Best Nintendo Wii Games Of All Time

In the early 2000’s the Wii was a staple in households worldwide. Your friends had one, your neighbor had one, heck even your grandparents had one nestled next to their DVD players under the TV. Nintendo had seemingly conquered the world again and this time they brought motion controls.

The Wii Mote is probably the most genius design decision a gaming company has ever made. One of the biggest hurdles in gaming for casual or non-gamers is the controller. Too many buttons confuse that audience and their mindset isn’t compatible with the complex nature of input to movement so many of us take for granted. That problem became negated when the boffins at Nintendo HQ decided to design their new controller in the image of the standard TV remote.

Combining instantly familiar design with motion controls and minimal buttons was a success that skyrocketed Nintendo into the untapped market of the casual gamer. That said, the Wii was for everyone, not just casual gamers and here we have collated the best of the best from Nintendo’s culture shaking home console. So sit back, grab a cuppa and enjoy the blast from the past as I take you through my top 10 Wii games of all time.

Wii Sports

The game that everyone owned, some never even bought a single other title for the system. As a pack in title, Wii Sports was the ultimate proof of concept for the whole console. It wasn’t just a game; it was an experience generator. It’s what you dragged out at Christmas when your aunt asked what the new TV remote was, and what you’d play with your mates after school, intensely focused on a game of ten-pin bowling.

The simple joy of mimicking a real-world action, swinging your arm to bowl or volley a tennis ball, was intoxicating. It taught millions of people that gaming wasn’t scary, it was just fun. Wii Tennis and Wii Bowling are timeless slices of pure, unadulterated Nintendo magic.

Yes, there was a sequel – Wii Sports Resort, which many would rank above this one, but for most Wii owners, the original Wii Sports was the game of choice at the time.

Mario Kart Wii

Sure, the plastic wheels were a bit of a gimmick, but Mario Kart Wii is a firm favorite of the franchise. It’s the ultimate party starter, keeping the core chaotic racing fun while throwing in the new element of bikes and tricks to mix up the mayhem. The true genius was in the multiple control options: you could use the wheel, the classic controller, or even a GameCube controller if you were a purist.

This meant anyone could jump in, from your grandma using the wheel attachment to the hardcore player using a Classic Controller Pro. Oh, and the inclusion of online multiplayer made this a game you could sink hundreds of hours into long after your friends had gone home. A complete, wonderful package of friendship-ruining racing.

Mario Kart 8 may have come along and left the Wii iteration in the dust, but there’s something special about this one. Give it a blast if you have the chance and some friends over, and you won’t regret it… Unless you go bikes only on Wario’s Gold Mine, it’s painful.

MadWorld

A slightly off-kilter choice here and a break from the candy colored Nintendo offering, MadWorld was an aesthetically bold title from PlatinumGames. Bathed entirely in stark black and white, save for the vibrant splashes of crimson, this brawler looked like a graphic novel come to life. Its excessive, brutal violence was a perfect counter-programming to the system’s reputation as purely a ‘family console.’

It was loud, it was hilarious, and it reminded everyone that the Wii could handle mature, stylish titles too, even if most of them were overlooked. This is a must-play for those who want to see the Wii hardware flex its unique muscle for the over-18 crowd.

Fans of Sin City will love the art style and gore throughout. Not a game for the family, but one to throw on should any PlayStation or Xbox doubters scoff and claim that the Wii is just for kids.

Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition

Now I like to stick to exclusives for these lists, but Resident Evil 4 on the Wii is the definitive version of the horror classic. Sure, we now have the full-blown remake on modern systems, but this one, for me, is the best way to play Leon’s jaunt to rural Spain.

There isn’t much changed at all from the original Game Cube version (where it was an exclusive for a time), but the addition of the motion controls is one of the rare occasions when it benefited the port. You aim the gun with the pointer—pinpoint accurate and intuitive—and the snap of the Wiimote for a quick-knife action feels incredible.

When the HD remaster came to Xbox my muscle memory had me flicking the controller to use the knife purely from playing the Wii version for so long. If you have access to a Wii or Wii U – try and pick this one up and you won’t regret it. The fact the Switch port didn’t have the Wii motion controls is and always will be a travesty.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Now, you may shake your head at this one, and rightfully so – Nintendo seemed to pump out these New Mario games every few months in the early 2000’s, but this one stuck the landing.

Sure, we had the DS iteration that was pretty solid, but New Super Mario Bros. Wii was the first home console 2D Mario game since Super Mario World on the SNES, and I was there for it. A robust package with cool new power-ups and levels that brought 4-player on-the-couch multiplayer to the franchise for the very first time.

The resulting chaos of four Marios bouncing off each other, throwing each other into lava, and fighting over the ‘Propeller Suit’ was a thing of beautiful, frustrating genius. It’s a testament to the timelessness of 2D platforming, perfectly packaged for a new generation.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Twilight Princess may have kicked off the Zelda games for the Wii, but Skyward Sword was the true next-gen experience at the time. TP was a GameCube port, and a fine one at that, but journeying back to the beginnings of Link and Zelda was an amazing experience.

Another time that the motion controls benefited the gameplay: by raising your Wii mote to charge Link’s sword, you felt like the green tunic-wearing hero yourself. The 1:1 sword combat via the Wii MotionPlus accessory was a true revelation, demanding precision and strategy as you aimed strikes and slashes at your enemy’s vulnerable spots. And this is yet another instance where the Switch port was not as good due to that version’s control clunkiness.

Nothing hits the spot like a fresh Zelda game, and if you are a fan who has never played this one, grab yourself a Wii and a copy of Skyward Sword.

Okami

The best Zelda-like game ever made. Okami was like playing a living Japanese painting, featuring the Sun Goddess Amaterasu in the form of a white wolf. Originally a PS2 game, the Wii port’s innovation was the implementation of the Celestial Brush mechanic.

Instead of using an analogue stick to ‘paint’ commands on the screen, you could use the pointer on the Wii remote to draw power-ups, bridges, and attacks instantly.

This was the perfect marriage of a game mechanic to the Wii’s unique hardware—it felt organic, fast, and completely natural. It’s a gorgeous, sprawling adventure that is criminally overlooked and deserves a spot in any Wii owner’s collection.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Of course, a Nintendo console list wouldn’t be complete without a Smash Bros. title. Super Smash Bros. Brawl was, quite simply, massive. It took the frantic, accessible fighter formula and cranked everything up to eleven.

We got online play, a huge roster of characters that finally included third-party legends like Solid Snake and Sonic the Hedgehog, and the sprawling, brilliant single-player campaign known as The Subspace Emissary.

It was a fan-service explosion with an absurd amount of content that made it impossible to put down. It also had one of the best soundtracks in all of gaming.

Xenoblade Chronicles

This is where the Wii truly showed its teeth as a serious gaming machine beyond the motion controls. Xenoblade Chronicles was a colossal, epic Japanese role-playing game (JRPG) that was almost too big for the little white box.

With a deep, strategic combat system, a compelling story set on the bodies of two gargantuan warring gods, and environments that stretched as far as the eye could see, this game provided hundreds of hours of quality content. It was part of an incredible push by Nintendo of America to bring more niche JRPGs to the West (Operation Rainfall) and it has since become a bonafide classic.

A beautiful, ambitious swan song for the Wii era.

Metroid Prime Trilogy

As a huge fan of Metroid 2D games, I had never really looked into the Prime series before this uber pack of goodness. The Metroid Prime Trilogy collected all three of Samus’s incredible first-person adventures (Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption) and ported the first two to use the superior Wii motion controls introduced in the third.

Much like Resident Evil 4, this made the action incredibly precise and immersive. The Wii Remote and Nunchuk combo was the perfect controller for exploring the desolate, beautiful alien worlds and blasting space pirates. It’s an unbeatable value proposition and arguably the best way to experience one of the greatest first-person adventure series of all time.

So there you have it, a trip down memory lane that proves the Wii was so much more than just a console for fitness games and party antics. It had a deep, diverse library that pushed boundaries and introduced a whole new audience to the joy of gaming.

What Wii game do you feel should have made the cut?