I have lived and died by the sword as a PC gamer, though probably there were more guns than swords. Investing in a console didn’t really feel like a necessity, probably because I never had to deal with peer pressure. However, it doesn’t imply that one cannot switch (pun intended) to the other side.
And with that came the Wii U. Rather an odd choice for my first console in the third decade of the third millennium, but as the title says, it is never too late for the party, even if the lights are off, the music has stopped, and everyone has gone home.
Why the Wii U?
The short answer is…being available for cheap in Japan. The longer answer…it is a better HD Wii. Ironically, that is exactly why it is the worst console commercially in Nintendo’s history.
The honest answer though in this decade is modding. I enjoyed the process of modding the console and converting the region from Japan to US for the Wii U as well as the vWii, thanks to the resources available at GBATEMP. It is rare to see a console have backward compatibility at the hardware level for 3 generations and that is where the value of the device lies today.
It is not really an Internet device with its really limited wireless capabilities, but Aroma does a great job of making the device feel modern with its plugins and Pretendo does what Nintendont by keeping online service alive, which is visible more than ever on the Wii U homescreen.
Even otherwise, the novelty of the device and its controller has never ceased to be fun. It is still a blast fooling around with the motion controls, but the pièce de résistance was always the gamepad.
Switch before the Switch
The Switch succeeded because the Wii U failed. You can see how the idea evolved and the Wii U lived too short a life to realise its potential. The controller was a great idea that was extremely compromised and ultimately abandoned. It reveals its true potential with games like Nintendo land, but they are few and far between.
It is perhaps no surprise that it rose like a phoenix with the Switch, with nearly all titles ported over. It could have been the Switch were it not for the bad marketing.
But really, in 2026?
It depends on where you are coming from, but the fact is that there are better ways to experience both the Wii and Wii U library – through emulation. Putting legitimacy aside, Dolphin and Cemu do a much better job of dealing with an aged title on a large 4K TV than what the original hardware can with its 720p output. In fact, I kept one of the Wii U Motion Plus controllers with me, and it was much more fun playing it on the emulator with a wireless IR sensor as the upscaling really made the graphics much more palatable even for the Wii titles.
And so it ends, all over again
Considering the trouble I went through in acquiring and modding the console, it would come to you as a surprise that I sold it just before publishing this. For me, the fun was more in the modding process and experiencing the interface but not really on the gaming aspects. It has more to do with the fact that I have a 1500+ games PC library which keeps piling up and scant little time to enjoy gaming as against learning something new.
However, it did add something to my life that I hadn’t experienced before. Will it get me to buy a console? Most probably not. Did it teach me something as to how life works? Probably a lot. You shall be forgotten, you shall be remembered, for there are two sides to the coin, neither more equal than the other.
