I Miss When Nintendo Games Took Over the Living Room

I love my Nintendo Switch.

I play it all the time. I love being able to curl up somewhere and play a cozy game by myself, take it with me, or dock it to the TV when I want the bigger screen.

But lately I’ve been thinking about something I miss from the Wii and Wii U days.

Nintendo games used to take over the whole living room.

Not just the television. The living room.

Someone was standing on a Balance Board. Someone else was waving a Wii Remote around. The Wii U GamePad was doing something completely different from what everyone else could see on the television.

Half the time, watching someone else play was as entertaining as actually playing.

It was chaotic.

It was occasionally ridiculous.

And I miss it.

Eva and I played parts of Yoshi’s Woolly World together, and this is one of those Wii U games I desperately want Nintendo to bring back.

First of all, the entire game looks like someone raided a craft room and turned it into a Nintendo game.

Everything is yarn, fabric, buttons and little knitted details.

If we’d been using the term “cozy gaming” the way we use it now, Yoshi’s Woolly World would have fit right in.

But wanting it on a modern Nintendo system isn’t only about the game.

I’d like to be able to play it with Eva again.

That’s something I’ve realized as Nintendo has started bringing more of its older games to Switch and Switch 2.

Sometimes I want an old game because I remember the game.

Sometimes I want it because I remember who I played it with.

When I think about our Wii U, one of the first games I remember is Nintendo Land.

More specifically, I remember Metroid Blast.

All four of us played it together.

That’s the kind of gaming memory that sticks with me now. I don’t remember every level we played or who won what. I remember the four of us in the living room playing together.

Nintendo Land took advantage of the strangest thing about the Wii U: one person could have the GamePad while everyone else was looking at the television.

At the time, the GamePad sometimes seemed like such an odd piece of hardware.

Looking back, though, that oddness was exactly what made some of those games so much fun.

Everyone wasn’t necessarily seeing the same thing.

Everyone didn’t have exactly the same role.

You had to talk to each other. You yelled things across the room. Someone inevitably accused someone else of doing something wrong.

It was family game night disguised as a video game.

Can we talk about the Nintendo Balance Board?

Because this was a truly ridiculous and wonderful period in video game history.

Nintendo convinced millions of us to put what was essentially a giant plastic scale in front of our televisions and call it entertainment.

And it worked.

We skied on it. We did balance games. We exercised on it. We stood on it while our families watched us fail spectacularly at whatever we were supposed to be doing.

The Balance Board games were a hoot.

They were also a perfect example of what I miss.

You weren’t quietly holding a controller.

You were physically doing something in the middle of the room while everyone else watched, laughed, gave unsolicited advice and waited for their turn.

One of the games I had completely forgotten about until I hooked everything back up was Balance Bubble Plus. You stand on the Balance Board and shift your weight to steer a giant bubble through the course.

Is this an efficient workout?

I have no idea.

Is trying not to crash your tiny Mii inside a bubble considerably more entertaining than doing squats?

Absolutely.

While writing this post, I made the mistake of wondering whether our old Wii U still worked.

It did.

First I hooked up Yoshi’s Woolly World. Then I remembered that the Wii U could still take me back into the old Wii menu. Then I spotted Wii Fit Plus.

At that point there was really no turning back.

I found our old Balance Board, put batteries in it, synced it and was immediately informed that it had been 2,072 days since my last session.

Thank you, Wii Fit. It’s lovely to see you too.

But then something funny happened.

I started playing.

Not just long enough to take a picture for this post. I actually started playing again.

I tried Balance Bubble. I did the Obstacle Course. I stood in my living room shifting my weight around on a giant white plastic board while my Mii tried to avoid being knocked into oblivion.

And it was still fun.

That’s when I realized I’d accidentally proved my own point.

By the end of the evening, I had Wii Remotes on the entertainment center, games pulled off the shelf, the Wii U GamePad plugged in, the Balance Board sitting in the middle of the floor and cords absolutely everywhere.

Nintendo had taken over my living room again.

And yes, I asked whether anyone in my family wanted to play.

Nobody did.

I kept playing. 😂

The Wii and Wii U weren’t perfect consoles.

The Wii U in particular had plenty of problems.

But Nintendo was willing to try some incredibly strange ideas during those years.

Motion controls.

A Balance Board.

A giant controller with its own screen.

Games where one person had information the other players couldn’t see.

Some ideas worked better than others.

Still, there was something fun about Nintendo asking, “What else can a video game be?”

Instead of only making the graphics better or the worlds bigger, Nintendo kept changing how we interacted with the game—and sometimes how we interacted with the other people in the room.