you know, addressing a criticism from the base game, they would later roll that out to other versions. But for the time, I think that was exclusive to Wii U. And I think as the ports go, Matthew, this is probably up there, right? What do you think? It’s probably up there also like a game which can be probably enjoyed in isolation. You don’t have to have played any other Deus Ex, relatively self-contained. I’m sort of humming and aahing about this one. It didn’t make much of a splash. We got really excited about it. I think we did like one of the earliest kind of features about sort of like revealing the game and it definitely felt a bit more exciting in the short period where it was like a Wii U exclusive because you thought, oh wow, not just the functionality of the console, but like the tweaks that they’ve made to like, you could do like non-lethal takedowns of the bosses and things like that. You know, really gone in and address some of the bigger problems and if for some reason those had been locked to Wii U, it would have been an amazing coup and I can understand why they didn’t do that. But it seemed, it seems less exciting to me now that you can do this on all platforms of it. For my sins, I’ve never played this game on any platform, so I can’t really have an informed opinion. But I hear it’s a wonderful game and I think it’s a real blind spot in my history, probably not a definitive Wii U game, I would imagine. Yeah, it gets muscled out, it’s probably a definitive PC game of this time, just given its heritage. Okay, next up, We Party U. Feels like a no to me, feels like Nintendo Land has ticked this box for us. Thoughts Matthew? Yeah, I mean, it’s not Mario Party, which is like a plus, but no, no, not for me. Ash? I worked on this game and I have no memory of it. Okay, it has been muscled out officially. Angry Birds Star Wars, obviously a no. Again, I wanted to note that Angry Birds is making inroads onto Wii U at this time. Tough days. Mario and Sonic at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. I’ve never liked this series. Not really a fan. Thoughts Matthew? No, it’s always sucked and we had some rough magazine times of this because it was tied up with so many license holders, Mario, Sonic and the Olympic Games. There were so many ways that you could get fucked trying to cover this game that it leaves a particularly bitter taste, like Neil said on that episode a few weeks ago. That was amazing. Where their cover got pulled and they needed to stick a giant Dragon Quest face on the cover instead after Deadline and you’re like, well, yeah, that’s Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics. Yeah, that would make me deeply resent the Olympics as a concept if that happened to me. Ash, I’m guessing you agree with this? Yeah, similar frustrations. I think I was doing social media content for this game when it was coming out and the hurdles you had to jump through. No, that’s the Summer Olympics. Brilliant. In many cases, it was just easier not to bother covering it, which I’m sure was great for the marketing. And yeah, I think the first one on the Wii had a little bit of value because it kind of had some good uses of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, but I don’t think it really translated in the same way to Wii U. Wii U GamePad doesn’t have the same physicality as a Wii Remote, which is you kind of need for an Olympics game. Maybe it did use the Wii Remote for some events. I cannot remember. It didn’t leave an impression. Okay, it doesn’t get in. Moving on. Super Mario 3D World, one of the most significant releases on Wii U throughout its lifespan, the only original 3D Mario game that came to this platform. A source of many great memories for me. This is probably my favorite game I played on the platform, other than Breath of the World maybe. But is it that tied to Wii U that it couldn’t be enjoyed elsewhere? I don’t think it is, Matthew. I know it has a few touch screen elements, so maybe something involving blowing or something like that? Or there’s some other thing that it does. There’s definitely touch screen platforms that you can steer around. For me, what makes it very hard to detach from Switch now is the Bowser’s Fury add-on, which I just think is so juicy. The idea that the definitive version of this is on Switch seems quite weak to me. Yeah, okay. The Wii U, sorry. I loved it. I think it was a great game. But again, I don’t think it’s lost too much in the translation. In fact, it has gained, as you point out. What do you think, Ash? I think it’s an awesome game. I think they really successfully married the appeal of a 3D Mario game with the accessible multiplayer of the new Super Mario of those games. Really a design triumph in that respect. I think Cat Mario is a design for the ages. There’s a reason he’s back in the Mario movie, for example. Great design, but it translates beautifully on the Switch. There’s not that much reason to return to it on Wii U, but if you were doing a top 10, these are the greatest Wii U games. It’s on that list. Oh, yeah. It’s so wonderful. Such nice geometry in this game, too, is, again, that translating 2D to 3D thing. Just lovely, lovely level design. Okay. Doesn’t get in, but very, very good game. Scribblenauts Unlimited. Was there ever much of a Scribblenauts person myself, Matthew? Scribblenauts was wild the first time out in DS, and then you played it for five hours and got bored of the idea. I don’t think it stopped me from giving it fucking 90 or something stupid in the end game. But by the time this… I mean, Scribblenauts is just… No thanks. The most joy you will ever have with Scribblenauts is in that first half an hour, I think. Yeah. As you figure out its limitations and its strengths. All I remember about this is that it got insanely delayed by about a year, even though it was finished and we had physical copies in the office, and I wish I could remember the reason why that happened. It was some sort of error that couldn’t even be like, didn’t feel comfortable patching out. There’s probably a juicy story there that I’m robbing everyone of, but maybe it’s for the best. Yeah, the game itself, like Scribblenauts was always one of those ideas that I think was very interesting on paper, is fun to mess around with for a couple of hours and then you’re like, oh, just go play a different game. Okay, not in much to move on. So Wii Fit U, that’s a no, isn’t it? For this crowd. It didn’t work. I include myself in that. Okay, that’s a no. Let’s move on. Nes Remakes. This just came up recently, Matthew. Does this warrant a place because there are two of these games on Wii U, right? Yeah. I mean, if there’d be like a scrappy way of kind of putting them in together. The fact that this doesn’t exist outside of Wii U is quite a point of confusion to me because there’s nothing tying it to Wii U, you know, it’s like a, you know, a load of button inputs playing like mini games carved out of classic retro Nintendo NES games. It’s on 3DS, isn’t it? Yeah. Oh yeah, actually I completely forgot about that. Well, that makes it much, much a weaker inclusion. But the point stands that I am annoyed that this isn’t a series they continued with because I was super into the whole NES remix thing. This is like the 3DS version of these combined is definitely something I’m going to hoover up before that shop closes. It’s on my list. So, is that a no from you, Matthew? Yeah, go on then. Dr. Luigi, I think that’s a no, but the name just made me laugh so much. I don’t know how you feel about Dr. Marimash, but on NGamer, we always hated that guy. I mean, great music. He’s a doctor who just chucks pills down your throat. There’s something just very sinister about his whole deal. It’s very satirical about the US pharmaceutical industry, Matthew. It’s not. Let’s move on. 2014, Donkey Kong Country, Tropical Freeze, but boasting a time trial mode, as previously discussed. Almost got me fired, so it’s a no from me dog. Is there anything that ties this to Wii U in particular, Matthew? Because obviously this is on Switch as well. No, play it on Switch. I don’t remember this having a single interesting Wii U feature, but I don’t think on this game much, because for obvious reasons. Yeah. Ash, how about you, do you have more affection for this game? Yeah, well, I have a hot take that this is the only truly good Donkey Kong Country game. Yeah, that’s what we like to hear on this podcast. I might get savaged by certain listeners for saying that, but I truly do believe it. It’s the only one, I’ve played all of them, it’s the only one that I legitimately love. I think it is a wonderfully, wonderfully designed and presented game, but equally so on Switch. It loses nothing by going to Switch. I will say it’s part of that era of Wii U where it did feel like Nintendo were purposefully dropping the Wii U functionality and just making games that could easily be ported to other systems. I think Mario Kart 8 is part of that category as well. I can only speculate, but I wonder if they didn’t really see the economical value in pushing the Wii U features anymore, or even if they knew we need to start building games that will be portable to the next platform. At the time, it felt strange as an employee to be thinking, hang on a minute, why are you not giving us games that can sell the unique potential of the Wii U? They’re just good games. How hard it is with just games that are merely good. Yeah, that’s the thing. We have entered the second half of the lifespan here almost. That would not surprise me if this marks that turning point. Okay, this isn’t working. Let’s just plan ahead. Okay, that’s a no, but not to say it’s not a great game. I know a lot of people love this one, side scrolling Donkey Kong game from Retro Studios. Next up, Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, feels like a no, Matthew. No, just a rotten 3D platformer, isn’t it? Yeah, get rid. Okay, NES Remix, no as established. Doesn’t mean it’s not good. Mario Kart 8, I think this is now, for better or worse, a definitive Switch game. Obviously has the DLC bundled in. No reason to really go back to this one. Thoughts, Matthew? A masterpiece, I would say, of Mario Kart. It is the galaxy of Mario Kart, but it is, yeah, it’s a Switch game. And congrats on the fucking, whatever it is, 50 million sales. Yeah, Ash, again, for you, same deal. I think it’s the best Wii U game collectively in the office. You know, there was a little clock on the Wii U. We put well over a thousand hours into this. Just a real kind of like after work and lunch break, past time that, you know, nothing else got a look in for the rest of the Wii U lifespan. But yeah, it’s massively overshadowed by the Switch version. Yeah, I just never had that experience with this. And then obviously Switch is like, I’ll just attach these controllers, prop it up. And I’m in a coffee shop and we’ll just play two-player Mario Kart. And it’s, yeah, it’s just night and day ready from my experience of Wii U, which felt very solitary. So yeah, it’s nice someone was having a local co-op experience. We were really enjoying it until they shut down the mag. Yeah, that’ll do it. So yeah, okay. Obviously, yeah, classic, but not quite the Hall of Fame for obvious reasons. Pushmo World, another one I got from a list of notable digital games. Matthew? I associate this series more with 3DS. This is the puzzle game where you pull blocks sort of in and out of the foreground as a little guy called Mallow, I think was his name. Obviously on 3DS, that’s a really striking effect because you can sort of see the different depths of the different levels of blocks. And that isn’t to say it’s not a fine platformer on Wii U, but the true kind of core of this game lives in 3D. Okay, Ash, you on board with that? Yeah, this is a 3DS series, really. Okay, Hyrule Warriors. So yeah, the first time that Nintendo had done their version of the Musou format, basically. Quite a drab looking game, I think, compared to Age of Calamity. I don’t know if this is necessarily considered a classic, but certainly a good bit of fan service and probably quite notable to you, Matthew, when I went out at the time, they did something like this. It was trying to work out what are Nintendo doing or what’s the direction here, because you’ve got this console which is kind of faltering and this seemed like a very, very hardcore decision. In hindsight, I don’t know if it… I think they actually have made quite a success of their various Warriors tie-ins, so pushing in that direction doesn’t seem as mad now. I think you’re right about it lacking the clear visual hook of the sequel. You know, it’s based on a more sort of generic idea of Zelda. It’s not like a specific Zelda universe. It’s kind of bringing stuff together, but I didn’t have a huge problem with that. I just think if, you know, you can play this in other versions. Okay, yeah, it’s on 3DS and Switch this one. Ash, same deal? Yeah, I think it’s a great celebration of the Zelda history at that point. I put 85 hours into this game. I actually really loved it, and it gives you a lot to do. It’s a very generous game, but yeah. Yeah, you can play it elsewhere. Okay, fair enough. Yeah, it did seem like a big deal to me at the time as someone on the outside looking in, because it’s just got so many references to other Zelda games pulled into it. Okay, Bayonetta 2, again, this is on Switch, and it’s really nice on Switch, and having played it with the OLED screen, ooh, I don’t think I could ever go back to that blurry ass. Look, we’re playing on GamePad version. What are your thoughts, Matthew? Yeah, I mean, that’s basically it. The definitive version of this is Switch OLED. Pleased it was there, though. I mean, don’t feel we got to celebrate it properly, because it’s arrived just as the mag was kind of properly getting shut down. So, I don’t even remember signing these last pages out. Yeah, they salvaged this series from Oblivion, basically. Sacred just decided not to move forward with it. So, Nintendo became the custodians of Bayonetta, and that was a great move by them. Thoughts on this one, Ash? I wonder, again, alternative universe stuff. I wonder if Wii U had been a big success out of the gate. Would Nintendo have felt like they needed to salvage Bayonetta from Oblivion? Possibly not. So, I think Wii U, there’s a nice silver lining there that Bayonetta came back and has endured since. Great game, just as great on the Switch. I like the idea that the Wii U is struggling, and it’s like, you know what will save it, Bayonetta. Yeah, a sequel to a game that sold 1 million copies on other platforms. They also salvaged Devil’s 3rd at the same time, but that ain’t going on the Hall of Fame. No, I will get to that. So, next up, the Uncharted of Nintendo, Sonic Boom Rise of the Week. Move over, Uncharted. So that’s a no then, Matthew. Fuck, that was such dog shit. This is the weird Knuckles is like buff one, isn’t it? I think that happened in this one. Yeah, it’s a no. Okay, Ash, unless you have any residual Sonic love for this one. No. Super Smash Bros for Wii U, that’s an obvious no to me, because why would you play this? The Switch one in particular is like a towering achievement compared to this one, I think. This is just like a half measure. And if you didn’t have much of a local, sort of like multiplayer scene, this is basically a pointless purchase. I consider it that way in retrospect. Thoughts, Matthew? Yeah, I’m on board with that. Yeah, so the Switch version is literally the ultimate version of this game. So yeah, that’s it. Looked real nice, of course, but yep, obviously all that good work would pay off on Switch, as is the case with so many of these. Captain Toad, Treasure Tracker, this is your favorite Wii U game, isn’t it, Matthew? It’s absolutely fine. It’s like a triumph of like cuteness and animation. It’s probably more of like a, like I’d put Captain Toad in more with like Luigi’s Mansion, where it’s like a big character play rather than a necessarily like awesome game underneath it all. But it’s so like richly drawn and lovingly made that it kind of wins you over. But it’s like, it depends if, are you a, you know, if Nintendo Q is like enough for you, then by all means. But I just think it’s, I think it’s really throwaways as a puzzle platform. It just doesn’t, you know, you just race through it and you’re like, oh, was that it? A bit like Hyrule Warriors, this is put onto so many different platforms. I don’t think it’s necessarily tied to Wii U in the same way as some of these games. Like I’ve got it on 3DS, so yeah. And obviously it’s on Switch too. So, sounds like a no to me. Okay, 2015, firmly in the second half here. Mario Party 10, no Matthew? No. No Ash? Yeah, no. Okay, no love for Mario Party here. This is an interesting one. Affordable Space Adventures, a 2D space exploration game where you played a little spaceship where it’s kind of control panel was on the game pad. And so you were constantly adjusting and tinkering with the qualities of the ship on the game pad to survive the experiences that you were playing on the TV screen. So like if there was an enemy that reacted to like loud noises, you could switch to like the electric engine instead of the gas engine so that you would glide past it and you could sort of direct power around different parts of the ship. And so 2D action adventure, where you were also kind of like puzzling out the kind of right sort of specifications for your spaceship on the game pad, which made it one of the only like true kind of like TV game pad interaction single player games, which is probably why it should definitely be in the Hall of Fame. Yeah, I was hoping you’d go to bat for this. Ash, did you have much experience with this one? Played this at the time. I remember how I felt about it more than I remember the kind of mechanical experience of playing it. I remember feeling, you know, I wish there were more download games that took advantage of the Wii U in the way this does. This is one of those games, if I was ever to drag the Wii U out of the loft, I’d be loading this up and reminding myself all about it. I’m very happy for it to be in the list. Okay, great. So for the first time in about, I think like, a year and a half, we’ve got a Hall of Fame list. Yeah, and we have skipped over like, amazing games. Yeah. You know, yeah. Yeah, but again, it’s like that. What is evident, I think, from that curve is like we’re running out of games that take advantage of the specific platform that it’s on. Yeah. That’s probably what’s notable here. Well, there’s a big one coming. Okay, yeah, absolutely. So Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush. Matthew, as the man who absolutely submerged himself in Kirby last year, where did this fall for you? I reviewed this at Gamesmaster. I wasn’t a fan. I thought it was like a rougher version of Power Paintbrush on the DS. I really didn’t like the plasticine art style of it. I thought Nintendo had gone like super into this handcrafted thing with like Kirby’s Epic Yarn and then Woolly Yoshi and then Plasticine Kirby. And this was the one that just didn’t land. It just looked like big, ugly blocks of clay. Mechanically, I found it very, very frustrating compared to the DS version. It’s not in my Hall of Fame. Okay, well, you know, there’s not enough like conviction there for it to go in the Hall of Fame. So let’s move on. Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Tipping Stars. I think it’s another digi game. I don’t know much about this one, Matthew, do you? Yeah, March the Minis is not a Nintendo series I have much fondness for, which is really annoying because they made fucking millions of these things. All the Nintendo franchises you love that they don’t make more of, for some reason, there’s a version on I think like DS, DSiWare, 3DS, Wii U, maybe several on 3DS. It’s a bit lemmings-y, I guess. It’s actually a lot like Crusty’s Fun House, if you ever played that, where you kind of program, little, you put down like little obstacles and stuff to steer these little mechanical Mario’s. Never ever worked for me. Just doesn’t do it. I kind of resent the series, to be honest. The reason is it kind of arguably evolved out of the Game Boy game, the Donkey Kong 94, which is like an all-time platform game. Think Donkey Kong, but with Mario 64 controls on the Game Boy somehow, if that makes any sense at all. But then to see the series evolve beyond that, and they kept, with every Mario vs. Donkey Kong, they would almost try to reinvent it every single time, make it into a different sort of puzzle platformer. And I felt like it just, it lost a bit more of its DNA every single time to the point where it became borderline irrelevant to me. So it’s a no. Okay, it’s a no. This is a really interesting one. Okay, so absolute bolt from the blue, massive success that rose above the fact that its hardware was performing badly to genuinely find an audience and become a breakout hit, Splatoon. And not available in exactly the same form on other formats. There’s an argument for this going in. Matthew, what do you think? You know, obviously it’s the core kind of paints. You swim in the paint, you kill with the paint idea that is in all Splatoon’s. Mechanically, there is something about having the map on the separate gamepad screen, which I think is superior to bringing up a map in two and three. People may disagree with that. Like in my head, this was 100% made for Wii U and they carried it on because it was massive. So does that earn it a place in the Wii U Hall of Fame? I think so. Ash, what do you think? I’m tempted to say it does. I think it was a game specifically made with the strengths of Wii U in mind. Anecdotally, I remember this had a kind of mythological status at Nintendo UK because you would hear about it long before you’d ever seen it. So you’d go into a meeting room and someone would be like, oh, when Miyamoto’s paintball game comes along, even though it wasn’t a Miyamoto game at all, that’s how it was referred to. They’d be like, when his paintball game comes, everything’s going to change. We’ve never seen anything like that. And I don’t think it really changed the fortunes of the Wii U, but it did launch a phenomenal new IP for Nintendo, which doesn’t happen that often. And yeah, I think it’s right at home on Wii U. And I agree with Matthew that having the map on the game pad because it is essential because this is a game about dominating a map, about painting the floor as much as you can. So being able to see that at all times is a really crucial part of the game design. And also I played this to death on Wii U. I’ve never played Splatoon 3 and I played Splatoon 2 for a couple of games. That says something, possibly more about me than the games, but it’s always a Wii U game to me. I think the original game almost does everything they want to do with it. Like they’ve not moved it. There’s never a leap in two or three. It’s like maybe more nuanced, but it is just more Splatoon 1. I think that this was just, I think it’s like also there’s maybe a finite amount of joy you can get out of the idea. That’s how I personally feel about it a little bit. And so, and I felt like I got a lot of that from this. It was also a really slick Nintendo online experience. That’s what I thought about it. I was like, it was really good actually, like throwing you into a game and the overall experience. And like, it’s like, it’s a good multiplayer hang in contrast to like some quite bad multiplayer hangs on other platforms. So yeah, I think it should go in. So that’s our eighth entry so far. Okay, Art Academy Atelier. It’s a no, right Matthew? I mean, it’s just a drawing thing. Makes sense on the game pad, but yeah, it’s fine. Yeah, okay, cool. Ash, you’re on board with that? That’s a hell of a no. Okay, Yoshi’s Woolly World. This is also on Switch, right Matthew? There’s a port of it on 3DS and there’s a sequel on Switch, that’s right. This wasn’t as good as Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Yoshi’s, the Yoshi games have all been a bit ropey since Yoshi’s Island. I don’t think that’s the spices take. I don’t think they’ve ever really nailed it. Maybe he was like a one-time only kind of hero, who knows? Ash. More notable for the awesome Yarn Yoshi amiibos that they released alongside it. Which I had one of my dog ate it and I’ll never forgive her for that. Whenever you want to use Yarn Yoshi in Smash Brothers, you have to rub your dog against the NFC reader. Rub her nose in it. So for that reason alone, it’s a no. Okay, great. Devil’s Third, oh boy. So what, it’s a third-person game with first-person multiplayer, is that right, Matthew? Yeah, made by Mr. Ninja Gaiden, Itagaki. Originally, a game for, it was being published by THQ for like 360 and PS3, and when THQ went down, it didn’t have a home and ends up weirdly at Nintendo, because the water’s like, yeah, this is what we need. An odd, odd shout. A notoriously troubled path to release. I mean, famously, like Nintendo of America basically like want nothing to do with it, even though it’s a Nintendo published game, people petition them to release it. It felt incredibly begrudging. This was the one which, like, according to the anecdotes, GameStop purchased 420 copies to sell across the country. They were so like, fuck this game. So it’s an oddity, but also terrible. Yeah, so Ash, what was the deal, what was your feeling with this internally at Nintendo UK? Because I think someone tweeted me saying that there was like such a surplus of copies of this left in the UK Nintendo store that they were just like firing them out basically. What was the deal there? Yeah, that sounds about right to me. I remember the marketing manager on this put a lot of effort into it actually. But I think they gave it to an intern, either an intern or someone who had been an intern and had been employed as a full-time member of staff. So I think for him it was like, oh, this is my big chance to market a game and really put a lot of effort into it. But a few of us played it and it was almost unbelievable that Nintendo would put their name to a game that bad. It’s baffling. There must, like somebody, like Itagaki must know, so they must be mates with someone at Nintendo for this to have happened. Or Nintendo were just so desperate for something they could sign cheaply and get released. Like I do not know. I’d almost be tempted to put it in as like, I don’t know, just a strange kind of artifact tied to the Wii U, but it’s not a good enough game to be. I think if we were to put this in while also casually dismissing for legitimate reasons, Mario 3D World and Mario Kart 8, that’s a crime of taste. People would burn down the Hall of Fame. It’s a classic act of podcast shithouse-ery that would not be forgiven by sensible people. So let’s move on. Super Mario Maker. Was this any better on Wii U, Matthew, than it would be on other formats? I actually don’t have a vast amount of experience with Super Mario Maker, so let’s pass to Ash. Yeah, I bought this bit of a plate there, Ash. I made a little Hall of Fame list of my own just before doing this podcast, and Mario Maker was at number one. Wow, okay. I think it, again, it’s a perfect partnership with the Wii U hardware because of the gamepad. It’s, in my opinion, it definitely loses something when they made the sequel on Switch. They made the best of the situation that they could, but nothing can compete with assembling those levels. On your gamepad, very kind of close and intimately, you don’t even need the TV on, really. You can just sit on the couch, drag items and assets around to design your level, and then pass it to somebody else to play. At the time working on it, it felt like a revolution. It felt like something we should be really shouting about because it wasn’t something other platforms could do. There had been other kind of design your own game makers, but you compare, in my opinion, compare Super Mario Maker to LittleBigPlanet, they are worlds apart from each other because Super Mario Maker had the backbone of Mario platform games. So it was already, before you’ve even made a level, it’s already at a massive advantage compared to any other game making software. And the way that game making software was designed by Nintendo, like a bit like Mario Paint on the SNES, like interacting with the level designer itself sometimes felt as much of a game as playing the end results. So tremendous game. I think the game pad does make the Wii U version definitive. It sadly lost something because Miiverse is no longer there. I’m not sure you can even access levels online anymore, which might be a big tick against it or a cross against it. But also it had the amiibo functionality where you could tap an amiibo and get an eight bit sprite based on that amiibo. Was something I don’t think the sequel does that. That inspired creators to design their own Zelda levels, for example. Also, behind the scenes story on this. There were promo characters that were added. We worked with Aardman to get Shaun the Sheep in there as a downloadable character, which is really cool. I think there was a Mercedes car you could play as. Jump around as a car. We didn’t do that one. Shaun the Sheep and a car. I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time trying to get Yooka-Laylee in there, but I do remember sitting in an office with one of the marketing managers and he said, look, why don’t you keep trying, try and get something signed off, but let’s go a bit more mainstream, right? Like Shaun the Sheep was a good idea. I think we should try and get the queen in the game. Right, okay, yeah, I’ll get right on that. Wow. But what if the queen dies? Will it not be inappropriate? Gets like a hit with hammers, you know what I mean? Like it’s not, it’s not ideal, is it? Oh, you can’t fire a bullet bill into the fucking queen. Amazing. Well, that’s a great story, Ash, so yeah, appreciate it. I think that there’s an argument, I mean, Splatoon, it’s not like anyone’s going into Splatoon now to play it multiplayer. I think there’s an element here of like capturing what the Wii U did well that makes this a good argument for putting this in. So how about we say yes for now? Yeah, I’m digging that. Year Walk, I only mentioned this because I think it’s a notable port. I don’t know much about this, Matthew. Do you have any experience with this? Yes, this was like a smogo, kind of weird, like narrative horror puzzle experience where you’re kind of walking through this snowy Nordic forest, meeting creatures from folk tales. A really lavish Wii U port that they made with Daka Daka, who also made Scram Kitty and his buddy on rails, which was quite a fun downloadable shooter. And yeah, it just took a really good game and like elevated it above its other forms. You know, it puts like this sort of encyclopedia of folklore on the game pad. It added some gyro controls. You could write notes on the game pad. I think it used game pad speakers to have like a kind of extra weirdness to the soundscape. So it could kind of like play audio tricks alongside the TV. Whether it’s maybe too niche to include above some other things, you know, like I don’t think it’s quite as inventive as like affordable space adventures. But it’s definitely a, wow, they made this game fit the Wii U specifically, which, you know, was quite a rare thing. That’s cool. Well, you know, it sounds like you’ve made your mind up. It’s not quite there, but it’s cool to at least have it highlighted. It’s a big Chris Schilling game, this one, Simogo’s Chris Schilling sort of joint for short. It’s very different energy to Sayonara Wild Hearts. Yeah. Okay, cool. Well, moving on to Shovel Knight, which I think was notable. It came to Wii U, but it’s just so owned by other platforms. It’s a kind of like big indie thing. You can play it like it anywhere. So it’s a no, Matthew. Yeah, it’s good though. Yeah. Ash, a no. Yeah, awesome game. I think it was on 3DS first, to be honest. Okay, let’s move on then. Rodeo the Sky Soldier. We go live to Ashley Day for the take on this one. You’re big Rodeo head, Ash. I do own this game. I got the double pack, which came with the once canceled Wii version. Wii version was in development hell for years. I don’t know exactly what happened, but they managed to kind of resurrect it as a bonus alongside the Wii U version. And they were very different versions of each other. Actually, the Wii version was the definitive version, sadly, so I’m not sure I could. I mean, this game isn’t going to the Hall of Fame either way. Let’s be honest. It was a nice little kind of flight action game. Everyone wanted it to be The Next Knight. It wasn’t really. Gaming footnote in history, I would say. Interesting. Enough said, then. It’s a no. Mario Tennis Ultra Smash, that’s a no, isn’t it, Matthew? Yeah, all the gimmicks they added were just bullshit. Okay, we’ve come to what I think might be the last Hall of Famer, maybe. Xenoblade Chronicles X. Matthew, I know this has got quite a complicated place in the series history for you, and it’s not a beloved game by you, but should it be in this Hall of Fame? I did go back and revisit it around our Xenoblade episode, and while it definitely doesn’t have the qualities of Xenoblade Chronicles 1-3, the open world of that game is a real technical feat. It’s quite a hard sci-fi vision, which is why I found it quite cold and hard to get into, but actually spending a bit more time with it, chipping away with some of the side missions, drawing out some of the narrative content, which is buried amongst something which seems a bit more systems-based from the outset. There’s a lot to recommend this. It’s quite an uncompromising sci-fi, open world RPG. Nothing else quite like it. If not for all the other masses of shit I have to play constantly for work and various other things, I’d be pumping a lot more time into this. Yeah, I think it kind of has to be on there because it doesn’t live anywhere else. And also it was such a big part of being a Wii U fan was being excited for Xenoblade Chronicles X. Yeah, it’s also the only one where I’m not totally convinced it will get off of Wii U, you know? Like it might not make that leap. You think they would have done it if they were going to do it. Yeah, that’s the thing. Zelda, I could see that’s going to happen at some point, I think, because Skyward Sword happened. But this, I don’t know, man, it might just be tied to Wii U. Ash, your thoughts on this one? It’s baffling to me that it’s never been transplanted to Switch, given the popularity of the Xenoblade series. My idle speculation is that maybe they feel it deserves more of a remake than a port to try and amplify some of the things that are great about it and make up for some of its minor shortcomings. I think it’s a really good game. The, personally for me, like the addition of these giant, pilotable mechs really made it quite interesting and unique compared to the rest of the series. I never finished it, but I’ve never finished any Xenoblade game. I don’t really have the stamina for it, so I don’t know how much of a criticism that is. It might just be a personal thing, but yeah, I think it’s pretty cool. It being hard going is not like a new take, so I think that’s probably a fair response. Okay, so we have 10 games here. I think we should fire through the last few. We have some notable ones still left, but I think basically we’re just looking for, are there any arguments here for anything else? So 2016 we’ve reached now. Twilight Princess HD. Now I think a Hall of Fame only needs one Zelda HD facelift and Wind Waker would be the one. What do you think, Matthew? It’s definitely the bigger transformation. This has a lot of the subtle changes that a Wind Waker also benefits from, but it looks to my eye anyway, more like traditional HD remaster. It’s just like that earlier game, but without as much fuzz. Yeah, I think that’s fair. What do you think, Ash? Yeah, I think Twilight Princess is a less, I think it’s a lesser game than Wind Waker. I mean, they’re both great games. And I don’t think the remake brings as many kind of visual improvements to Twilight Princess as Wind Waker did. So yeah, Wind Waker’s the pick for me. Yeah, I hope it ends up on Switch, but yeah. Yeah, it doesn’t quite reach the Hall of Fame. Pokken Tournament is on Switch, and plus Matthew Pokemon fighting games like you either have held this game, isn’t it? Okay, that’s a no. Star Fox Zero, really interesting game. Played it today for the first time. I don’t think this is quite as bad as people say it is. Has a lot of like, sort of like, you know, using the gyroscope gubbins and some baffling use of two cameras. Sometimes interesting and cool use of two cameras, but not always. Sometimes just plain confusing. And properly does make use of the Wii U, you know, the Wii U’s functionality in a way that makes it quite hard to get off of the platform, get it onto other platforms. But the bits where you’re not in an R wing are not nearly as good as the bits where you are in an R wing. And I don’t quite think it’s good enough to reach Hall of Fame status, despite being an interesting Wii U artifact. Thoughts, Matthew? Whatever you think about the controls, it’s just the look of the thing. It’s weirdly functional, you know? Cheap. Yeah, I don’t have to say cheap, you know? Yeah, basically. It looks more tech demo-y than you’d hope the grand return of Star Fox would. I feel like that’s a world which does need a real sheen and sort of explosive energy as part of its identity to kind of sell you on it. And I almost felt like Miyamoto quite dogmatically thought, like, the controls, the controls, the controls. If you like the controls, that’s the thing that’s impressive about this game. That’s the thing you’re going to love about this game. And actually it underserves the kind of Star Fox-ness of it. That’s fair, I think. Yeah, that’s where it kind of lacks. It’s almost like a game as well. The deeper you get into it, some levels look better than others. Like, Corneria at the start actually looks really nice, I think, because they’re kind of like, you remember what it looks like on N64. I think you get this with a few platinum games where the first area looks incredible and then subsequent areas may be a bit like, or on the kind of like muddy cliff planet and it’s not very shiny. But it’s not quite as bad as people say. The actual core, playing in an R-Wing stuff is absolutely fine, I think. Ash, what do you think of this one? Yeah, well, I’m a huge Star Fox fan. So I tend to be more forgiving than most because I just have a great time whenever there’s a new Star Fox game and I get to spend time in that world with those characters again. And I did think actually they managed to capture some of the spirit of Star Fox 64. Sometimes when a new Star Fox game comes out, they go completely left field and they kind of miss what was cool about just like the basic shoot them up action. So I think in places it’s really good fun to play. I don’t mind the motion controls. I don’t love them, but I don’t mind them. But I think there are certain parts of the game where you’re not doing that basic shoot them up action and it’s trying to innovate a lot more that the pace of the game slows down quite a lot and drags. It’s a real shame. They made such a big deal of the different vehicle functionality and some of them are just so boring. Like the gyrocopter is just, gyrocopter and the walker just so much worse than using the basic R-Wing functionality. So yeah, holds it back. I’m told that some of the better levels in this are the hidden levels, the other paths. And I haven’t tested that yet, so I don’t know. But yeah, sort of like the germ of what is good about Star Fox is still in this game, but it’s just not quite as good as it should be. So I don’t think it quite gets into the Hall of Fame as a result. Star Fox, Gardash, you have any thoughts on this one? Uncle fucking Slippy Toads? Uncle Grippy. That’s it, Grippy, sorry, yes. What’s the deal here? God. Yeah, Platinum Games’ most obscure video game possibly. I don’t know why it needs to be a Star Fox game. I think this was one of Miyamoto’s, there was a period where Miyamoto was showing off in public experiments that would take advantage of the Wii U and I think this was one of the few concepts that actually got released. So they put the Star Fox license on it. But yeah, not that interesting. Okay, so we have no more yeses here, I don’t think, but I’m gonna bundle them all together then we can sort of pull out some thoughts. So we’ve got Mario and Friends Amiibo Challenge, Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE, that game would be a great Wii U Hall of Famer candidate had it not been put on Switch because it’s quite a strange Fire Emblem, Shin Megami Tensei spinoff. Mario and Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, you know what we think of that. Paper Mario Color Splash and of course, 2017’s The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, which was also a Switch launch game and even though I played it on Wii U, there’s no functionality that’s really tied to the Wii U and therefore I don’t think it could be called a Hall of Famer even though clearly the game’s entire intent was built around this console and like this was a kind of like North Star game that Nintendo was obviously working towards throughout the console’s lifespan. Anything to pull out there Matthew? Paper Mario is kind of interesting in that it hasn’t been ported to Switch. It’s not horrible. I think people are super down on this period of Paper Mario in the middle. It has some of the problems of Sticker Star in that it kind of relies on this kind of gimmicky system where you collect these like giant objects for use in puzzles. And it also has a, because it doesn’t really have character leveling, a lot of people are like, what’s the fucking point of any of it? Which is a bit of a bleak way of looking at a game which is actually stacked with like imagination and jokes and like really nice visual designs. But I’m a late Paper Mario game apologist. So more of an oddity rather than a Hall of Famer. How about you, Ash? Is there anything in here that’s like, deserves noting or discussing? I don’t think so. I mean, obviously Breath of the Wild is a game for the ages, but is there anyone who really thinks of it as a Wii U game? I have a feeling based on old kind of promotional videos that they did that there were like things it did with the Wii U game pad that then got stripped out once they realized it was coming to Switch. So there’s probably a more interesting version of this game that exists somewhere, but yes, it’s a Switch game. So I don’t think any of these really need to go on the list. I honestly assumed for years that it did use the game pad because it’s so obvious how it would. You were like, oh, it’s a shame the Switch doesn’t have the game pad functionality and people are like, oh, it doesn’t have any. And you’re like, what the fuck, really? Yeah, especially as there’s like a game pad in the game. Yeah, I mean, yeah, and it’s just, yeah, it’s mad, mad. That is a take that I’ve taken from you and repeated on this podcast multiple times, Ash, that you are literally carrying a game pad around. And it’s such a simple but obvious observation that, yeah, it’s good. Okay, yeah, so obviously lots of love for Breath of the Wild, but not quite making the list. And obviously, I think adding to that, Wind Waker HD’s Wii U pad functionality hints that the idea they were already experimenting with that stuff, so clearly that was something they were thinking about for Breath of the Wild at some point. Okay, we have our 10-game Hall of Fame, so here we go. Is it cursed? What, is what cursed? Our list, is it cursed? I can’t remember. It’s all right, it’s fine, it’s good, it’s a good list. I think it works. Game and Wario is the one I kind of questioned a little bit, but gonna go through them in order here. So, okay, we can obviously change anything we want to at the last minute, just gonna fire through them. Number one, Nintendo Land, number two, Zombie U, number three, Game and Wario, number four, The Wonderful 101, number five, Rayman Legends, number six, The Legend of Zelda, Wind Waker HD, number seven, Affordable Space Adventures, number eight, Splatoon, number nine, Super Mario Maker, number 10, Xenoblade Chronicles X. That feels basically right to me. Thoughts, Matthew? My only thought is do we swap Game and Wario for Star Fox Zero? Might be a good shout, because it’s just such an interesting curio. What would I rather, some of Game and Wario’s stuff is in WarioWare Gold as well, I think. Oh, but I forgot Game and Wario’s, that’s the only game Ash still has. Sorry, I forgot that element of it. I think we definitely need a Nintendo Land or a Game and Wario in this. What do you think, Ash? If you could swap between the two, would you change anything else about the list? I don’t think I’d change anything else about the list. I think it’s a good list of viable kind of semi-exclusives that are a great reason to play on the Wii U still today. And I think it kind of nicely also represents the taste of this podcast and it suits your listenership. So that’s something. The editorial’s right. Star Fox and Game and Wario. Yeah. It’s a really tough one. I think a lot of the positives in Game and Wario, you probably, some of the things are done much better in other WarioWare games and some of the kind of other mini games, you know, you can get similar experiences in, for example, Super Monkey Ball and like Jackbox Party Pack. So I wouldn’t be against Star Fox going in as this like, you know, this is something that really you are not going to find anywhere else. It’s a Star Fox experience you won’t find anywhere else. And I would bet a lot of money it’s never coming to any platform ever. Yeah, I love it. And I think people should play it to see what the hell they were doing with it. Like it’s worth it on that level, I think. It was also kind of like the last hurrah for the game pad. It was the last remnant of, you know, any real effort to innovate with the technology. And I think that makes it interesting. Yeah, I think chronologically the idea of like the game pad’s journey being starting at Nintendo Land on a list, ending with Star Fox Zero has quite a nice, neat arc to it. So, okay, Game of Wario has been muscled out. Matthew, you okay with that? Yeah, RIP the fronks. Oh, hashtag free the fronks. Is that what it was? Yeah, I think it’s good. Okay, cool. Well, we come to the end of this podcast. It’s 48 minutes longer than I thought it would be, but I think it’s been really good. Ash, where can people find you on social media? They can find me on Twitter. I am at Jelly Scare, where I’ll mostly be retweeting Team17 stuff and talking about retro games. Also check out my blog, Games From The Black Hole. Most recently did a game called Suzuki Bakuhatsu, which is a bomb disposal puzzle game on the PlayStation. Amazing. Ash’s knowledge of retro games is like 9,000% sort of like greater than ours combined. So that’s why you’re such a good guest, Ash. Will you join us again at some point? I’d love to. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah, we’ll definitely, I think I forgot to tweet out Games for the Black Hole last time, so I’ll definitely do that this time. Point people towards it, because yeah, you write some cool shit on there. Matthew, where can people find you on social media? I am at MrBazzle underscore pesto. If you like the podcast, patreon.com/backpagepod, two additional podcasts a month there at the XL tier. Backpagepod on Twitter. I don’t recommend going to the Discord. I decided to start throwing that in there. I’m only joking, of course. And yeah, I will be back next week with a new episode, goodbye.