The Wii U is coming. 65 days now. It’s time to take the Wii out back and…you know.

But, before we trade the old fellow in, let’s take a moment to remember the joy it brought us. Mr. Totilo, take us home:

The Wii is, nevertheless, the console that ran some of my favorite games, including excellent versions of Mario, Zelda andMetroid. Its weird games were among the best oddball titles any gaming console has had. And it remains an innovator whose imitators have yet to improve upon it.

Expanding the audience…

The Wii was the first video game console that anyone plugged into my parent’s TV since the Odyssey 2, the console my brother and I played in the Totilo household in the early 80s. We would plug an NES and then a SNES in a different room, where my my brother and I kept our toys. When we left the nest, so did game consoles. But in late 2006 the Wii was something my parents had to see. My father liked the bowling. We dabbled with tennis. I eventually bought my parents a Wii, their first—and probably last—game console. My dad liked it for Netflix.

A failure or two…

Motion control was supposed to be better than the Wii allowed it to be. Even the 2009 Wii controller upgrade Motion Plus offered less than the 1:1 association between character and a player’s hand movements that early Wii trailers implied we’d get…

Totilo’s essay is not meant to be read in snippets. It’s a read that’s simultaneously personal and personally divorced. His view on the seven best games on the system will be challenged by many. And the Wii’s legacy is as of yet determined. Still, a worthy read.

Totilo, Stephen. “Farewell to the Wii, A Great Gaming System After All” (Kotaku: September 11, 2012) <http://kotaku.com/5942101/farewell-to-the-wii-a-great-gaming-system-after-all>.