Wii U First Impressions

First off, let me give you my perspective as to why I spent my hard earned dollars on a Wii U… Well here you go. At the present time, I own a PS4, Gamecube, and N64. Back when it was released, I bought a Wii. After a year and a half, I was simply unimpressed with needing to use the motion controls for games. I ended up selling it and purchasing an Xbox 360 which I still find to be the smart decision for last gen (though I really wanted to play Heavy Rain). I really love my PS4 but something about Nintendo and their first party games beckons me to return. For example, it is like breaking up with your amazingly hot girlfriend who is impossible to resist. You know you are going to try and get back with her, so why did you break it off to begin with? Oh yea… she has no 3rd party support and is a bit crazy. Well for this generation of consoles I am taking a two pronged approach. I will own the PS4 but the Wii U will be my secondary system for all Nintendo games. Why? Because… I do not have a wife to nag me about needing things like rent money or healthy food. Ha, winner!

I go to Gamestop to purchase a Wii U and of course they only have the standard package because… it’s Gamestop. I end up going to Wal-Mart where they have the Super Mario Bros U and Super Luigi U bundle for 300 bucks. Well now, this is quite a good deal in my mind. After all I do want to support Nintendo and buying used certainly won’t do that. Also, for fun, let us imagine I bought the Wii U used from Gamestop. Now, no matter what I was acquiring a copy of Super Mario Bros U so… Wii U used at Gamestop is 229.99 plus Super Mario Bros U used is 44.99 which amounts to… 285 bucks plus tax. The bundle which came with the aforementioned game and the Luigi Bros U game cost me 300 plus tax. For only 15 bucks more I acquired a brand new, unused system, plus an extra game. Worth it!

Now I am back home and I unbox the system and it all sets up fairly easily. I am digging the easy set up of the HDMI cord over the old school component cables. I must note that the power cord has a brick in the middle and, consequentially, made me roll my eyes. The gamepad catches my eye. Love at first sight… or maybe lust… not quite sure yet. The Wii U’s gamepad is light weight and feels great in my hands. All of a sudden I saw an issue… The gamepad has it’s own separate cable to charge, which is disappointing since you would think the Wii U could charge it on its own. However, it does come with a stand to sit on while it charges which is a nice touch.

Finally, after about 15 minutes I have everything set up with the gamepad charging. Of course, I completely forget the Wii U will need a patch to update itself. I did like how the system would run and let me play games even if I hadn’t updated it. Some systems don’t even let you play them till you have downloaded a patch… cough Xbox One cough. It is roughly around midnight when the system starts updating so I decide to catch some zzz’s…

YAY! The Wii U is updated and ready to play! The Wii U menu is similar to the 3DS and Wii which is good for those of you familiar with that set up. The Wii U accepts my Super Mario Bros U disc like the cd player in my car and it loads fairly quickly. Side note – Wii U discs can hold 25gb of data which is far above any Nintendo console before it. Ok, so I must note that Nintendo truly cares about the customer because I notice Super Mario Bros U already has Luigi U on the disc. Many times I have bought a game which said it came with something extra but it was really just a code to download extra content. Nintendo does not do that to you. Right when I start playing I notice how everything feels natural. The gamepad, initially, had me looking down at it but after a while I grew accustomed to how it was a companion to the system. I know the Wii U is weaker in power to the PS4 and Xbox One but when playing Nintendo games… who cares? They look great and are in 1080p finally. The gamepad’s second screen is awesome and I was able to switch my to watching TV while still playing Mario on my gamepad. Pretty flippin’ legit!

All in all I am fairly impressed with the Wii U so far. I picked up Super Mario 3D World and it is even more fun than Mario + Luigi U. Oh and by the way, it looks great sitting on top of the PS4. Plus I noticed you can add an external hard drive for extra memory on the cheap! Anytime you buy a Nintendo system or game you can log into Nintendo club online and accrue coins which can be used for various things such as virtual console games and t-shirts.