In this Source Gaming Roundtable we were asked by our Ultimate Patron, Mr. JBRPG, about our thoughts on console launches, specifically our experience with them and why we think these systems had some of the best launches out there. We all gave a different console launch as our favourtie so give it a read and let us know yours in the comments!
As long time Source Gamers might have guessed, I’ve been around for a few more console launches than most of the staff. While I didn’t actually purchase or obtain the SNES at launch, I still feel like I’m qualified to talk about what it was like to own the system NEAR launch. I owned and was very much a Nintendo Entertainment System sort of kid, so I was beyond excited at owning Nintendo’s new, 16-bit system. Glimpses of franchises that I already loved, like Castlevania or Super Mario, displayed in amazing detail on the pages of Nintendo power was more than enough to convince me that this thing was the future. I was lucky enough to get the system for the holidays in 1991 which wasn’t quite within the launch window as the SNES released in August of that year. Still, it was the first console I received so close to release and it delivered. The early library for the thing in North America was amazing. My initial games for the system were Super Mario World, SimCity, F-Zero, and Castlevania IV, and I consider every one of them a classic. Really, that first year of SNES provided a ton of just great games. I eventually picked up Final Fight, Final Fantasy II (IV), Darius Twin, Ultraman: Towards the Future, Gradius III, and Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts. All 1991 titles. That clunky gray and purple box really came out swinging.
The first system I bought with my own money at launch, though, was the Gameboy Advance. One of the best things about this little machine was the backwards compatibility. Sure, I didn’t own too many titles for it at launch, but I could still play all my old titles. It was a really engaging and cool piece of tech, although the lack of backlighting was a HORRIBLE omission. It seems quaint now, but the version of Tony Hawk 2 that came out with the system was really cool, and although they didn’t have a brand new Mario game Mario Advance was also a delight to play. The real crown jewel, for me atleast, was the first “Metroidvania” style Metroid to release after Symphony of the Night – Castlevania Circle of the Moon. I had no idea that that style of Castlevania would continue, let alone on a handheld. But it did, and it would prove to be a perfect fit. I initially bought my GBA to have something to do during my high school graduation (yeah, yeah, I’m old remember) but it served me well until I bought myself a GBA SP. To this day I consider the GBA to be the best pure handheld Nintendo put out. Sure, the DS and 3DS have some real gems, but there’s just something about the simplicity and sheer portability of the GBA that will always have me put in on top.
As the only European in the team, my experience with system launches differs quite a bit from everyone else, at least in the early days. I think the Nintendo Wii was the first console launch where every region received it roughly at the sam time. Prior to that, us in the PAL sector were always a step behind. Case in point: the Nintendo Gamecube. It launched in the UK on May 3rd 2002, an entire half a year after it’s Japanese and US launch. While the launch line-up is still mostly the same, this did mean that we had a few more options when compared to everyone else. For example, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle and Pac-Man World 2 were both day one launch titles for me, but took a few months for every other regions respective launches. Sega actually carried a lot of the Gamecubes day one launch for me in fact, with Super Monkey Ball and Crazy Taxi also coming out day one. In hindsight, it’s really bizarre that the Gamecube didn’t launch with a mainline Mario game but did launch with a mainline Sonic game. That must’ve felt like blasphemy back in the day!
That being said, if we look beyond day one and look at the laucnh window for the Nintendo Gamecube then that’s where Nintendo really shone and elevated the system to have one of the best first party launches of any system. Yes, there was no mainline Mario game but we did get Luigi’s Mansion on day one. There was also Wave Race: Blue Storm for fans of that series. Then it wasn’t too long a wait until Pikmin landed on our laps, as well as Doshin the Giant. Outside of Nintendo we also had Resident Evil and SSX Tricky, which were both fantastic games. However, there was one game that stole the show, a game that shaped my gaming habits and almost certainly that of you reading this: Super Smash Bros. Melee. Launching with a Super Smash Bros. title is a great way to sell systems and Melee was such a humongus jump from the original 64 game that it blew fans away. I was still playing Melee long into the Gamecube’s twilight (princess) years and it alone justfied getting a Gamecube at launch for me.
So I’m a lifelong Nintendo fan, one who has happily stuck with them through thick and thin. Most of my friends became somewhat disillusioned with the company during the GameCube years—we were in middle school then, for reference, and this was when “mature” titles like Halo and Grand Theft Auto were at their peak—but I was excited for their newest system: the Nintendo DS. It had two screens, the bottom of which was also a touch screen, and I was eager to see software take advantage of these innovations (admittedly, I wasn’t enthusiastic over the microphone; I have asthma).
On launch day, I raced to my local Toys “R” Us and got in line. I happily bought a platinum DS and a copy of Super Mario 64 DS. Since Super Mario 64 was my favorite game for years, getting to play a version with three new characters on the go was fun! Some of my friends had the game, too, and while 64 DS‘s multiplayer mode wasn’t exactly deep, it was still entertaining enough to mess around with. Aside from maybe WarioWare: Touched!, which hit a month later, the platform’s release schedule sadly didn’t really have anything interesting… for a year or so.
Then, gradually, it built up a strong library, one I hold in high esteem. Donkey Kong, my favorite ongoing franchise, didn’t exactly shine on the platform, but I still spent a lot of time with its DS offerings. Actually, that was a recurring theme for me with Nintendo’s major DS releases outside Pokémon; New Super Mario Bros., Mario Kart DS, and Metroid Prime Hunters mostly let me down, even if I spent hours playing them. But plenty of other studios stepped in, helping broaden my horizons. The Ace Attorney series and Cing’s work, for the standout examples, helped show me how great narrative-driven games could be, with Hotel Dusk: Room 215 remaining my all-time favorite game. The DS also had my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! game at the time, and the Sonic Rush duology was something of a bright spot during a time when SEGA’s flagship franchise was at its lowest point. Plus, it was cool seeing Nintendo be cool again; a number of my classmates played Pokémon Diamond & Pearl or Animal Crossing: Wild World, and the Wii’s start was explosive.
The Nintendo DS remains the only system I ever bought at launch. Aside from the Wii, which I unsuccessfully tried buying on release, I’ve never felt compelled to purchase a brand new, expensive machine on Day 1. I didn’t buy the DS’s stopgap upgrade, the DSi, either. But the DS marked a subtle shift in me where I began treating this medium as more than just some casual hobby; I started closely monitoring it, taking notice of consoles and titles beyond the Nintendo and SEGA ecosystems (the Xbox 360’s Dead Rising and, of all things, Gears of War really caught my eye), and now I write about video games here!
It’s not quite an exact number—I tend to not adopt whole machines at launch—but I was one of the people who got a Nintendo Wii within a month or so of its release. And boy, it was magical. I’m being completely serious. For all of the issues that the Wii had, and for how anemic it could be, Wii Sports and Twilight Princess (which of course would’ve been perfectly good on the GameCube, but was still a game I really loved) were extremely satisfying. It’s kind of old hat to say it, but Sports was a fundamentally different kind of experience. It was great having a console that pretty much everyone in my life could play and have fun playing. For all that I’ve tried to introduce people to gaming, and for all the times I’ve succeeded, I’ve never seen people be quite so engaged by playing like they were by Wii Sports. Paradigm shifting, and I appreciate having gotten to see that from the start.
Oh boy, lemme tell you about a little number called the Wii U. The Wii U was the successor to the Wii released in 2012, but you already knew that, didn’t you? I bought a Wii U at launch, and honestly, that month when the Wii U launched, I was pretty impressed with it. I got the black 32 GB model that came with Nintendo Land, and bought two other games to go with it: New Super Mario Bros. U and Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge.
I loved it. Nintendo Land was great fun to play with family. I have hours upon hours logged in the Animal Crossing and Pikmin minigames from that collection. New Super Mario Bros U. was a solid platformer that I enjoyed, and it’s probably my favorite 2D Mario game to this date. And despite it being super rough, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge is a solid experience and I got pretty into it to the point where I even gave the competitive online multiplayer a shot. Above all I felt extremely positive about the future of dual screen gaming, which I thought was the next step into the future of console hardware.
But the games stopped coming. The Wii U infamously had one of the rockiest launch schedules of any Nintendo platform to date. The reason I bought a Wii U at launch was for Pikmin 3, which I waited forever for. It was intended to be a launch year title, and technically still was, but it was pushed back for months. Twice. That Pikmin minigame in Nintendo Land? I played that to the point of exhaustion.
Donkey Kong Country; Tropical Freeze exiting the 2013 launch window didn’t inspire confidence either. You probably know the story by now: the Wii U was a massive failure. Games that were planned for it, including some of Nintendo’s own, were quietly ported to other platforms, as releasing on the Wii U only was, except under rare circumstances, a surefire recipe for failure. I remember Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Director’s Cut was supposed to launch for the Wii U on May 7th, but was quietly delayed and then ported to every current gen platform under the sun.
All-in-all, the Wii U was a strange console. I’ve been recently using it more than my Switch, which is a bizarro world sentence and if you ever meet someone who says that you should probably keep a 10 meter distance from them. Hi, I’m AShadowLink, and I play my Wii U on a regular basi- wait where are you going? Hey!
Looking back on it, I’ve also only been around for very few console launches. In fact, the only one that I was completely aware of and paid attention to from beginning to end was the launch of Nintendo Switch. I remember watching the Nintendo Switch’s trailer when it dropped in the middle of math class in high school and I stayed up all night streaming the 2017 Presentation with friends.
While I didn’t buy the console on launch day, I did get it within launch month, but my journey with owning something Switch related started on my birthday, March 14th. After school, me and my friends went to Dave & Buster’s to celebrate; completely unaware that they’d have a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild available for you to win! Once I saw that, I knew what I was earning tickets for and I reached my goal by playing only one game across the entire two hours we were there: Tippin’ Blocks. It was incredibly easy to reach the 1,000 ticket win cause all you needed to do was keep a steady balance and place the blocks properly. Breath of the Wild, I think, was about 50,000 – 55,000 tickets. I was very close but once I reached the end of my play points, I had about 49,000 tickets, so a friend gave me their tickets so I could grab a copy of the Nintendo Switch’s launch title and what is one of my favorite games of all time.
Nearly two weeks after that, receiving birthday money from my family amidst the inbetween days, I woke up early on March 25th to get in line at my Toys R’ Us (that is now gone) and purchased a Nintendo Switch. Placed it securely in my bookbag, made my way back home, and that was that. The first time I fully purchased a console “on my own” and how I met what is currently my favorite video game console of all time.
It’s surprising for me to realize that I’ve only ever been present for two console launches: those of the Switch and PlayStation 5. Even more surprisingly, despite how few games I’ve gotten for Sony’s latest system, I’ve got more to say about the latter than the former. I was on the fence regarding the PS5 throughout 2020, but a particular showcase turned my opinion around with the one-two punch that was Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition and God of War: Ragnarok. Not gonna lie, I still haven’t bought Ragnarok and don’t plan to for a while. DMC5:SE, on the other hand, was an absolute blast. I’d already played the original version, but Vergil’s addition was that much of a game changer.
Though, a repackaged PS4 game wasn’t the only thing I played from the launch lineup, there was also Bugsnax! And yeah, all the jokes surrounding its launch were right on the money, because this game’s fantastic. It’s since gotten some new content via free DLC, but I was left so satisfied by the ending that I haven’t tried it yet. On top of that, of course I had to grab Spider-Man: Miles Morales. It was fun, but shorter than I’d have liked and didn’t feel like much more than DLC that was separated from its predecessor. Finally, the last game I played with my new PS5 was Astro’s Playroom, which was another great time. It did what it was supposed to do, show the new controller’s features off, and then some.
Of course, most of these games weren’t exclusive to the PS5, so there wasn’t much reason for me to take the plunge so early, but considering how lucky I was to even pre-order one with how fast they were selling out, I don’t regret it. All things considered, I haven’t gotten that much mileage out of the system, but its launch was a period full of new experiences and surprises that I’m very happy to have been there for.
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