I love quirky and unusual games, and the Wii had plenty of them! So for this part of the blog series, we’ll take a look at some of my favorite kooky games. And any other Wii games I couldn’t fit into any of the other categories!

Animal Crossing: City Folk

I LOVE Animal Crossing! It’s not really THAT weird, but I couldn’t think of another category to put it in. I still like the GameCube AC game better, and it’s one of my top five favorite games of all time. But the Wii version is still fun. Not only that, but my mom likes the game, too! In fact, she enjoyed it so much that whenever she was around, she taught herself how to turn on the Wii so she could play it if I was away. That’s a big deal for her! We’re both excited for the 3DS Animal Crossing game. In fact, when it comes out next year, I’ll buy my mom a 3DS so she can play it!

Of course, there are some things about the Wii AC game that I did NOT like. One was that the city part of the game was really more of a strip mall. And about nine or ten months after I started playing, my save file got corrupted so I couldn’t see my town anymore. It’s weird because that’s the ONLY time a save file got messed up on my Wii, I’ve never had any other problem with any other game. And believe me, I checked. So I stopped playing the game a little earlier than I wanted, but playing for almost a full year is still a pretty long time!

Furu Furu Park

The Wii had WAY too many mini-game collections, but this one stood out because it was so quirky and Japanese-y. Plus, it was made by Taito, so many of the games were based on classic titles like KiKi KaiKai (Pocky and Rocky), and Sonic Blast Man. I’m a big Taito fan, so I really dug that.

Kororinpa: Marble Mania & Marble Saga

The Wii also had plenty of ‘tilt the maze to roll the marble around’ games. You’d think Super Monkey Ball would be the best, but it actually kind of sucked on the Wii. The best one of these kinds of games, in my opinion, were the Kororinpa marble rolling games from Hudson. Like I said, Hudson did a great job of supporting the Wii. These two games had excellent control and some neat classic Hudson references, including Bomberman. I liked the first game a little better than the second, but both were fun.

Major Minor’s Majestic March

Actually this game wasn’t very good, but I had to put it here for two reasons. One, it’s a marching band game. I never thought they’d make one of those. I was in marching band in high school and always wondered what a game about that would be like. It’s pretty weird. The other significant thing about this game is the characters were designed by the same guy who did the ones for PaRappa the Rapper.

No More Heroes & No More Heroes 2

I didn’t really like the main part of these games. A little bit too violent and gory for my tastes. Even if the violence was way over the top and cartoony, and the blood spurting from enemies looked more like piñata candy. I’m just a big baby, really. But no, the thing I liked about these titles were the 8-bit game references. In fact, in the sequel, the side jobs you could take were all 8-bit based mini-games! I had my brother Jeff play the main game, and all I would do was play the 8-bit job parts!

Rhythm Heaven Fever

This music game was done by the same folks who did the Wario Ware games, so you know it’s weird. What’s even weirder is the controls. No motion controls at all, you just use the A and B buttons to play. I think at one point they wanted to make it have motion controls, since many of the games have you swinging something around. But I think that in the end, they decided that the motion controls were not precise enough for this difficult game, so they ditched them. Good choice, I think.

Sam & Max Season One & Two

You can play these point and click adventure classics on PC, Xbox, and more, but I just like the fact that they put them on disc on the Wii. I have them both. Pointing the Wii remote at the TV does make the controls feel more intuitive, I have to admit. It’s too bad the third season wasn’t available on Wii disc. Oh well. If you’ve never played TellTale’s Sam & Max games before, I highly recommend you do. Sam & Max are really the only comic book characters I ever really got into.

The Munchables

When the Wii first came out, everyone thought Namco should make a Katamari Damacy game for it using Wii motion controls. There’s probably a good reason why Namco didn’t do that. As much as I like Katamari, I’m kind of glad they didn’t make a Wii game. Although I do wish they would’ve done a Point Blank game on the Wii. Anyway, The Munchables is the closest thing to a Wii Katamari game we’ll ever get. It’s really like a mix of Pac-Man and Katamari (although I think Katamari is a cleverly disguised Pac-Man game in itself). In the game you control a munching monster who can eat anything in sight, then grows bigger so you can eat larger things. I think it must’ve been done more on the Bandai side of Namco Bandai, because it also has a Tamagotchi vibe to it. Anyway, it’s a pretty quirky game but also surprisingly fun.

Wario Ware: Smooth Moves

This was one of the first Wii games I was truly excited for. It’s not the best in the series, but I still enjoyed it and the game provided plenty of laughs. I can’t wait for the Wii U Wario Ware game currently titled Game & Wario.

Wii Music/Play/Party

Aside from Wii Sports, Nintendo released other games in the “Wii” series to attract casual gamers and use their Mii characters. Hardcore gamers snubbed these, but I loved them. Even though it got panned by reviewers, my friends and I enjoyed Wii Music way more than what we should have. If you look at it as more of a music toy rather than a game, it’s pretty fun. The Wii Play games were just a bunch of mini-games, but they were still very playable. And finally, Wii Party was a neat take on the Mario Party formula. I liked how many options you had to choose from depending on how many people were playing. Even a party of one could have fun!

And that’s all for now! What are YOUR favorite weird and wacky Wii games? Next time on my “We Love the Wii” blog series, we’ll look at my favorite 3-D adventures! Later!

Tags: Misc