This is an updated version of the forum post.

The House of the Dead Overkill, MadWorld, No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle, and The Conduit will go a long way in determining how third parties will treat the Wii for the rest of its lifespan. If they manage to sell well, we’ll get more games like them. If they don’t, we’ll get more minigame compilations. That’s how it’s going to be.

So, the first two coming out are Overkill and MadWorld. How do you think they’ll sell? I’ve seen GameStop ads on TV pushing them both, and I’ve seen ads for both in this month’s GameInformer. So that’s good news.

I think Overkill will easily push one million in sales. Possibly two or three. The House of the Dead 2 and 3 return sold over 900,000 copies, and that was a compilation with zero advertising. Overkill is being advertised and it’s an original game. So no worries there.

But MadWorld? That’s a different beast entirely. No More Heroes sold 400,000. Not outstanding, but enough to make a profit and warrant a sequel. The Wii’s userbase has increased by a lot since then. MadWorld is a toss up. It’ll either be a runaway hit or a massive flop. We have to hope that games like No More Heroes attracted enough interest from the type of gamer who would be interested in MadWorld. I keep mentioning NMH because it’s the most similar to MadWorld (excessively violent, unique artstyle). MadWorld’s artstyle may attract lots of people, and it may put a lot of people off. I have a feeling MadWorld will be boosted by great reviews.

And hopefully IGN does another “buy this game” campaign like they did for Zack and Wiki. I’ve contacted the editor at GoNintendo, and he actually responded. He said he’d do his part to help draw attention to this issue.

Wii fans need these games to sell well. And we need The Conduit and No More Heroes 2 to sell well. So if you’re sick of shitty Wii games, but The House of the Dead Overkill. Buy MadWorld, The Conduit, and No More Heroes Desperate Struggle when they come out.

Don’t just buy these games because they’re original, innovative, and aimed at an older audience. Buy them because, by all accounts, they’re great. Or, if they haven’t been released yet, because they appear to be great so far.

It’s times like this that I feel like I was born about a decade an a half too late. Everything awesome happened in the 1970s and 1980s, and I grew up in the bullshit 1990s and 2000s. The 1970s and 1980s got Lynyrd Skynyrd, Galaga, Ronald Reagan, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I got stuck with fucking Cold Play and Bill Clinton. Fuck off.

But anyway, arcade games are far superior to console games. Why, do you ask? It’s simple. When a developer or publisher makes a console game, their intention is to get you to buy it. That’s it. Maybe they want to milk a sequel, but usually they’re content with your sixty dollars. They don’t give a shit if you enjoy yourself when you’re playing the game because you’ve already bought it.

But in the arcades, the developer had to give you a reason to keep sticking quarters into that motherfucker. Everything about an arcade cabinet says, “Hey, check this shit out”. You’ve got a difficulty curve that increases at a reasonable rate, you’ve got gameplay that gets better as you go, and you don’t have to fuck around with any bullshit stories or tutorials. You put in your quarter and blast some fucking aliens. Arcade games didn’t have to make sense. Did you ever wonder why the little guy piloting the ship in Asteroids is in a fucking asteroid belt? Fuck no you didn’t, because you were too busy blasting fucking Asteroids.

The sound effects, the graphics, the gameplay, and the music were all designed to keep you playing. If a game failed to keep you interested, then it failed to make the arcade operator money and he then stopped ordering new cabinets of that game. It’s pretty simple.

There’s nothing more satisfying than multiplayer gaming in an arcade setting. You get to beat your friend head-to-head. You get to play his turn while he runs to the bathroom. You get to beat his high score, and point out your initials every time someone walks by the cabinet. See that, motherfucker? High score in Donkey Kong. Eat shit.

Speaking of which, Donkey Kong. Motherfucking Donkey Kong. Jump over a fireball, smash a barrel with a hammer, fuck up some rivets, drop Donkey Kong on his head and save your girlfriend. How did a monkey get a hold of your girlfriend, climb to the top of a construction site, and throw barrels down a conveniently shaped set of I-beams while fireballs aid him in killing you? Shut the fuck up, that’s how.

Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Galaga, Centipede, Berzerk, Robotron 2084, Dig Dug, and Joust. Legendary names in the realm of gaming. Remember the Frogger episode of Seinfeld? Fuck yeah, you do.

One great thing about the arcade was that the controls were all specifically designed for a single game, rather than games being designed for controllers like you’ll see with consoles. If the game you were playing called for a track-ball, that’s what you got. You didn’t have to try to make due with some bullshit Xbox 360 directional pad. If you were playing a light gun shooter, you walked up to the cabinet and started shooting shit.

And arcade greatness, while best in the 1980s, has lived on through the 1990s and 2000s. Many of the greatest games on modern and recent consoles got their starts in the arcade, and their arcade style is what makes them so great. Crazy Taxi, Virtua Fighter, Radiant Silvergun, Time Crisis, Tekken, and Street Fighter. Think about it. You’re at Cici’s Pizza, you’ve just ingested some terrible combination of carbonated beverages that weren’t supposed to be mixed together, you sort of have to pee, and Time Crisis II beckons. It’s fucking go time.

It really sucks that arcades have died out for the most part in America. They’re still big in Japan, which is why we still see great arcade games making their way to modern consoles, but they’re mostly a thing of the past here. It’s sad, but we’ll always have our fond memories of juggling 44oz beverages with epic arcade games.