Much, MUCH more than Wii Sports.

Man, if there was one game that I had the most fun with during the Wii U Experience Event, it definitely had to be Nintendo Land. And that was surprising; I deliberately played Nintendo Land last because of my lack of interest in it. But my oh my did I have fun with that thing.

For those who don't know, Nintendo Land is a set of twelve Nintendo-themed "attractions" (effectively minigames), each with a unique way of showing off what the Wii U can do. Of the twelve, I only played Mario Chase and Pikmin Adventure, both of which were just announced a few weeks ago at the Wii U NYC event just a few weeks ago.

I played Mario Chase first. Though my first match (seen in the video below) lasted for something like 20 seconds, the second match was when things really kicked off. My brother was on the GamePad playing as Mario, and I along with three other people were playing as Toads trying to attack Mario, hence the name Mario Chase. What I noticed during this session was how much I actually screen cheat during normal splitscreen multiplayer on other consoles; I desperately missed having to look down at someone else’s view to figure out where exactly he or she was. That, to me, was when the idea of asymmetric gameplay clicked, and I could see now why Nintendo has been trying to push this idea to us gamers.

Most of the second match consisted of me and the three other players yelling at each other trying to figure out where the hell Mario was running. I had a feeling we were the loudest people at the event, with all that screaming and yelling of “BLUE, RED, BACK TO BLUE, UP, TOWARD THE CENTER, NOW TO RED.” Mario Chase is amazing fun; don’t dismiss it as some silly minigame.

One more thing about Mario Chase: playing with the Wiimote sucks. The d-pad only allows for 8-directional movement, meaning that you don’t really have full control over your Toad. So Nintendo, make a Wiimote with an analog stick, please! (Or just add Pro Controller support, either way works fine…)

Pikmin Adventure was next. This game was less exciting than Mario Chase, but mostly because the rep was distracted for most of our playthrough. I couldn’t blame her, either. The event was almost ending, and the even coordinators were spewing out trivia questions at us, which caused me to turn into poop (literally), to which the rep suddenly turned around and told us “come on guys, you both are poop!”

But anyways, the game itself can be pretty fun if you play with the right people. I was playing on the GamePad as Olimar controlling several Pikmin, while my brother was playing with a Wiimote as a Mii dressed up as a giant Pikmin (which, by the way, is something I'd TOTALLY wear to parties.) It’s really a cooperative multiplayer game (as opposed to competitive multiplayer in Mario Chase), so I honestly didn’t have as much fun with this game as I did with Chase. It also didn’t help that the rep forgot to tell us how to play, leading to a ton of poop-transforming and Pikmin-dying. Still, it was pretty fun, and we left the event with mustache chocolate pops.

And they looked like poop.

DIE! DIE! DIE!

Nintendo Land launches with the Wii U worldwide and comes bundled with the deluxe Wii U package in the Americas as well as select packages in Europe.

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