In the long long ago of 2007, a time amidst shitty new consoles there was one smart buy left for me. And so was the Gamecube purchased, alongside its finest efforts, some excellent games overall and 2 of the best games ever made. While it's no Vagrant Story on a whim or Valkyrie Profile 2 and Final Fantasy XII on the same day this was perhaps my third best video game related purchase of all time. So what would it take for the Wii U to accomplish such a feat? Let's look back and see what made the first purchase good in these considerations.
Once upon a time I was dumb and I liked Resident Evil 2, what can you do. It's still an "okay" game in retrospect but man those controls were atrocious. Really the main redeeming thing about the series is the comedy from the awful story; so what better way to capitalize on that than to make one of the most fun games period and basically treat it like a B movie. RE4 is an awesome, awesome game and one of the few "infinite replay value" games in existence; the game just never stops being fun. So what could come out on the Wii U to be as good as this? Probably nothing realistically, but hey get some solid third party support from struggling companies and maybe you'll find something similar.
Ah Metroid Prime, what a gorgeous, wonderful game. Likely the best presentation ever alongside fun, almost totally unique combat systems and a genuinely interesting, if entirely predictable, storyline. People say Mass Effect was a good series and Metroid Prime just totally annihilates it, as far as Sci Fi series go this is the pristine peak. Super Metroid is a little better, sure, but that doesn't stop Metroid Prime from also being in the top 5 games ever. So yeah, don't make a shitty fucking Metroid game and there you go Nintendo.
Retro is making good/excellent DKC games but while DKC is a fine series it's still not even close to Metroid, likely the best franchise in existence. You don't have to make a game as good as Prime or Super to have an extremely good game in this day and age; just make something that's pretty good relative to those and you're probably set. It could be an old school platformer, a first person shooter, or hell even an FTL with Velocity-esque platforming sections. Just get us out there murdering those poor, defenseless space pirates one way or another.
Metroid Prime 2 is also quite a good game and supplements the main issue I have with the first in that there's a ton of boss fights and the vast majority of them are quite good. Obviously the last last boss (the first last boss was awesome) is not great but aside from that the game was superb; even with the ubiquitous light/dark mechanics of the time.
Paper Mario has always been awesome, in concept and execution; and this game is no exception. With each dungeon you have a completely different exploration mechanic and the combat is easy to get into but somewhat difficult to master, with an extremely addictive leveling system. It's a good traditional RPG and those are precious few these days. What I want on the Wii U is mainly just a shitload of Xenoblade type games; one of those you can get out of the way quite easily by simply rereleasing Xenoblade on it and after that just make 2-3 more over the course of the system's lifetime. Square has some of the best talent out there as well so why not get them to make a non Final Fantasy game again, because basically all of those are amazing, including but not limited to: Vagrant Story, Chrono Trigger, Valkyrie Profile 2, Dragon Quest VIII, and Chrono Cross. Look, Final Fantasy is good and all but what really made Square impressive was the B team stuff that often exceeded the main product.
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4. The Price
50 bucks, that's how much the Gamecube was in 2007. Now you can get one for like 35. Every so often there's a forum thread about whether they should buy Metroid Prime; and the answer will always be: it's cheaper to buy Metroid Prime and a Gamecube than it is to buy a new console game. Maybe 50 bucks is a pipedream in the immediate future (though likely not at the end of this console cycle); but just have a really nice Black Friday sale and maybe I'll even get one before the end. Right now the Wii U has a lot more good games on it than the other new consoles, but that will ultimately change at least in terms of volume (though perhaps not by that much at this rate); but it just doesn't feel like an upgrade over older systems. However I have more faith that Nintendo will put out an RE4/Metroid Prime caliber game (of which the last console generation was sorely absent, apologies to Dark Souls II and the Last of Us which barely miss the cut) than the other companies so I wouldn't be too displeased in buying one early. So, what price? I'm going to say 150 bucks, but I might spontaneously have a PS4 from an oft trucking brother of mine for at least a few months and that would drive the acceptable price range up to 200 bucks.
5. Uh... Zelda?
Full disclosure: while I own both Windwaker and Twilight Princess I've never actually beaten either of them. The reason is simple: A Link to the Past is better at doing the same exact thing. But random spatterings of Zelda in games such as Hyrule Warriors and Bayonetta 2 will have to suffice. Really I just want a lot of good third party games, I mean if Zelda or Mario were miraculously amazing then sure I'd go for those but chances are they'll just be the same as always (3D World giving a somewhat different spin). What I ultimately want from a console is 10 great games, doesn't matter what genre they are though in the case of racing or rhythm games they'd have to be particularly good.
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