Monday, February 06, 2012

The Wii had two "real" hardcore games



The Wii is in most likely in it's final year now, and the question begs to be answered on how will the "little console that could" be remembered?  No doubt motion control and waggle come to mind, but what about experiences that couldn't be had on other consoles? The term "hardcore" is now placed on just about any Mature rated game these days without much of a second thought. Times have changed a lot in the last six years in gaming and that term means a lot more to me now than ever before. Why? Games like Modern Warfare, Gears of War and Halo that are considered "hardcore" are really turning into casual games that everyone seems to play now and not much else.

These factors have forced me to re-evaluate what a hardcore game is and what a hardcore gamer is. The Wii had two shining examples of a hardcore game that not very many people knew about but in the end many ended up playing based on word of mouth. The first was No More Heroes in 2007 which was the most wacky and out place game you would ever lay your hands on and yet the charm, craziness and gameplay were very addicting and it turned out to be one of the most unique games I've ever played. The game is so much on the "inside" and obscure that people didn't even know or understand that many of the elements of No More Heroes was the basis for the movie: Scott Pilgrim vs The World (which explains the low box office numbers). For true hardcore Wii fans that played No More Heroes and understood it, that movie was an amazing experience for them.


Then in 2009 the Wii had MadWorld, which also became a word of mouth "have you seen this game?" type of affair that was only on the Wii. A friend of mine who is a PC/Wii gamer was hell bent on proving just how deeply hardcore the Wii could actually be, did something really amazing with MadWorld. A friend of his lived right next to one of the freeways in San Diego and behind his apartment building there was a huge cement wall that you could easily see from the freeway and walking down the street. My friend had this screen projector and.....you can guess what he did next. They would hook up the Wii to this projector and display MadWorld in all it's gory glory, ripping enemies to shreds so all on-lookers could see that the Wii was not just for playing bowling and tennis. People were actually amazed and couldn't believe that he was playing this game on the Wii. This example is what a true hardcore gamer is in my mind. Amazing.

Just because a game has blood, violence, guns and late teens to adults play it, doesn't mean it's really a hardcore game. It's really what the person will do with the game and what actions they take to make a game get known all by themselves is what makes the game hardcore and thus makes the gamer hardcore. True hard core gamers really appreciated No More Heroes and MadWorld because they actually added something new and different while giving them some of the most violent and gory gameplay ever in video games. To top it all off both games were also not First Person Shooters.

Based on basically word of mouth:

No More Heroes has sold 500,000
MadWorld sold nearly 700,000

The Wii had it's share of developers that were just cashing in for a quick buck, but there were those few that made a game for the Wii that was their game and they gave us an opportunity to share in their imagination with them.

In my opinion No More Heroes and MadWorld were the only two "real" hardcore games of this console generation. 

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

In my opinion, you are a dumb retard.

Donkey Kong Country is one among a good amount of Wii hardcore titles, your definition of hardcore is horse bollocks.

Metaldave said...

Hahaha, thanks for sharing.

The title of my post is "real" hardcore, like "deeply" "truly" etc. This is a difficult subject to discuss since it's subjective to the player playing the game.

The Wii has had plenty of "core" titles and DKCR is definitively one of them to go along with Resident Evil 4, Super Mario Galaxy 1&2 and Metroid Prime 3 to name a few.

This wasn't my point of the article though. The point was how the two games I mentioned developed their own fanfare with almost no advertising or money supported by the developer. This is why I said "real" with quotes, we all know they are real games but the quotes mean something deeper.

Read my explanation again about the experiences with each game and how that also plays into my reason for posting it.

Anonymous said...

MADWORLD WAS TOTAL DOG SHIT ITS BLACK AND WHITE GRAPHICS WERE NOT A ARTISTIC DIRECTION THERE WERE A EXCUSE FOR A TINY DEVELOPMENT EXPENSE..............

the game was short over hyped and frankly a load of crap i had it for my birthday few years back hardcore does not mean blood /violence/sex/18 certificate and nor does HD

mario galaXY 1/2 WERE CORE GAMES AS WAS SUPER MARIO Wii METROID DONKY KONG COD EVEN

the whole idea of hardcore keeps changiong as its now a defending word for sony fans and ms fans to use to justify there DUMB ASS PURCHASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

in this day and age hardcore = a word that ps fans hide behind when infact ps1/2 were both successful on a casual level

Anonymous said...

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/334692/xbox-720-pre-owned-games-block-would-be-fantastic-says-dev/

xbox 720 is a industry console lol @ the industry trying to fool us

Travis Hendricks said...

I would definitely put these two games in the viral hardcore games on the Wii. And both of them were great, I bought each of them.

themightyme said...

no more heroes 2
muramasa: the demon blade
sin and punishment 2
red steel 2
metroid prime 3
metroid: other m
xenoblade chronicles
the last story
pandora's tower

allot more than 2