As previously stated, the Nintendo Wii is just about two years old now, well enough into its life cycle to no longer forgive developers for unfamiliar hardware restrictions and lazy ports (yes, I'm looking at you, Harmonix and Rock Band). Most people still look at the Wii as home of the goofy mini-game collection despite its having also hosted some truly unique and wonderful unloved gems like EA's Boom Blox, Ubisoft's No More Heroes, Capcom's Zack & Wiki and THQ's de Blob. There is one major game publisher, though, who seems hard-pressed to make the Wii completely awesome with a wide range of aggressive titles, and that publisher is (believe it or not) Sega. That's right, longtime Nintendo rival Sega. Kinda makes you wonder why the Dreamcast flopped...
Yeah, it seems like the kids over at Sega have really taken a shine to their former direct competitor this generation. The system launched with another entry in the ever-popular Super Monkey Ball franchise, soon followed by the Wii-exclusive Sonic & the Secret Rings (which garnered much more of a positive reaction than the current-gen Sonic The Hedgehog on XBox 360 Playstation 3). Then, of course, came the history-making Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games and the long-anticipated Saturn sequel NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams and a follow-up to the Dreamcast's Samba de Amigo (not to mention multi-platform titles like Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and Sega Superstar Tennis and well-received hardcore niche titles like Ghost Squad and Bleach). What do those games have in common that No More Heroes and Zack & Wiki didn't? Oh, that's right, you might have actually heard of them! That's because Sega actually markets their games aggressively with that marvelous innovation called advertising.
And Sega ain't stopping there. In addition to the multiplatform Sonic Unleashed, they're also bringing Wii exclusives MadWorld, House of the Dead: Overkill, Sonic and the Black Knight (a sequel to the aforementioned Secret Rings) and the just-announced newly-aquired much-hyped The Conduit. These are decidedly "hardcore" games, two of which involve over-the-top violence and gore, one is billed as a revolution in first-person-shooter controls and graphics on Wii (see screenshot to the left, yes, those are in-game graphics on the Wii), and the other gives Sonic the Hedgehog a frickin' sword. These are games that fans, analysts, and Sega reps continue to insist people want – nay, crave – and based on the number of ads I've seen in the past year for NiGHTS, Mario & Sonic and Samba de Amigo, they will be marketed well. People will know that these games exist, that these games are awesome, and that these games are available for a Wii near you, which is more than can be said about my poor pirate buddies Zack and Wiki.
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