Nintendo claims the Wii will appeal to inexperienced gamers, and so far, all their actions seem to indicate they still firmly believe that. However, it's a fairly basic idea that the most skilled players will win in pretty much any game (except in some cases of bad luck). I then started to wonder whether there are any existing games where even a relatively unskilled player can do well, assuming their skilled opponents are not godly in comparison, that is. I decided to examine various multiplayer games I've played/have seen played often to see if a newbie (to games in general) could ever have a hope of doing decently well after learning the basic controls (without handicaps and pseudo-handicaps).

Halo (1, 2)/other FPS: Based on my first-hand experience as a Halo newbie, I'd say the average newbie would never stand a chance against players with even some experience. Even a little experience will help a player pick which weapon to use and where to attack from, giving them a distinct advantage. I think this can be generalized to most shooters since knowing the weapons and the maps is quite helpful in any game.

Mario Kart/Kirby's Air Ride/other racing games: Racing games require the player to either know the track or have a very good reaction time. However, knowing the track and all its shortcuts, etc usually gives experienced players a considerable advantage. The Mario Kart-esque games give experienced players more of an advantage since knowing how and when to use the items/weapons/abilities can make a big difference. Although, new players can often catch on to simpler racing games after a few tries, as long as they play the same course with the same settings.

Mario Party (all of them): Although these games rely on luck quite a bit, experienced players have the upper hand when anything non luck-based shows up, such as the mini-games. Experienced players would have played the mini-games before and therefore know the tricks to beating/winning them. However, mini-games are usually simple enough that even inexperienced players can figure them out after a few tries, making Mario Party a fairly newbie-friendly series.

Pokemon (all of them): Pokemon, of course, has a link battle feature. However, the main reason I mention it is because its core in-game simplicity does not carry over to link battles, at least when there's an experience gap between the players. Experienced players will have a much better idea of how to use strategic moves effectively, which can often make all the difference if the teams are of comparable power, and using Pokemon of considerably different strengths is what I would consider having a pseudo-handicap.

Super Smash Bros. (original, Melee)/other fighting games: I was tempted to write these games off for the same reasons as Halo and other FPS, but then I remembered Melee's one semi-newbie-friendly feature: the C-stick. As far as I know, most experienced players refrain from using the C-stick since it's better to charge up a smash the regular way than to use the C-stick for a normal smash. However, C-stick smashing lets new players do more damage than they might otherwise by just button mashing. Of course, experienced players still have a considerable advantage since smash attacks can only get you so far. As for other fighting games, I haven't played them enough to say much, but I think any game that relies on the player using combos and/or button sequences to pull off good moves is not particularly newbie-friendly.

Mario Power Tennis/other sports games: I haven't played very many sports games so I can't really say too much about them. However, I think I can say that for the most part, people unfamiliar with a sport will not be able to play a video game version of it very well. For people familiar with the sport though, I think it depends of the particular game. I'm most familiar with tennis, but Mario Power Tennis took me some time to get used to ball and player positioning. However, I do recall doing decently well my first few tries when I played my friend in some football game several years back. So, I guess inexperienced players have a halfway decent chance in some of these games, although their chances decreases the more the game varies from the actual sport (i.e. power shots in Mario Power Tennis).

There are plenty of other multiplayer games out there, but I think for the most part they follow the same general arguments as these games. This then raises the question of what types of newbie-friendly games Nintendo could possibly release for the Wii. Granted, when they say they're targeting a broader market, they probably just mean they're trying to attract new people in the early days of a games release. To do this, they just need to make the game different enough that prior gaming experience will not automatically give players a huge advantage. This, of course, is where their controller comes in to play. In addition to that, I think they'll try to lure in new players with games that have more diverse and unique activities, like fishing, conducting an orchestra, etc, and they've already started doing this with the DS. However, I wonder if they will do anything to change the current trend by making some games that are easy for inexperienced players to learn, or at the very least, allow new players to do something other than sit around or button mash (i.e. C-stick smashing in Melee). Then again, there's the question of whether it's even possible to do this to any significant extent without making games entirely luck-based or far too simple for people to play them after a few tries.

Note: views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's and are not necessarily those of Wolverine Soft.