As many of you will undoubtedly know, Nintendo have announced their successor to the immensely popular Wii console, the Wii U, which is set to launch this later year. With it's innovative touch screen tablet controller, known as the Wii U GamePad, it looks set to revolutionise the world of games all over again. With fancier graphics, revamped social features and an awesome looking line-up of games, we can't wait for what's essentially the grown-up lovechild of the Wii and the DS to hit stores - but wait it seems we'll have to, as Nintendo are keeping pretty schtum about the details.
But we've never really been the patient sort, especially when there were other ways of getting what we wanted - and so, in the absence of any real news about Nintendo's upcoming Wii U console, we decided to entertain ourselves with a bit of animal testing. Before you all leave disgusted and up in arms, we want to stress that no cats were harmed in the making of this feature - although she may have been mildly irritated.
So without further ado, meet our victim - Bessie. Adopted from the local Cat's Protection League as an older cat because it's 'hard to place the mothers' of kittens, she settled into her new cushy life rather quickly. A lover of laps, men's armpits, cheese and onion crisps and garlic bread, she's often mistaken for being as thick as two short planks - frequently falling off things, jumping at windows to get the birds as they fly past or getting herself shut in wardrobes as she does. But little does everyone else know that her ditsy persona is nothing more than cover, for Bessie, in reality, is psychic, with a mental capacity beyond that of her peers - and many humans, too. After all, Einstein was famously forgetful, always misplacing umbrellas and losing track of people's birthdays. Perhaps our cat has a brain bigger than Einstein, and it's just full of untapped potential. Or perhaps she really is just a useless lump of friendly fur.
With five questions about the Wii U to answer, and a myriad of potential ways to annoy a cat we set to work, crafting a series of highly scientific experiments to help determine what the future of the Wii U, including the release date, price and potential launch titles. We're feeling quietly confident in our furball's abilities - or at least, at our skills at creating experiments with more flaws and bias than your average drug trial, but only time will tell how accurate Bessie's been. Step over Mystic Meg - here comes Mystic Mog.
How much will the Wii U cost?
So, for our first experiment, we went for something a bit simple - something that's not too ambiguous, but with enough reward that Bessie doesn't get upset with us for insulting her intelligence. Setting up four saucers, each with a selection of cat treats on (Dreamies - she goes mental for them), each saucer also had a label on saying which price it represented - £0-99, £100-199, £200-299, and $300+. No sooner had we let her go than sped across the room, thinking Christmas had come early, and... went straight to the £300 dish. That's actually not too far off double the Wii's launch price of about £170.
Despite assurances from Nintendo that consumers will be pleasantly surprised by the Wii U's retail price, £300+ doesn't seem like a price point any of us would be too pleased about - so, rather than write off our cat's psychic powers one experiment in, we're going to write off her eyesight instead - and presume she got a tad confused with the currencies. 300 Euros would make it around £230, which seems more on the reasonable side, while 300 dollars translates to a much more wallet friendly £190. We'd imagine it'll be somewhere between the latter two options - so maybe or psychic cat isn't too terrible after all? On a side note, if you have a cat you really should try out the Dreamies cat treats if you haven't already - ours can't get enough of the cheese flavour, even if they do smell like unwashed feet.
Yes those are Hunchback of Notre Dame bedsheets - we're just THAT cool.
What month will the Wii U launch in?
Setting up a series of boxes, each labelled with a different month, we dug out one of Bessie's favourite toys - a ball of kitchen foil - and plonked her in the centre. Looking rather disgruntled, she just sat and stared up at us, probably wondering when the next dose of Dreamies was coming. So we did what any good cat owners do when they want their cat to do something - walked off and left them to their own devices. It's been scientifically proven that a cat will lie on whatever you don't want it to, as if by magic - and, while we weren't initially aiming for her to sit in any of the boxes, it would at least have given us something of an answer. Upon our return, however, she was still just sat in the middle of the floor, staring at us - but after a period of the silent treatment, she somewhat reluctantly batted the ball around, before it ended up in the November box. Perhaps it was a sign she wasn't 100% sure - or maybe she'd just rather be out sunbathing in the strawberry patch.
In the absence of any decent pictures from this experiment, here's a random one of her sitting in the Call Of Duty: Black Ops Collector's Edition box.
What date will it hit stores?
You know all those hilarious videos on YouTube with cats going MENTAL at a laser pointer? That's pretty much how ours gets too. For reasons known only to herself, she absolutely loathes/loves the little red dot, and the goofy cat face it emanates from; all it takes it a click from his nose and she perks up, tearing round the room, looking scanning the room for her electromagnetic nemesis. Knowing this, we decided we couldn't not devise an experiment involving it - so we quickly knocked up a chart with the numbers one to thirty one on and stuck it to the wall. Yes, we know now that November only has thirty days, but we'd temporarily forgotten with the excitement of the experiment. Thankfully, the cat obviously has a better grasp on the Gregorian calender than we do and didn't pick thirty-one - instead, she picked the opposite - number 13. Perhaps some people would get a touch superstitious at a black cat picking the 13th day of a month, but at least it doesn't fall on a Friday.
So exciting she ripped the paper.
Which games should be available at launch?
So far, we know of a veritable smorgasbord of games that are going to be launching within the Wii U's 'launch window', but up until recently, we weren't entirely sure what that meant. Now that Nintendo have announced that by 'launch window' they mean 'anywhere within up to four months post launch', there could potentially be a huge wait for some of our most looked forward to titles. Hoping to take some of the mystery out of the whole 'will they, won't they' of the Wii U's launch line-up, we devised our most devious (and laborious) experiment yet to help determine which games will hit the shelves on day one.
Now, some would say our cat is spoilt - practically drowning under cat toys that she rarely plays with - but we'd be inclined to disagree. We just have a weakness for buying cat toys, and she has a weakness for playing with them. Always keen to show that it was an investment, not just us spoiling our cat rotten, we decided to put the many toys we've accumulated from those pet stockings you get at Christmas to good use, labelling each one with one of the so far announced Wii U titles. Due to technical difficulties (not having quite enough cat toys), we haven't included every single one of the thirty-odd games so far announced for the months surrounding the Wii U's launch, instead just picking out the games we really want to know about:
From top left to bottom right (ish): New Super Mario Bros. U,Lego City Undercover, Project P-100, Scribblenauts Unlimited, ZombiU, Just Dance 4,Batman Arkham City: Armoured Edition, Assassin's Creed 3, Rayman Legends, Pikmin 3, SiNG, Wii Fit U, Game & Wario, Rabbids Land.
Sticking a label on each of the toys with the name of each game on, we let our resident psychic kitty loose on a bed covered with toys to see which ones she liked best. As we don't want to completely spoil the surprise of the launch games selection, we just let her pick out three titles - Lego City Undercover, New Super Mario Bros. U and Wii Fit U. Which sound like a pretty awesome selection of games if you ask us.
Will Nintendo Land come bundled with the console?
We already know the theme-park-based-minigame-collection Nintendo Land is due to release at the same time as the Wii U console, and we also know it's one of the few games confirmed to be launching day and date with the system (which could be as telling a sign as any) - but Nintendo have been deliberately vague about whether it'll be bundled with the system, a la Wii Sports, or whether they're going to sell it separately. We're hoping for the former - and as it's such a burning question, we decided to put it to our mystic moggy. Deciding to divide one of her favourite spots, the Wii Balance Board into two sections, we decided if she sat on the left, we'd take it as a no, but if she sat on the right, it'd be all but guaranteed that Nintendo Land would be launching alongside the Wii U. Our hearts racing, we held our breath as Bessie trundled towards the board, before... plonking herself down on the 'no' half of the Wii Balance Board. Which is something of a disappointment, seeing as Nintendo Land, to us, seems to be perfect pack in fodder. Perhaps she just got this one wrong - after all, no-one's always right. Sigh. Sometimes we think we should have held off and bought a black Balance Board, though, because then maybe Bessie's favourite spot to sit wouldn't show the muddy paw prints quite so much...
Who, me?
And so as our experiments came to an end, we chose to retire our cat for the evening, having made use of her psychic prowess to discover so much more about the Wii U. Our results, in summary, were as follows - according to Bessie, the psychic cat, the Wii U will launch on the Tuesday, the 13th of November, priced at £300 at least (or possibly, if she read the currency wrong, somewhere between £190-230), but sadly, will come without a bundled copy of Nintendo Land. The veritable olive branch is that we'll have some rather awesome launch titles in the form of Lego City Undercover, New Super Mario Bros. U and Wii Fit U.
While we're hoping that she's wrong on the bundled game and price fronts, the rest of her predictions don't seem too implausible. With any luck, it won't be too much longer before we know how accurate Bessie's foresight was.
