WiiWare: How Is It Looking?

By Liam O'Connor

We take a look at Nintendo's WiiWare service.

During the 1980s, a large part of the video game industry was actually fuelled by the efforts of geeky teenagers that loved mathematics and technology and sat in their rooms coding video games for such machines as the Commodore 64 and the ZX Spectrum. This was the rock and roll period of video games, where creativity was oozing from every corner and games had such wonderful titles as Nodes of Yesod and Quazartron.

And then, tragically, video games became a hot commodity, and creativity and independence was sucked from the industry. Far from being able to be made by a high school kid in his spare time, titles needed teams of hundreds of people and budgets that ran into the millions.

With so much on the line, the higher ups that ran video game publishers only saw one choice: the safest bet. And so the industry became drowned in a torrent of first-person shooter wannabes and sequels to games that sold well. Recycle, reuse, regurgitate. Is anyone really surprised that Bioshock 2 is on its way? It seems that the days of the independent developer are dead.

Or are they? Indeed, while big budget developers might be proclaiming the PC scene to be dead, the PC has proven that small independent titles such as Fashion Star can flourish thanks to digital distribution.

With digital distribution, the costs can be kept to a minimum. There is no need to press discs, print manuals, and ship them in fancy boxes. There are no brick-and-mortar stores that need to take a cut of the profits. These games can be instantly delivered to an audience that can download them on a whim without even needing to leave the house and, most importantly, this means that the risks are fewer and creativity is encouraged.

It’s no surprise then that video game consoles have taken to providing a form of digital distribution. Indeed, for a while now both Xbox Live and the PLAYSTATION Network have provided gamers with fresh, original titles like Everyday Shooter and Space Giraffe, titles that would never see the light of day if digital distribution didn’t exist. And now Nintendo is getting ready to join the digital distribution party with their WiiWare service.

Nintendo has offered digitally distributed content for a while now thanks to its Virtual Console service, but these titles have been rehashed and reheated offerings from yesteryear. Sure, most of them still hold up well today, but they are neither new nor original. Fortunately, Nintendo are now also offering to be the bastion of digitally distributed original content.

It promises lower margins and fewer hoops to jump through than its competitors and it has an attractive installed user-base of over 22 million to tempt developers with. The service offers the same user-friendly interface as the Virtual Console and continues to charge gamers in Wii Points. In terms of infrastructure, there looks like there is little that could go wrong. The question is how are the games shaping up?

Unfortunately, Nintendo seems to once again be neglecting the PAL market, with only five WiiWare titles confirmed for Kiwi gamers and very little of them likely to appear any time soon, despite the fact a system message from Nintendo recently appeared on Kiwi Wiis informing of the launch of the service in May. Additionally, little is known about the five titles: Bruiser and Scratch in the Case of the Puzzling Paw, Eternity's Child, Plättchen Twist 'n' Paint, Pop, and Dr. Mario & Bacteria Extermination.

Plättchen claims to be a puzzle shooter that will take specific use of the Nintendo Wii’s motion controls. It also claims to use the Donkey Konga bongos and support 12 players simultaneously.

Dr. Mario & Bacteria Extermination is essentially an updated version of Dr. Mario that allows for Mii support. It might not be the epitome of originality, but it should provide a wonderfully addictive experience.

The only other title we know anything about is Luc Bernard’s Eternity’s Child. Featuring beautifully hand-drawn graphics, this “interactive fairytale” features a world where winged angels were murdered by other creatures jealous of their ability to survive a flood due to the currently topical melting of polar icecaps. After the massacre, the remaining inhabitants built robots to make the world seem less barren, but unfortunately these robots went bad – as it seems robots do.

Players will take control of Angel, an orphan who has had his wings removed in order to prevent his execution. Angel’s goal is to leave the orphanage and find others of his kind and hopefully be accepted despite being wingless.

Eternity’s Child promises a fresh, original, and dark platforming experience that will be a refreshing breath of air in this saturated industry. It is scheduled for release on the WiiWare service sometime this winter.

Unfortunately, that’s all we know about the WiiWare service at the moment. Bruiser and Scratch and Pop both remain enigmas and details on upcoming games is scarce. Hopefully more titles will be confirmed in the future and the service will provide Wii owners with a convenient way to obtain fresh, original titles to compliment those big blockbuster titles. Keep it locked to NZGamer to read more about the WiiWare service as we learn it.

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