One of my favorite video game genres are collections of old arcade games or other retro compilations. So I decided to make a whole blog about my preferred ones for the Wii in Part 2 of my blog series on my favorite Wii games. I know these kinds of games don’t use the Wii’s motion control strengths, and some of these can be found on other consoles as well. But I enjoyed them most on the Wii so they go here anyway.

Data East Arcade Classics

This one was only on the Wii, surprisingly. It had a lot of games from the now-defunct Data East company. Like BurgerTime, Bad Dudes, Magical Drop 3, Lock N Chase, Side Pocket, Caveman Ninja, and many more! I liked that a lot of the games on here I’ve never heard of. That’s one of my favorite things about arcade collections is when you find a retro title you’re not familiar with. It’s fun to learn about those!

Metal Slug Anthology

This was actually one of the very first Wii games I got! I think this was out for other systems at the time, too, but I had the Wii version. It has the first 6 Metal Slug games, plus XX (which was a reworked version of 3). Lots of great artwork to unlock and plenty of run and gun action to satisfy Metal Slug fans. My favorite to play as was Eri, but I liked how in later games you could pick Ralf and Clark from the Ikari Warriors. In fact, in Metal Slug 7 (not on this collection), I hear there’s a secret or a download that lets you play as Leona, too!

Metroid Prime Trilogy

I guess I could’ve put Metroid Prime 3 under the 3-D Adventures part I’ll do later, but I’m sticking it here because I want to. This is an awesome collection that includes all three Metroid Prime games. The first two have been reworked with motion controls, and Prime 3 was already on the Wii so they didn’t have to worry about that. At first I didn’t think I would like the Prime games, but I ended up loving them. Except Echoes did get a little bit too hard. I hear that Nintendo stopped printing the trilogy, so if you see it in a store anywhere, get it! I’m definitely holding onto my copy, that’s for sure! It’s too bad that Metroid: Other M turned out so disappointing. It wasn’t necessarily a BAD game, but not up to Metroid caliber quality. Definitely the worst of the series and you won’t find it on my “We Love the Wii” blogs.

Namco Museum Remix/Megamix

This one has a selection of classic Namco games, plus updated versions of classics with motion controls. For instance, the Galaga Remix game lets you aim at the bugs with the remote. All the games have Pac-Man in them, too. A couple of years later, they repackaged the same game and called it Megamix, and added one new motion control game and changed the selection of arcade classics to more popular ones. A little cheap for them to do that, but I have both anyway since I’m crazy.

Kirby’s Dream Collection

This one just came out and I recently wrote a blog about it, so I won’t talk about it much here. All I can say is that it’s the best Wii game collection, and probably one of the last great Wii games period. Six classic main Kirby titles, a timeline, episodes of the cartoon, an excellent art book, and other goodies make this one fantastic collection. The hardest part of this game is deciding which one to play first!

And those are my favorite Wii game collections! What are your favorites? Next time on Part 3 of my “We Love the Wii” blog series, we’ll talk about my favorite Virtual Console and WiiWare titles! Later! –Cary

Tags: Misc