There were a lot of games released for Nintendo’s little monster, the Wii. At the time of its original run, I missed out on a lot of them because I was a broke college student. Having little money, I did what I imagine a lot of Wii owners did — I focused on the known-quantity first-party games and ignored most everything else as shovelware. If I’d had a little more cash or been a little more willing to take risks, though, I might have encountered some of these games. They may not be for everyone, but they’re not just novelties, either. Call it a kind of hidden gems thing, if you like — here are the ten weirdest best Wii games I know of.
10. Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars
3D platformers were everywhere on the Wii, but how many of them star animate mushroom people? As far as I know, it’s just this one. Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars is about a civil war between fungus guys and has a neat system where you can assemble makeshift weapons out of appropriately-sized human objects. Also, it’s the only game I’m aware of that contains an original Les Claypool soundtrack.
9. Elebits
When the Wii launched, most people were reaching for games like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Super Monkey Ball. A lot of good titles got lost in the shuffle of those first few weeks, such as Konami’s Elebits, which came out only a month after the Wii’s North American launch. That’s a shame, because Elebits (or Eledees in PAL regions) is a cute title about hunting around a house for the titular creatures that almost anyone can enjoy. It was a great demonstration of the new console’s capabilities, too, and a creative alternative to the obvious shooting-based gameplay many titles used them for.
8. The Conduit — Weirdest Best Wii Games
I remember following the development of The Conduit back on forums in the late 2000s. Hype was high for High Voltage Studios’ attempt to realize the dream of an actually good FPS on the Wii, and while the resulting game didn’t set the world on fire, it’s still an admirable effort. The Conduit basically lets you adjust every possible aspect of the controls, including screen dead zones and rotation speed. Plus, there’s a neat story about government conspiracies and aliens.
7. Deadly Creatures
Like The Mushroom Men, Deadly Creatures is a game where you play as a small character navigating a world of human structures. (Though here’s it a spider or scorpion instead of, well, a mushroom man.) Unlike The Mushroom Men, Deadly Creatures features a storyline in which human characters played by Dennis Hopper and Billy Bob Thornton are trying to locate buried treasure from the Civil War. Way before games like Grounded, Deadly Creatures dared to ask: what if you were just a little guy running around?
6. Endless Ocean: Blue World
Japanese developer Arika really has range. From their Fighting Layer series to their most recent battle royale collaborations with Nintendo (Tetris 99, Super Mario Bros. 35), the studio is adept at creating exciting multiplayer experiences, but their SCUBA series Everblue and Endless Ocean prove that they’re equally able to tackle slower-paced single-player games. Endless Ocean: Blue World is the sequel to the original Endless Ocean on the Wii and improves on that title in most ways. Things get a little more out-there in this one, too — you don’t just encounter extant marine life, but more fanciful creatures like plesiosaurs and a gigantic emperor penguin named “Big Bobby.”
5. Captain Rainbow — Weirdest Best Wii Games
You’ve probably got a pretty good excuse for never having played Captain Rainbow — it was never released outside of Japan. It’s hard to imagine how it would have been received had it been, considering that it’s a self-referential parody of lesser-known Nintendo characters. While fishing, catching bugs, and playing minigames, you’ll run into Takamaru from The Mysterious Murasame Castle, Lip from Panel de Pon, and the titular Devil from Devil World, all who need your help to make their dreams come true. It’s doubtful that Captain Rainbow will ever get an official English release, but there’s a mostly-complete patch available for anyone who wants to give it a shot.
4. Excitebots: Trick Racing
Excite Truck was a solid racing game with a lot to recommend it, but it was almost immediately forgotten when Mario Kart Wii was released. When it came time for a sequel, Monster Games decided to just get really silly with it, replacing the trucks with Beast Wars-esque animal robots. If you played the recent Cruis’n Blast, it’s kind of like that. But, again, with animal robots. Animal robots who have to slide into bowling pins to get a strike during the middle of a race.
3. Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon
A gorgeous title by Namco Bandai and tri-Crescendo (best known for Eternal Sonata and their work on the Baiten Kaitos series), Fragile Dreams is a post-apocalyptic adventure game. Using the Wii Remote to control the protagonist’s flashlight, the player must battle ghosts, uncover the mysteries of the world, and find and rest at bonfires throughout the ruins of Tokyo. There are clear parallels to the later Namco Bandai-published Souls series here, and Fragile Dreams actually released around the same time as Demon’s Souls, beating it to market in Japan by just a couple of weeks. Fragile Dreams never quite caught on the same way, but it’s a unique experience that’s still worth playing today.
2. Rodea the Sky Soldier — Weirdest Best Wii Games
Ok, this one is a little confusing. Rodea the Sky Soldier is a game where you play as a flying android controlled with the Wii Remote alone. It had a weird development cycle, being completed by Yuji Naka’s Prope studio in 2011 but not actually released until years later, when Kadokawa Games simultaneously released ports for the Wii U and 3DS. These latter versions of the game were poorly regarded and don’t represent Naka’s original version for the game. The only way to get the good, Wii version of Rodea was to buy the initial print run of the Wii U release, meaning it can be tough to find a copy today. Thankfully, Wii emulation has come a long way in the intervening years.
1. Pandora’s Tower
Released near the end of the Wii’s lifetime, Pandora’s Tower didn’t get much uptake back in 2013. Developed by Ganbarion, who prior to Pandora’s Tower had only worked on licensed games like Jump Super Stars, the game is a fantasy tale about a hero trying to break the curse on his love, who is slowly turning into a monster. The core gameplay involves using the Wii remote to manipulate the Oraclos chain, which you use both to attack enemies and navigate the environment. There’s really nothing else like Pandora’s Tower, a game where you must periodically feed your sweetheart disgusting lumps of monster flesh to stop her from transforming into a horrifying creature and killing you. Maybe one day we’ll get a port on modern hardware, but for now if you want to try one of the weirdest and best games on the Wii, you’ll have to play it however you can.
