The host of the long-running TV game show, Let’s Make a Deal, is bringing his brand of humor to Nintendo. Wayne Brady partnered with the Japanese game maker on Wii Party U, the latest family cooperative experience for Nintendo’s new Wii U console. The comedian talked about his own gaming cred in this exclusive interview from the set of the Nintendo shoot for a series of viral videos.
What are you doing with Nintendo?
I shot a series of online vignettes for Nintendo, which I have to say as a gamer it probably doesn’t get any better than that. Some of my best memories as a kid are wrapped up in Nintendo, which is cool and kind of sad because a lot of my great memories are gaming memories. But they asked me to come and be a part of these vignettes, which talk about the Wii U and the Party games. I got to play this version of Wii Party U before anyone else. I get to play this at home. True, I’m playing it by myself with three different controllers and it’s meant for friends, but it’s cool. I still have found a way to make it work, and the best part is I always win.
What video games did you play growing up as a kid?
I was a huge, huge Super Nintendo guy. Even the original NES, the very first Mario Bros., that’s what got me hooked on gaming. I wasn’t a Donkey Kong person. I’d play Pac Man and Galaga when I went to the bowling alley with my parents maybe, but at home, it was Super Mario Bros., Double Dragon, Spy Hunter, Burger Time and 1942, and that was the early version of that. I got into all the other systems and the fighting games. Capcom was a favorite of mine, but it was mostly Nintendo games, because that’s all we had growing up was a Nintendo. I pretty much rocked that since I was 14.
What’s a favorite Nintendo memory?
Favorite Nintendo memory of all time is when I beat Super Mario Bros. by myself. There was no one else in the room and you have to remember this was in 1989. It was my senior year in high school. Our technology wasn’t as developed, so I took a Polaroid of the screen to prove to everyone at school that I beat it. It just shows where I was at the time, where I took a picture of my screen and shoved it into every senior’s face when I beat Super Mario Bros., and they were like, “Good job, Wayne.”
What are your thoughts on how far video games have come since then?
We don’t have enough time to talk about how amazing I find the field of video games right now. To go from a lot of the side-scrolling images in games to where the standard is now to have crisp, real-life, interactive 3D. With the latest Grand Theft Auto, the fact that I can download an app and interact with my dog in the game is ridiculous. I just turned 41, and I’ve been gaming since I was 12. I had a Collecovision and we also had the Tandy Radio Shack TRS. They made a computer and we played it at school. My generation, everyone who’s maybe 38 and up, we’re that first generation of people that grew up with video games. Gaming is now a part of our lives. They’re doing this amazing stuff with gaming now. I can’t wait to see where we are in 10 years, in 20 years.
When I’m 70, I’ve got a plan. When I’m not touring the country like Bill Cosby still tours and he’s 80-something, I’m going to come home and attach myself to my docking station that Nintendo would have invented, and you attach it to all of your localized points and it’s like The Matrix. It puts you in the game. You have a unit at home that puts you in the game and I can live most of my life at that point in the game with super powers and a fancy car and a hot super hero girlfriend. It sounds like I’m a nerd who is hopeful, but I’m really a nerd who knows the future. That’s going to happen. Video games are the future.
Wii Party U is available for the Wii U.
