Who are Wii [or, Be still my heart(s)]

The announcement has hit the UK tabloids: supposedly Nintendo has signed on the dotted line with the BBC’s merchandising wing to make Doctor Who video games for the Wii and DS. I’ll blither on endlessly about why this has been a long time coming – and why it’s always been bad news before now – after the jump.

A Doctor Who video game always struck 8-year-old me as a no-brainer. Now that I’ve added 30 years to that number, I know now that it’s an incredibly difficult proposition. Let’s take this quote from the article linked above:

The game will be closely monitored by the BBC, which does not want anything too violent. Former Doctor David Tennant said the game had struggled to get off the ground as some developers had wanted the Time Lord to beat up his enemies and blow things up. David said: “The video game was quite actively developed, but it’s difficult to nail as the Doctor doesn’t blow things up. He’s not Batman, who goes around smacking people in the head.”

Now, allowing for a moment that David has apparently witnessed some BatHeadSmackage that I’ve somehow missed, this raises a very good point. Anytime the Doctor has been seen to use a weapon in Doctor Who, it’s been a last-resort, life-or-death thing. More often than not, he’s faced down those with weapons, armed with little more than words, and he’s lamented others taking up arms countless times. How do you make a game out of that?

It hasn’t been easy going. I’ve chronicled several attempts at Doctor Who games before, from the very first one (released on cassette in 1983 for the BBC Micro) to the most recent PC game, which was a Doom clone, and everything in between.

Let’s take the 1997 PC game Destiny Of The Doctors as an example. It’s a first-person shooter – eek! That violates the whole canon of the show right there. But in this game you’re not the Doctor, but rather some strangely amorphous “champion” fighting for the Doctor. Therefore you can get away with the shooting and so on. But any fan of the show will tell you that this is a gigantic cop-out: what any player invested in the show really wants to be is the Doctor himself. The “champion” character – never mentioned in the TV show before or after the game – is a proxy, and a cheap one at that.

But this is where I get excited that this thing’ll be on the Wii. Hello? Wiimote = sonic screwdriver. It can even make the noise any everything. How freakin’ cool is that? What’s scary is that, according to the article, it’s taken years for anyone on the game-development end of things to make that connection:

Firms had been coming up with ideas for the last three years in a bid to tap into the show’s success. The insider added: “BBC Worldwide, which licenses BBC shows, has been trying to find some way of doing it. But you can’t have Doctor Who blowing things to bits with a laser gun. That would massively change the nature of the show.”

Obviously the wrong people have been trying to crack this particular nut. Do they even watch the show? The Doctor outthinks his opponents rather than beating them to a pulp; putting that into game form is difficult. The Wiimote-as-sonic-screwdriver is almost certain to be the key to cracking that particular puzzle, however.

I’ll be the first to admit that the screwdriver is overused in the show itself, but it could be a lot of fun in the game if implemented properly. And sonic or not, there’ll be plenty of opportunities to shoot things up, since:

It will also feature key Doctor Who baddies including the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Silurians.

Can we say: “Doctor-less, all-baddies death match mode”? Thought we could. As long as that mode isn’t the end-all and be-all of the game, I have no problem with it being incorporated as an option.

And finally, I’m so excited that I’m nearly shaking at the article’s implication that this is a Nintendo first-party title, not farmed out to someone else. One need only look at Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort – and the fact that folks like the head of EA have spent so much time bitching about the fact that they can’t seem to get the general game-buying public to adopt any non-first-party sports games for the Wii – to see that Nintendo has the best handle on making unique games for its own system. Naturally they do, but in the case of the Wii, the gulf in fun and playability between first and third party games is, at least in my experince, vast. Nintendo integrates the Wii controller into its game play where it seems that a lot of other developers cash their checks after using it as little more than a glorified mouse pointer or light gun. I’m elated at the thought that Nintendo is doing this, because, again as the article quotes a BBC insider:

“We’re delighted to have finally nailed down a deal. We went with Nintendo as they have huge appeal for families and Doctor Who is very much a family brand. The Wii console is key for us as it’s something families play together.”

…and that, in the end, is what it’s all about. I look forward to boarding the TARDIS with my own little companion.

Don’t forget to release this in North America, guys.