Wii LAN

Ever since Nintendo announced the Wii, or as it was at the time called, The Revolution, people have been talking about Nintendo's plans for the online multiplayer. For the first time, Nintendo would be putting a good amount of focus on online play for one of their consoles. Since then the DS and Wii have been great successes and the WiFi connection is going strong on DS, so people are looking to finally have something to compare to Xbox Live.

Unfortunately I think some people have forgotten what came before Xbox Live. When the Xbox first launched it's big title was obviously Halo: Combat Evolved. It was an extremely well made first person shooter that has a great single player mode, but an even better multiplayer mode. This was partially due to game play but a big draw was surely the LAN mode.

For those unaware, LAN means Local Area Network. This meant that you could link up to four consoles together to play in massive multiplayer free fro alls. People used to lug around huge machines, televisions, and cables just to play at big LAN parties. Having personally attended quite a few, I can tell you that these parties can be a lot of fun and have an entirely unique dynamic to them.

LAN has a lot going for it. It's true that they require a fair bit of work hauling stuff around, but it's worth is to be in a room with a bunch of friends, fragging away for hours. Of course they originate with PC's, but I won't go into tat here. And unfortunately, it seems that LAN parties are dying off, for consoles anyway. This is largely due to the advent of online play. And this is truly a shame, especially as they are more capable of providing this unique experience than ever before. Or at least one of them is, it seems.

This is where the Wii comes in. When I first heard about it I thought to myself, this would be a great system for LAN because of three major things.

1. Size - Where as the Xbox and PC's are huge, heavy, and space consuming, the Wii is downright minuscule. One of the first things we knew about the console was it was about the size of three DVD cases. We also know now that the controller is quite small as well. This lends itself well to LAN because it makes all the transportation easier.

2. Wireless - The Xbox required you to connect multiple cables to different consoles and in some cases have them all connected to a router. This was not only confusing for many people, what with different kinds of cables, but also could be potentially more costly than some could afford. Not to mention having all those consoles connected by cables was dangerous, as people were liable to trip over cords. The Wii fixes this with wireless connectivity, not only for controllers but for Ethernet too. It also goes back to the old idea that it would be easier to transport.

3. Standard Definition - This is not as big a point, because the original Xbox was like this, but the fact that the Wii is not made to be based around High Def makes it a lot more appealing when trying to find four televisions than the other next generation consoles. true, you could have some high def televisions and some not, but that leads to fights, which, while funny, are not really conducive to a LAN party's environment.

So with this in mind I implore Nintendo and third parties to start developing new Wii games with LAN built in. How awesome would it be to play the next Red Steel or Call of Duty LAN style on the Wii. Online play is already on the way, but it seems Nintendo is almost skipping a step here. I am in no way asking them to do this instead of online play, but definitely as an option in future games. There really is no excuse.

P.S. There were some first party games on Gamecube with LAN as well, so it's not like it's something they are new to them. Heck, they have had this in the DS since launch with single pack play so they could even do that possibly. But I'm no specialist, so I'll leave it at that.