Nintendo consoles are for kids aren’t they? One step up from those LeapFrog toys you buy for toddlers. Forget adult themes or violent games: Nintendo won’t even let publishers release them, leaving the way clear for a sappy cartoon plumber and his sappy cartoon mates to appear in sappy games that appeal to kids and, well, saps.

Okay, so us Wii owners know this simply isn’t true any more. Wii already has one gritty first-person shooter in the form of Red Steel, the ultra-gory Manhunt 2 is on the way later this year, and rumour has it that Nintendo is even lobbying hard to persuade Rockstar to bring Grand Theft Auto to Wii. The bad old days of The Big N playing prim nanny to its gamers are long gone.

It has to be said though, you can understand why these old stereotypes are lingering on.
Check this list of current or upcoming Wii games. Cars, Happy Feet, Ice Age 2, Open Season, SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature From The Krusty Krab, Barnyard, The Grim Adventures Of Billy & Mandy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Disney’s Meet The Robinsons, Chicken Little.

Jesus.

These aren’t Wii-exclusive titles, of course. Movie tie-ins come out on every gaming platform known to man, so other gamers are suffering too. But seeing as the grittier Wii games are more few and far between, the casual browser in Woolworths could be forgiven for thinking Wii is just another kiddy Nintendo console.

I’ve got the solution though. Ban The Kids. Slap an 18+ rating on the console, and boot out any game that’s clearly designed to appeal to underage gamers. And take steps to adultify those games on the borderline - the ones whose cartoon charms might tempt children back.

Give Mario an Uzi and have Yoshi disembowelled by the Yakuza in an early cut-scene. Put pit-bulls in Nintendogs when it comes out on Wii. Include hotel-room roasting mini-games in Mario: Strikers Charged. And tweak the Mii Parade so it’s a bloodthirsty brawl with nunchaku and lots of swearing.

I realise this could be seen in some quarters as a knee-jerk reaction, and the other downside is that all the measures detailed in the paragraph above would probably attract 14-year-old boys like spotty moths to a flame. But if Nintendo wants to get the message across that Wii isn’t a toy, it’s the only way forward.

You know it makes sense.

(EDIT - Thanks to Go Nintendo for linking to this post, and taking it in the spirit it was intended (”entertaining”). For those of you getting all uppitty, I’m getting a graphic made up saying ‘BRITISH IRONY - Don’t Take It Seriously!’ for future posts like this, to avoid confusion. The serious point is that there are still way too many Disneyfied games clogging up Wii’s release schedule. And no, that’s not a photo of me.)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 7:07 pm by Stuart Dredge
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