Nintendo Gamers Online, the site that was created in response to Nintendo’s pig-headed refusal to design a decent online matchmaking system, is reporting that they have undisputed proof that the friend’s code debacle is here to stay. In their latest article titled Sad: Individual Friend Codes Confirmed (how’s that for original?), they give us the down and dirty …
A friend match, as you would imagine, lets you play with up to 3 of your friends. In these matches you can voice chat with the other players(depending on the software). This is great fun, but it’s unnecessarily difficult. In the interest of protecting children, Nintendo made it necessary for each friend to swap a 12-digit friend code. This wouldn’t be SO bad, except for the fact that BOTH friends must enter the code, and there is no friend request system(think Myspace), which would have made things much easier.
It was because of this that we were much relieved to find a friend code embedded in our Wii’s when we all started receiving them. Even though this is still a far cry from the Gamertag system used by Microsoft on XBox Live, it would at least allow us to have a unified buddy list without the hassle of repeatedly entering new friend codes for each game. However,.. images of Mario Strikers Charged posted on IGN a few days ago confirm that we were wrong, DEAD WRONG. It certainly appears now, that the Wii code is for nothing other than sending messages to your buddies and swapping Mii’s. This means that you will STILL need to swap codes for each game you play online.
While you can file this under info that we already knew but just didn’t want to believe in the first place, I give points to anyone who takes the time to point it out and throw it in Nintendo’s face. The whole set up is laughable, and a major deterrent for those that are already enjoying the online thing the way it was meant to be played.
Some might say that Nintendo is bombing out in all fronts, but for me it’s just the friend’s code thing. If they would just be a bit more reasonable about that, most of us could overlook the the overpriced Virtual Console offerings, or the lack of “must have” games at the moment.
