Day 23, Game 23 - Balloon Fight

Tonight, I want to celebrate Nintendo. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Nintendo decided to acknowledge the future of the Wii U. And not just empty promises, but rather games. GAMES GAMES GAMES. I can't stress enough how important that word is. For Nintendo, unlike Microsoft and Sony who always brag about power and size and online blah blah blah, their main selling point and the reason they have been around for 30 years, is their stellar games. Without an amazing library of self-published games, Nintendo would have gone the way of Sega a long, long time ago.

Sure, their systems are nice. They are innovative and unique. But without GAMES, no one would ever experience how great their systems are. Their games make the system, not the other way around.

So today, they came out swinging. They dropped announcement after announcement via Nintendo Direct. They announced a new 3D Mario game, a new Zelda game, a remake of Zelda: Wind Waker, a new Mario Kart, a new Yoshi game, Smash Bros., and so on.

And one of the most obvious yet exciting announcements was the return of the Virtual Console to the Wii U. Right now, you can transfer your Wii Virtual Console titles to the Wii U, but you can't play them at all with the GamePad, and you have to be in the Wii mode to play them at all. Now, you will be able to download them right to your Wii U menu screen, play on the GamePad (even exclusively on the GamePad if you choose), and connect to Miiverse in-game. Better yet, if you already own Wii Virtual Console games, you can download them once again, in Wii U form, for a mere $1 ($1.50 for SNES games).

Also, to celebrate the 30th year anniversary of Famicom (the original name for the NES before it was released here in the States), Nintendo is giving huge sales on Virtual Console titles, one every 30 days, for 6 months. The price? $.30 of course. The first game, released as soon as the Nintendo Direct was over? The classic Balloon Fight.

Most gamers don't remember this game, but anyone with a Wii U is at least familiar with it thanks to its own attraction in NintendoLand. The game came out waaaaaaaaaay back in 1986, and it was built to be played as a high-score bragging game.

I downloaded it, of course (after tax was only 33 cents!), and enjoyed the hell out of playing on the GamePad. It's not a game you can log serious hours into, but fun nonetheless. My seven year old was blown away that I was playing a game that looked like this, especially since he's been seeing me run around lush jungle environments in Far Cry 3 lately. If this is any indication of how much I am going to enjoy playing old games right on the GamePad, then this year of gaming is going to be even better than I could have imagined.

I can't wait.

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