Black Friday is approaching us quickly. Prepare yourself to battle crowds in order to get the best deals on clothes, televisions, human slave labor, and most importantly, gaming consoles. Gaming Consoles are by far the most sought after things on Black Friday, and many people reading this are hoping to snag one this holiday season. The ones currently on everyone’s mind are the Xbox One and Playstation 4, but I feel that it’s necessary to remind everyone of the third next-gen console on the market: Nintendo’s Wii U.

Though it may be often forgotten by gamers, the Wii U is Nintendo’s first foray into an HD gaming console that features a new way to control your games. No, it isn’t motion controls, it’s a tablet controller! The gamepad is a wonderful tablet controller that has the ability to play games without the use of a TV. Other specs of the console include full 1080p display, a revamped and easy to use store for downloading games from the comfort of your home, and a new online service called Miiverse. Miiverse takes the concept of Miis, an avatar that you can create and use in various games, and puts it into a social-network type interface that allows you to interact with Wii U owners across the world.
Console specs and control options may be fine and dandy, but a console can only be as strong as the games on it, and the Wii U delivers games by the truckload. The Wii U’s lack of decent third-party support may be off-putting to some, but Nintendo has more than made up for this with games like Super Mario 3D World, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD, Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros. 4, Hyrule Warriors, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, ZombiU, New Super Mario/Luigi U, Pikmin 3, and most importantly, Bayonetta 2.

In my opinion, the Wii U tops the Xbone and PS4 because of its versatility and variety, two things that the Xbone and PS4 can’t claim to having. It belongs on every gamers’ Christmas list this holiday season.