Nintendo Skylanders SWAP Force Bundle - Nintendo Wii U

Let me tell you that first of all when i bought this bundle it was going for around $220 new! Which was a great price for a wii u as wii u prices hover between $275-$300 nowadays albeit with better games of course. I never bothered with skylander as i sold that on ebay with the figures for $20. Bringing my total cost to just over $200 for the wii u with nintendoland. Nintendoland is what you would expect with a pack in game. Just to show off what the wii u can do. Its a good game dont get me wrong but not something i would purchase. The wii u itself is of course why i bought it as the base set with no games were going for $250 at the time. To this day its still kicking. heavy usage from mario kart and smash bros. A great gift for kids and grown ups alike!

This is my second time I'm buying a wii u. I originally bought a wii u delux with the super Mario 3d world and let my friend Alex borrow it to play call of duty on it. But he went and got high and broke the game pad and later on ended up selling my wii u for drugs. I put this as a warning to becareful who you let borrow your stuff. The wii u in my oppion is a great video game system. *it works great for people who have slow internet like me running at125khz through my phone * graphics are incredible which is great if you want to play Mario kart 8 or etc. *free multi universe online play where you can chat over the wii u with friends cons you cant download anything from the Nintendo shop very selective on games it has. It doesn't have the latest games such as call of duty black ops 3 also if your game pad isn't responding remover cover and wipe dust will save you of hours of stress.

I picked this bundle up for $217 on amazon warehouse deals, having purchased a open box TV from that division and having no issues I went for it. This was a good call because it was basically brand new, there was no club Nintendo code inside, but I am not sure if that was just because this is the value console or because it was an open box, nothing else was opened or other than new so who knows. I purchased this console because I wanted a game system that my kid could enjoy as he grows up, he is about to turn 3 and is starting to get a grasp on games so what better than a Nintendo console to show him the joy of gaming, and this fits the bill perfectly all while satisfying Dad's love of electronics and games as well. I like many around here am a longtime gamer, about 30 years or so so I've seen or owned every console that's come and gone for the most part and I gotta say I truly love this console and feel Nintendo has done a bad job of explaining how great it is to the general public. I have a gaming PC and a smaller form factor (but still powerful) Steam box that I use for my main "hardcore" gaming but I can see this WiiU easily eating into that time. Also it should be noted I hated the original Wii and despised the forced motion controls on everything. Sometimes (most of the time) I just want to use a simple gamepad control setup. The WiiU has many more control options and solves this nagging issue I had with the Wii. The other reason I hated the Wii was the lack of HD graphics, this is also solved very nicely and while the WiiU can't crank out the polygons like the PS4 or Xbox1 it does not really matter as much as these games on the WiiU look pretty damn good, especially the first party Nintendo games with their crisp and clear cartoon style that translates very well to HD. Besides if I want a framerate destroying machine I do not look to the Ps4 and Xbox1 anyways, I look to my gaming PC with dual radeon r290's in crossfire and my steam library. So essentially if you have kids or love Nintendo first party games (or both) this is really the console for you and me I can recommend it without any reservation. Pros: -Awesome gamepad with a nice screen that not only opens up new ways to play it without the TV but is built well and controls nicely. Plus the sound adds depth and you can plus headphones into it for late night gaming! -Finally a Nintendo console with HD graphics. -Very nicely (if not a bit quirky) integrated online features throughout the console that costs nothing to access. -Compatible with all Wii games and accessories (nice non-jerk move by Nintendo) -Many games seem built with drop in/out local co-op in mind that is far more seamless than most consoles I've seen. Plus these features extend to help facilitate kids/parents playing together without any hassle whatsoever. This is a HUGE plus -First party Nintendo new titles plus classics and app store games. -Small, sleek form factor that is quiet. -Console is very fairly priced AND games are also very nicely priced here on Amazon. Cons: -Lack of 3rd party game support could hurt this console in the long run -Small built in storage, really small. (must use usb or sd storage to expand) -Menus and general browsing is not exactly lightning fast, it's not bad but its not super speedy either. -Large update out of the box that may upset some with slow internet.

The wii u Swap Force Bundle was given as a gift to a nine year old. Now each version of bundle he ranted and raved about so ultimately the bargain of this system bundle won out in the end. I'm glad it only cost me the same as the set alone because when the time came around these were no longer as popular. Interesting fact: he prefers collecting the figures to actually playing the Skylander game. The Wii U system, the entire family loves.

OK. Let's be clear here: The Wii U is actually a great system. However, I was just the unfortunate victim of bad luck. I received my Wii U and spent the next 5 hours trying to download the data for the update that's required before you can really do anything. I would receive errors after every 1-10 minutes of download time. I even got on the nintendo support line and received an hour of help from one of their tech guys. It took over four hours for the download to complete and then half an hour for it to install. Then, I thought my trials were over, but no! I go to play a game and - guess what? The system cannot read the disc. I try another disc. and another. and even the one that came with the system! Nothing! It cannot read any discs! This whole thing was a complete dud and totally unusable. I decided to return it. Now, onto more positive: I went out the following day to buy a bundled Nintendo Wii U deluxe system from Target - it was actually CHEAPER than this Skylanders bundle and it's the deluxe version with a game I actually would play (Mario 3D world), not this Skylanders thing. When I went to set up the Deluxe Wii U, the upgrade download took about 5 minutes and it works perfectly. Long story short: I am a victim of bad luck and wasted hours of my life trying to make a defective unit work. Once I received a unit that did work (and at a cheaper price from Target), it works perfectly and I had a fun day yesterday playing Wind Waker.

Maybe its the system maybe its not. I would expect a used system to have problems but this was suppose to be brand new. I've had to hold the power button several times on this because it glitched. If it is brand new then Nintendo could have done better, only got it because my son wanted one for his birthday, don't think I'll buy another Nintendo console after this. They were fun to play in the 90's, but the stupid Wii remote mic setting have really pissed me off. Skylanders is OK but I'm not going to buy every figure they have neither will I for Disney's infinity. thankfully my son could care less about them. I did however hookup an external drive for more space that works great but you will have to buy a y usb cord even if you have an ac power cord for the external drive. Got a cheap one off eBay for 3.95

So, I didn't know much about the Wii U when I started researching and I came across this bundle for $two hundred and thirty four dollars. I started comparing, and I figured that the only difference was this is 8gb vs the deluxe which is 32gb. I also read that it could be expanded with an SD card and those are cheap so I wasn't worried about the memory. Apparently, you get some Wii U club points for buying the deluxe and that is probably worth some money, but not that much to me. Then there's the included games. My kids really wanted Skylanders and since now there is Mario 3D for the Wii U, I figured I could get this bundle plus the 3D Mario and still be cheaper than the deluxe version with the old Mario Game. The Deluxe does come with the Luigi U game, but you can get that for $twenty dollars anywhere. So, at the end of the day I bought this bundle, and I have no regrets. However, I also learned that to download games (I like the digital distribution of games, cause my little boys scratch the CD games), you will need an external HD. The SD card and internal memory is used for game content and other things like downloading apps. So, if you buy either version of the Wii U and you want to download games, you will need at least a 500gb hard drive (20gb per game on average) My kids love this setup and the tablet is actually a neat controller that does bring some unique function to console gaming. You might have to eventually buy some more skylanders toys to finish the game, but the kids are playing fine with the ones that came with it. I'm so glad I got this bundle and didn't waste money on the deluxe version. Oh, and here's a tip, don't get the kids all excited when you open up the box. It will take about 3 hrs to download all the various updates. Each game and app wants to update the console in addition to the initial update. So, get it Friday, put the kids to bed, set it up at night and let them wake up to a Saturday surprise.

When my kids played this at the store it looked so cool but I was actually pretty disappointed when we ordered it for them for Christmas and found out it wasn't what we thought. I got it because we go on trips and its nice for them to have handheld games to keep them occupied and I thought this would be great for trips but much to my dismay you can't play them anywhere but the house. I didn't know it was basically a controller for the wii console with a screen. We already had a wii so if I would have known , I wouldn't have purchased the wii u because to me there's not a huge difference. The other thing that sucks is I still haven't figured out how to just play the games on the pad only and not the TV and supposedly after reading up on the wii u it says you are supposed to be able to play without the TV. It does not tell you how to do that in the manual it came with and it took me hours of research online trying to figure out how to do it but the way other people were saying to do it wasn't working for me and I'm very good usually with technology so it's very aggravating that they make it so hard to accomplish this. I don't know what Nintendo was thinking .