It’s no secret that Nintendo has had a profound impact on the history of the video game industry.
After an epic collapse of the video game industry in the early ‘80’s, which left retailers with absolutely no desire to have anything to do with any product that called itself a video game, Nintendo was able to single-handily resurrect home console gaming, through their sheer determination and moxie.
What was once an emerging art-form that was left for dead, was suddenly reforged into an activity synonymous with the name Nintendo itself; through the popularity and might of the Nintendo Entertainment System.
While those salad days didn’t last forever, as new challengers rose and eventually overtook Nintendo’s position of industry leader, the company has continued to pioneer; pushing forward our conceptions of gaming, the mechanics of games, and what products will be accepted by the consumer.
After resurrecting the home console, Nintendo was able to define gaming on the go, through the portable Game Boy line of systems. When Nintendo needed to rethink both portable and home gaming, they did so through the massively successful Nintendo DS and the Wii systems.
At this moment, we are on the cusp of Nintendo’s next console, a hybrid device between a home console and a portable unit called the Nintendo Switch. Much like the launches of the Wii and the Nintendo DS, Nintendo is once again attempting to redefine the concept of what it means to play video games.
There is a huge potential impact that the Nintendo Switch may have on the market place if they are successful in their endeavors to marry home and portable gaming.
However, as good as the Nintendo Switch may or may not be, no console is going to be worth a single dime without good games.
Fortunately, Nintendo has often been at the forefront of redefining the art of gaming itself; having published numerous games that have pioneered new mechanics and established new genre’s.
With the launch of the Nintendo Switch on the horizon (March 2017 as of this writing) I thought it would be fun to take a look back through the history of Nintendo and pinpoint the ten games that in my opinion, have been the Ten Most Important Games Nintendo Ever Published.
Throughout the month of December, we’ll be counting down the titles in Nintendo’s vast history that have pioneered standards for the entire industry and laid the foundations for Nintendo’s success.
These games were the games that were often instrumental in refining the very notion of what video games are and what they can be.
We already counted down #10, #9, #8, #7 and #6 on our list, so you should probably take a look at those post haste.
5. Wii Sports
Nintendo was in a precarious situation in the middle 2000’s.
While the Nintendo 64 ended up in a distant second place behind Sony’s upstart PlayStation console during the 32/64bit era, the beginning of the new millennium brought even stiffer competition.
The popularity of Sony’s PlayStation brand had skyrocketed – leading to an insurmountable market juggernaut in their PlayStation 2. Meanwhile, a new entry into the console space in the form of Microsoft and their Xbox gaming system helped further shrink down the available slices of market share pie.
Wii Sports Tennis would provide many a heated 4-player battle at a multitude of social gatherings.
Nintendo came into 2001 with the GameCube – a technological marvel that was compact, but still just as capable of producing high quality graphics that were nearly on par with their competitors.
However, the elegant tech-specs and the continued genius of Nintendo’s first and second party studios, (this would be the generation that gave birth to Retro Studios and their inspired translation of the Metroid series into 3D, with Metroid Prime) Nintendo found themselves in a distant third place behind Sony and Microsoft.
Vulture-like pundits began circling ‘round overhead: declaring that Nintendo may have to go the way of their storied rival, Sega, who’s own failures and massive losses had forced them out of the hardware business and into being a third-party developer.
Nintendo they argued, would be much better off focusing on producing games for everyone else and leave the development of hardware to Sony and Microsoft.
As the door closed on the sixth generation of consoles and the specters of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 began looming over the 2005 horizon, Nintendo decided to take a different approach.
Rather than produce another expensive graphics powerhouse, they decided to forge their own path – one which their President at the time, Satoru Iwata felt would revolutionize the console business.
Iwata’s revolution would focus on an intuitive interface over high-fidelity graphics – an interface that would be inviting and inclusive to both gaming veterans and newcomers alike: the Wii.
Wii Sports Bowling was an elegantly simple game that could be enjoyed by players from ages 8 to 80.
The Wii would use a motion-sensing controller as a mechanism to mimic real-life movements. A swing of a sword could be achieved by waving the controller, or a gun could be aimed simply by pointing the controller at the screen.
While the concept behind the Wii carried the potential to change the gaming industry, no piece of hardware can change anything unless there is software behind it that can crystallize that machine’s promise.
That piece of software would be Wii Sports.
Wii Sports was perhaps even more brilliant than the Wii itself.
A collection of simplified sports games, Wii Sports provided the perfect showcase of exactly how the Wii was different from any other console on the market. While a complex shooter while Halo 3 would be the equivalent to a foreign language to those not familiar with games, anyone could immediately grasp the idea of Wii Sports Bowling, or Wii Sports Tennis and instantly be able to jump into a game and start having fun.
Nintendo made sure to capitalize on the wide appeal of Wii Sports by including the game with every Wii console sold; thus ensuring that when the machine launched in 2006, a sensation would be born.
And what a sensation it became!
Fueled in no small part by ingenious simplicity of Wii Sports, the Nintendo Wii would become the most highly sought after item of 2006 and well into 2007, with stores constantly selling through stock as quickly as they could replenish it.
Wii Sports became a staple at family gatherings, kiosks were set up in shopping centers, the Wii even found itself in retirement communities with groups of grandparents gathering for weekly Wii Bowling sessions.
Nintendo would go on to sell over 100 million Wii consoles during the system’s lifespan – and helped breathe new life into Nintendo at a time when many thought the company might be finished.
None of that would have been possible without Wii Sports.
I hope that you enjoy this look at the Most Important Games Nintendo’s Ever Published. Please keep an eye out at NerdBacon.com, or like our Facebook page as we continue the countdown!
We also want to know your thoughts on what games were most important to Nintendo. Have a disagreement with the list? Want to share a Nintendo memory? Just let us know in the comments section below.
Written by The Watchman
He’s also an actor, a reporter, a pro wrestling connoisseur, and some say he’s a cat whisperer.
If you have any questions or just want to drop me a line, hit me up at thewatchman@butthole.nerdbacon.com
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