The Liquid Architecture blog

For all the good press the Wii gets, you hardly ever hear about third party Wii games moving anywhere near the clip that the big N’s games sell regularly. No More Heroes developer Suda 51 made some waves when he pointed it out (then abruptly “clarified” his comment), but as a consumer, it’s hard to get up in arms over this.

Nintendo got updates to its big 3 franchises out in a timely fashion, and they’re all fantastic. By all accounts, the best stuff out there for the system so far. And if Japanese sales are any indicator, they could have another hit on their hands when Wii Fit comes stateside. All tolled, 11 of the 14 Wii games that sold more than a million copies are homegrown Nintendo titles. But the House that Shiggy built isn’t entirely unsympathetic.

In their third fiscal quarter report (released last week), Nintendo pointed out that first-party games also dominated the DS sales charts early in that systems life cycle, but some clever third-party development has normalized that library over the last year and a half. In fact, the DS probably wouldn’t be the king of the mountain if not for nifty games like Capcom’s Phoenix Wright series, Advance Wars, and genre-benders like Hotel Dusk and the soon-to-hit-stateside Proffessor Layton.

Everyone should be breathing a little easier with last week’s release of Endless Ocean for the Wii. It hits all the sweet spots that Nintendo’s Wii games have: it’s exclusive to the Wii, sports a simple control scheme, and most importantly, appeals to the elusive “non-gamer” that’s driven the surge in Nintendo hardware sales lately.

Quite simply, Endless Ocean has “It.” Honestly, it’s tough to really call this a “game.” Endless Ocean has objectives and rewards, but I wouldn’t a call the scuba dive excursions “missions” exactly. The progress just doesn’t seem to matter much here, and this is a rare case where that’s a good thing. Endless Ocean’s more of an experience. The sea floor exploration, minimal HUD, and rhythm of your scuba create a calming, even therapeutic feeling.

A few minutes into Endless Ocean, I was reminded of a recent interview with Chris Taylor, a developer at Gas Powered Games: “When I ride the lawnmower I don’t think about steering and cutting grass… I think about life. I think about work. I think about things I have to do. I recharge – charge my batteries up.” Just like mowing the lawn, I found myself drifting away, barely even thinking about the game.