What video game system's success shocked you?

[Herschie]

I'm actually about to purchase a Wii, not for the system itself, but for a few GC titles I'd like to try and the Virtual Console. Maybe I should go with the Wii U instead?

I hear that the Wii fries Gamecube memory cards as it did a few of mine.

[Rev]

Why not just get a Gamecube with the Gameboy Adaptor? That way you can play Gamecube games & Gameboy Color & Gameboy Advance games. Plus the actual cartridges cost pretty close to what they cost on the Virtual console. You'll have a wider selection and the ability to actually own the games. Dang it! I want a DS player soooo bad.

That is a great option... I own both of those and they GB Player is awesome. Why Nintendo didn't make a DS Player for the Wii U is baffling. The Wii U is the perfect console for it and realistically the only one that could pull that off (for most games anyway). Buying a normal Wii is also beneficial as it is easy to soft-mod (if you're into that) which opens up a lot of possibilities for the console.

[David]

That is a great option... I own both of those and they GB Player is awesome. Why Nintendo didn't make a DS Player for the Wii U is baffling. The Wii U is the perfect console for it and realistically the only one that could pull that off (for most games anyway).

It's probably because they planned on putting DS games on the eShop. You're right though, a DS player would be awesome.

[Retro STrife]

The Wii. I personally didn't see the appeal of a system with five year old graphics and inaccurate controllers that caused arm pain. Wii Sports was fun (the bowling anyway) but that was it. Yet everyone was hooked on the damn system and and it was hard to find in supply for years after release. I ended up buying three of them for family members as gifts as it's what they wanted, and for each of them the novelty soon wore off and the things never got used again. These family members also didn't much care for the crappy graphics as they hooked them up via composite cable despite having HDTVs. Then again Nintendo didn't really advertise that the thing could at least do 480p, had they bundled a cheap component cable at least then the graphics would've looked slightly less terrible. The Wii never gave me a single ounce of appeal until my parents gave me their console back and I installed the Homebrew Channel on it. Then, suddenly, it was a good system and with Wii homebrew having accurate emulators for a lot of retro 8-bit and 16-bit systems, and being able to load Gamecube and Wii ISOs from an external hard drive I now think it's a pretty cool console. I sure wasn't a fan of the Wii before Wii Homebrew and I still detest the games that use moronic half-assed thought-out motion control waggling that is just grafted onto the game because they could, instead of being used intelligently like how Wii Sports handled motion control. To me, the Wii's best feature is being a single system to play old games through accurate emulation, and being able to load GC/Wii games without the discs. It freed up some space on my disc box racks. I would be perfectly happy if I never played another gimmicky motion control waggling game for the rest of my life. So glad that fad died and died hard.

Ditto on all this. I fell for the Wii hype too and bought one early on, but, really, it was awful and had no business doing as well as it did. Like most people, I barely played the thing after the first month of owning it. Two or three must-play games do not make a system. The Dreamcast was better and it still killed Sega.