Wii Time
I got the Wii in 2008 on a US/Korea trip. We had a blast with it. I vividly remember the countless hours spent on ‘Resident Evil 4’, a title that I had bought along with the Wii itself, 2 zeldas – ‘Twilight Princess’ and ‘Skyword Sword’, 2 mario galaxies and the best of all – ‘Super Mario bros’ (I guess we completed this 3+ times and even opened most of world 9). Even the occasional ‘Just Dance 4’ was enjoyable. I had fun hacking it and moving to hard disk based backups, some emulations that enabled me to play some old gems like Airplane game (River Raid), Tank Game (Battle City) etc.
Wii U – Not for Mii
When Wii U came along, I thought it was going to be more of Wii – I genenuienly wanted to buy it but kept postponing it to the point where it was barely selling anymore. It was such a failure that I decided to wait for the next product knowing very well that I would be missing some of the best games. I tried an emulation software called cemu but it was not a happy story inspite of all the efforts
Along came the ‘Switch’
When Nintendo launched ‘Switch’ I had a feeling that it was probably not for me. I was never a fan of handheld gaming and never took a fancy to PSP or 3DS. However slowly I realized that it was getting some awesome games and all the brilliant games of Wii U are finding their home here. One of the best implementations of Zelda ever – “Breath of the Wild” was available on it – reason enough to buy it. But as usual I took my time (similar to Wii – an year). Then ‘fusee gelee’ also happened and I had to rush to get a unit before Nintendo started patching their units – a real boon – a hardware unfixable hack for homebrew. So I booked a ‘Switch’ from US and as usual it was shipping in about a month and costing upwards of 33k. Thankfully I found a local vendor in Amazon India who was selling the same for 27k. Unlike Wii, switch was ready for 220V right out of the box. So I cancelled the US order and booked one with this ‘Mobhystore’ prime shipped. Got it in a couple of days.
New Zelda fan
My daughter was always a decent gamer – starting when she was 4 with Dora on Wii and playing super mario bros with our energy. However the true gamer in her came out with Zelda. She too like us has spent 100+ hours exploring the hyrule terrain, fighting off moblins and lizafols with much greater ease, roaming every nook and corner of hyrule castle, finding all memories, cooking differrent meals each time. Our oldest zelda fan, Kanni, finished the game after the usual scoldings from family members for staring at the screen all day – he must have clocked 200+ hours. I am behind them, more because of the recent happenings than anything to do with interest. In fact I intend to finish all the 120 shrines 🙂
Handheld mode
It surprised me when I understood that I will probably end up playing Zelda in handheld mode most of the time. It feels natural and immersive – not to mention the added advantage of avoiding prying eyes looking for solutions to difficult shrines 🙂 But the comradire is there between the 3 gamers – we do exchange the odd tip – lend a helping hand when someone is overly stuck etc. We also had a blast with Mario Kart 8, but it seems like a long time ago as all of us are now deep in Zelda. I am eagerly waiting to buy ‘Mario odyssey’, Resident evil reveations, overcooked, Rayman legends to name a few. I am also sincerely hoping for the port of ‘New Super Mario bros Wii U’. All in all Switch is one brilliant system and worth every rupee spent on it.
