Welcome to Wii U Week

On Friday, the Wii U will be pulled from life support. It will gasp its last breath and expire in a low-rent retirement home in some Las Vegas suburb. Like many washed up celebrities before it, it will have a short obituary in which its name will be misspelled (maybe Wii-Ewe?) and be the subject of nostalgia-infused, melodramatic think pieces from fringe fan sites that will describe its history with the reverence of a martyred saint. Consequently, we happen to be so fringe we barely exist, so we’d like to throw our pining, admiring hats in the mix.

It also happens that Dan and I love the Wii U. Like, no joke, we actually think it’s a great system. While everyone was trashing it, we were looking around confused, screaming in bazaars like demented street prophets about its merits while you all shuffled by, looking at your feet and putting paltry amounts of change in our cups. Retrospectively, it probably wasn’t so great. The touch screen controller went from being heavily utilized in launch titles like Zombie-U, to being, well, just a controller through most of the rest of its life. Game releases slowed from a trickle in 2015, to being almost not existent in 2016. I mean, there was like a new major release once every three months! And it was always a first party! WTF! It almost seemed like Nintendo was content in 2016 to let this thing die (and after announcing the switch, they indeed were). But, despite the lack of Big N support and its other shortcomings, we still love it here at Dodging Barrels.

I mean, come on! You can play this thing while you take a dump! Some of the most interesting game mechanics I’ve ever played were because of that stupid touch screen. Additionally, the system boasted two original Super Mario games and Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze, one of the only platformers I’d pit against the epic RPGs that are usually my bread and butter. Dude! Nintendo games! In HD!

It’s with these merits in mind that we’d like to dedicate a week of posts, streams and lofty opinion pieces to our fair console friend. So, let’s raise a tumbler of whiskey, pack the Wii-U in a small dingy with a few games, accessories and what-not, push it out to sea and light that shit on fire. It’s the least we can do for a system that never had a chance in this world.