Nintendo Land

This is where you can deliberate anything relating to videogames - past, present and future
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JaySevenZero
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Nintendo Land

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Nintendo Land for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.
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Buskalilly
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Re: 545: Nintendo Land

Post by Buskalilly »

For my money, Nintendoland deserved to be up there with Wii Sports. The way it used the Gamepad to provide unique asynchronous multiplayer sessions right there in one room was wonderfully fun. Mario Chase, with the little face of the player smirking in the corner of the TV, was so simple but endlessly fun. The Luigi's Mansion game provided excellent potential for messing with friends. The Animal Crossing one got my heart genuinely racing. I think Nintendoland's legacy lives on not in Nintendo's Switch multiplayer offerings, but in online games like Dead by Daylight.

Also, it's crazy that this game is now older than F-Zero GX was when it released - and it remains the last F-Zero game.
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Quiet Paul
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Re: 545: Nintendo Land

Post by Quiet Paul »

Considering I mostly just played by myself it was still a fun little hardware demo. Especially the legend of Zelda bow and arrow levels, the Donkey Kong crash course and the Yoshi ‘drawing a path’ level.

It was nice just to break out the Wii U and have another shot after all this time. I can’t often come up with an excuse to plug it in but I had fun with it! Some games like Nintendo Land and Wind Waker HD still look damn good!

Although it’s a relatively older ‘demo’ launch game, it holds its own as a fun but short lived experience. Especially if you’re playing on your own.

It just doesn’t compare to another ‘demo’ launch game I can think of…
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ErikBergman
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Re: 545: Nintendo Land

Post by ErikBergman »

The Luigi's Mansion game from Nintendo Land brought me and my friends a lot of joy shortly after the release of the Wii U, and I was certain that Nintendo had figured out a new, huge innovation in game design.

And today, almost a decade later, it seems as if the idea of assymetrical controls peaked with that little mini game.
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NoMoreSpearows
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Re: 545: Nintendo Land

Post by NoMoreSpearows »

On the one hand, Nintendo Land is a game that is far meatier than one would anticipate, allowing for both quick bursts of fun, longer and more rewarding content, and multiplayer that sells the concept of "this console is a DS with a movable touch screen" in a fairly straightforward fashion.

On the other hand, Game & Wario exists. It aims to accomplish the same goals, albeit with more focus on pick-up-and-play rather than a sprawling journey like Pikmin Adventure or The Legend of Zelda: Battle Quest. There's even a bit of overlap, with both games having arrow-shooting and top-down vehicular navigation. So why is it that Nintendo Land tends to be ignored when my sister and I have an itch to play something on the Wii U? It doesn't allow for nearly as much creativity.

Nintendo Land feels like the amusement park it is: a bunch of fun rides, but if you do anything against the rules you'll pay the consequences. Game & Wario is a bit more loose with its regulations, but in turn some rides are a bit shakier. Both are worth attending, but since they're so close together, neither stands out as much as they should.
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Joey Jo Jo Jr
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Re: 545: Nintendo Land

Post by Joey Jo Jo Jr »

Its a real shame the Wii U flopped and we’re unlikely to see the asymmetrical multiplayer concept taken forward again, as 5 player Mario Chase or Luigis Ghost Mansion after few drinks are some of the best local multiplayer sessions I have ever had, and wish more people would get a chance to try! The addition of a 5th player into local multiplayer also meant less people waiting on the sidelines to get to play.
While the game itself definitely lacks the simplicity of Wii Sports that made that game an easy system seller, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Nintendo Land. Also worth nothing are the little touches, like the camera on the gamepad showing the increasingly stressed video feed of your friends face as you close in on them in Mario Chase, which while not necessary to the gameplay really add to the fun!
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seansthomas
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Re: 545: Nintendo Land

Post by seansthomas »

Nintendoland is a great example of Nintendo at their most ingenious and unique. It also summarises their issue at this time, where they were producing games that were flawed but fascinating.

It doesn't have a ton of games within it that I truly love, but it has a couple of titles I adore.

Mario Chase with 5 players is incredible. I loved the frantic chaos of 4 people desperately trying to hunt down their target whilst the person with the gamepad manages to run rings around them. In one mode and at the first attempt, Nintendo nailed everything great about asymmetric gameplay.

The challenge is, that few other games ever used the potential of the gamepad as well. Affordable Space Adventures was the only game that came close, and arguably bettered anything here.

Despite all the hatred, I maintain that Starfox Zero and Guard did a few things well. ZombiU and Fatal Frame gave tension and meaning to the screen. But there wasn't much else.

Played solo, I also had a... well, blast... with Metroid Blast. I am a sucker for an interesting control scheme and for me, a lot of the Wii U's potential came from how you could use combinations of the nunchuk, Wiimote and gamepad, as seen here. Many games were at their best using interesting combos, such as Pikmin 3 and Wii Sports Club. But that's not an easy thing to communicate to the masses nor a very user friendly set up.

All in all I had a lot of fun with Nintendoland and would probably play it still with the family were it not for needing 4 charged Wiimotes to hand for a lot of the best modes.

Whilst I know many are keen to see a Switch port, though I still fail to see how that could work, it almost seems more apt that it remains a curio on Wii U only. After all, an unportable, creatively rich and slight mess of a title that only this misunderstood, mismarketed and mismanaged machine can run, somehow seems the perfect representation of this volatile but formative period of Nintendo's history.
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Nicktendo
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Re: 545: Nintendo Land

Post by Nicktendo »

Nintendo really hit the ball out of the park with this title. It perfectly demonstrated the capabilities of the hardware and unfortunately there weren't too many games that built upon its framework later in the consoles short lifecycle.
I enjoyed Zelda battle quest and Metroid blast but the absolute highlight was Luigi's ghost mansion.
I can't wait for my kids to be a little older, dusting off the ol' Wii U and playing this excellent party game with them.
TWR: Never Seen Again
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psychohype
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Re: Our next podcast recording (12.11.2022) - 545: Nintendo Land

Post by psychohype »

Nintendo Land is a game I was happy to pick up for under $10 about a year ago. For starters, I haven’t played it much. In fact, I haven’t played any of the mini-games that require multiple players. So I certainly haven’t gotten the full experience. But even from my limited play time, dabbling with the various single-player content, I was mostly disappointed by the game’s lackluster hub world. Even after you’ve gotten to the point where the hub world becomes more populated, it still feels like little more than one of those primitive waiting lobbies from an early online game. For a game called Nintendo Land, I guess my imagination conjured something a little more exciting — something modeled more after an actual amusement park. Obviously, the purpose and focus of Nintendo Land was the themed mini games, some of which do offer a bit of that amusement-park feel. Even so, I can’t help but feel that the lack of a compelling overworld contributed to the game becoming quickly overlooked.
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Tleprie
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Re: Our next podcast recording (12.11.2022) - 545: Nintendo Land

Post by Tleprie »

The Mario Chase, Luigi's mansion, and Animal Crossing games (which we referred to as "getting plump") have gotten so much play throughout the years since the Wii U's release. Nintendo Land is pretty much the sole reason I still have my Wii U. One of the best all time local multiplayer games in my collection.
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