Hail, ye Nintendo faithful! Loyal folk that you are, a Wii U rests beneath your TV. The console never quite hit its stride and has now been replaced by the Nintendo Switch, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still some good games for it.
Check out the list below for the games that make the Wii U shine.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a monumental artistic achievement, a video game so creative and full of surprises that we’ll be talking about it for years to come. It’s also unlike any Zelda game before it. For years, Zelda games were defined by “no.” You can’t reach this place until later; you can’t solve this puzzle until you get the right item. Breath of the Wild is the best Zelda game to date, and it accomplishes that simply by saying yes.
A Good Match For: Anyone who likes games that let you explore and make your own fun; horse lovers.
Not A Good Match For: Anyone who preferred the strict structure of other recent Zelda games.
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Read our review.
Study our tips for the game.
Watch it in action.
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The great EAD Tokyo studio makes their Wii U debut with Super Mario 3D World, a game as attractive and fun as those others. It’s a hell of a time, an enjoyable hybrid of the more linear, classic side-scrolling Mario games and the go-anywhere 3D Mario games like Super Mario 64.
You can play as Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach or Toad or, with friends in the same room, all four at once. Some of the game might feel familiar, but this is not one of those safe New Super Mario games. Yes, there are plenty of goombas to hit and fireballs to throw. There’s also a lot that feels fresh.
A Good Match for: People bored of standard Mario fare who want something more experimental than the New Super Mario Bros. games.
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Not a Good Match For: People hungry for a game that makes the most of the Wii U. You can play the game entirely on the controller and sometimes have to blow on the GamePad or tap it from time to time.
Read our review.
Watch it in action.
Purchase from: The Wii U eShop or Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
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Have you ever wondered who would win in a fight between Peach and Luigi? What about between Luigi… and the Wii Fit Trainer? Okay, what about a fight between Peach, Luigi, the Wii Fit Trainer, and the dog from Duck Hunt? Thanks to Super Smash Bros, you can find out.
Super Smash Bros. contains a seemingly endless supply of bonus modes, alternate gameplay types, and hidden secrets, on top of all the fighting. But while there may be a lot of weird, funny side stuff to explore, the game still thrives in the ring.
A Good Match For: People who like playing games with friends and roommates, anyone who wants to watch Duck Hunt Dog repeatedly get his ass kicked by Little Mac.
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Not A Good Match For: People who don’t often have friends over to play games, people who don’t own a bunch of controllers for their Wii U, anyone looking for a game with a meaningful story.
Read our review.
Watch it in action.
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The Wii U’s big competitive online shooter isn’t much like other competitive online shooters; it’s more “Nintendo” than that. You play as a handful of squid-teens who compete with each other by shooting ink-guns all over the place, then quickly transforming into cephalopod form and zipping from place to place. Splatoon revels in its different-ness, and ornaments its joyful gameplay with a snappy, exuberant sense of style.
A Good Match For: Competitive players, people who like squids, people who like their shooters with a little (or a lot of) personality.
Not A Good Match For: Those looking for a more traditional online shooter, or more traditional shooter controls.
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Watch it in action.
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Take the demon battles of Shin Megami Tensei and the strategy of Fire Emblem. Mix in a bunch of Japanese teenagers who want to be famous but discover the pop idol world of Tokyo is infested with demons. What do you get? Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE.
The story is often silly and occasionally juvenile, but the modern Tokyo setting is refreshing. More importantly, the game’s turn-based battles, which are presented through the visual metaphor of transformed super-charged pop stars battling in crowded concert arenas, are satisfyingly strategic. The game also nicely uses the Wii U GamePad as a sort of smartphone that displays the many, many text messages characters send each other throughout the game.
A Good Match For: Fans of role-playing games looking for something not set in the usual locales.
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Not A Good Match For: People who don’t care about or dislike modern Japanese pop culture—this game is drenched in it.
Read our impressions of the game.
Watch it in action.
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Bright lights, loud music, and a towering dominatrix beating the living hell out of a bunch of monsters: Bayonetta gets the sequel she deserves. Everything the first game did, the second game does just as well, while throwing in a bunch of new weapons and abilities in on top. If you’ve ever wanted to whip a massive angel into submission using your hair, this is your game. Strike a pose.
A Good Match For: Fans of fast-moving action games like Devil May Cry and, well, the first Bayonetta.
Not A Good Match For: Anyone looking for something relaxed to play, people who prefer games with a more subtle, low-key aesthetic.
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Read our review.
Watch it in action.
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Take one of the prettiest games in the Legend of Zelda franchise. Re-master the graphics in high-definition and add stuff that streamlines and improves the play experience. You’ll wind up with a game that will make you re-think its place in the canon of Nintendo’s action RPG series.
A Good Match for:Zelda fans, people who hated the sailing in the original Wind Waker. The HD version introduces a Swift Sail tool, which improves the speed of your boat and frees you up from having to shift the wind on longer voyages.
Not a Good Match For: Players who wanted that too-long final section trimmed down. The infamous quest before Wind Waker’s ultimate showdown is still bloated and still kills the game’s momentum.
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Watch it in action.
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Supposedly conceived while Mario and Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto was thinking about gardening, the Pikmin games let players control an army of up to 100 little colorful creatures who behave like a cross between plants and ants. The game is played more or less from an overhead view.
The playing field is a zoomed-in version of Earth where, to our titular characters’ view, flowers might as well be trees. Players control any of three diminutive explorers from Alph, Brittany, Charlie, all of whom can pluck the Pikmin out of the ground, marshal them to swarm big bug-like enemies and haul what are, to our explorers, massive, house-sized pieces of fruit. The better you do this stuff, the easier it will be to grow a bigger Pikmin army, which can in turn take on tougher enemies and overcome trickier, puzzling obstacles. This Wii U sequel introduces excellent co-op and competitive modes to supplement a fairly brief nine-hour campaign.
A Good Match for: Strategy-gaming fans who enjoy the likes of StarCraft or Command & Conquer and are therefore looking for a game that involves using wits and reflexes to conceive a complex a multi-unit plan and carry it out.
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Not a Good Match For: Those who played Pikmin games on the GameCube or Wii already and are looking for something that feels more like a sequel than like a refinement of something they played before.
Read our review.
Watch it in action.
Purchase from:Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
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Do you like Mario? Of course you do. Well, thanks to Super Mario Maker, you can now have endless on-tap Mario and eat mushrooms until your eyeballs pop out. Mario Maker is ostensibly a game that lets you make your own custom Mario levels—and it’s very fun to do that. But it’s just as fun to be a player, working through the Nintendo-made levels on the disc before branching out to see if you can survive the weirdest, funniest, hardest fan-created Mario levels you’ve ever played.
A Good Match For: Mario fans, people who’ve always wanted to try designing video game levels but haven’t had the tools.
Not A Good Match For: People who hate Mario, those who would prefer to just play straightforward Mario game.
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Read our review.
Watch it in action.
Study our tips for how to find the best stuff.
Check out our list of 20 courses you should play.
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Ah, the blue shell. There may be no better metaphor for the bleakness of life. One minute you’re cruising along, on top of the world, and then… BAM, you’re totally hosed. Just when you thought you had it in the bag, life throws a blue shell.
Mario Kart 8 isn’t really all that philosophical, of course. It’s the same Mario Kart formula re-tuned and polished to an absurd degree, easily one of the most fun party games you can play and one of the best games for the Wii U.
A Good Match For: People who like moving really fast, people who like seeing Luigi look really mean.
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Not a Good Match For: Those who loved Battle Mode in past Mario Kart games. For some inexplicable reason, MK8’s battle mode takes place on normal racetracks, which significantly dilutes the appeal.
Read our review.
Watch a huge tournament that we staged at Gawker HQ.
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Being a superhero is fun enough on its own—being 100 superheroes at once is just ridiculous. As the eponymous Wonderful 100 (the extra 1 is YOU), your job in this game is to, naturally, save the earth from marauding aliens. You do this by morphing your gang of caped crusaders into guns and swords and boomerangs in a series of satisfyingly chaotic fights. Combine frenetic action with some spectacular fights across giant robots and incredible landscapes, and you’ve got one of the Wii U’s most original games.
A Good Match For: People who love fast-paced action games that challenge both minds and thumbs. This is a game that takes commitment, and if you stick with it, you’ll be rewarded.
Not a Good Match for: Folks wanting a game that’s easy to pick up and enjoy. This one takes some learning.
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Watch it in action.
Purchase from: The Wii U eShop or Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
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ZombiU’s undead apocalypse feels fresher because of its London setting, but it’s really the chain-link single-player campaign and asymmetrical multiplayer that make it shine. There’s something morbidly apropos about having to find and loot the walking corpse of the character you previously controlled—to keep the best gear after you die—while playing solo. And facing off against others in the game’s asymmetrical multiplayer battles makes controlling the bad guys more fun than being the hero.
A Good Match for: Passive-aggressive survival horror fans, those looking for a game that uses the Wii U controller in interesting ways.
Not a Good Match For: Those who want meaningful relationships with playable characters. Other than “Zombies! Holy crap! Don’t die!”, the avatars you’ll control in ZombiU single-player don’t get much in the way of backstory and motivation.
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Watch it in action.
Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
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How has this list changed? Read back through our update history:
Update 3/16/2017: In what may be this list’s final update, we’ve added The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and removed Nintendo Land.
Update 8/18/2016: We’ve added Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE and removed Little Inferno.
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Update 10/2/2015: Super Mario Maker easily earns a spot on the list, edging out Rayman Legends.
Update 6/29/2015: Splatoon ink-blasts its way onto the list, and The LEGO Movie Videogame steps down.
Update 11/25/2014: Two games enter, two games leave: Bayonetta 2 and Super Smash Bros. Wii U make it on the list, while Bit. Trip Runner 2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution say adios.
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6/25/2014 Update: Surprising no one, Mario Kart 8 breezes its way onto this list, knocking off Need for Speed: Most Wanted U.
5/2/2014 Update: One LEGO game enters, another leaves - the terrific LEGO Movie Videogame finally unseats Lego City Undercover for a spot on the list.
12/11/13 Update: With a new design comes an opportunity to add some overlooked games and remove a couple of others. Both Mass Effect 3 and Scribblenauts Unlimited leave to make room for Deus Ex: Human Revolution: The Director’s Cut and Need for Speed: Most Wanted U.
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11/22/13: Super Mario 3D World won our hearts and attention just in time for the end of the year. It’s edged off New Super Mario Bros. U for a spot on this list.
09/20/13: The moment you’ve waited for is here. At last, Nintendo’s latest home console has gotten a price drop. Lucky for you, the Wii U’s library has swelled with more great games since the machine’s launch. So, in celebration of affordability and quality, we’re updating the list of what we think are the best games on the platform. Pikmin 3 bumps Assassin’s Creed III, Rayman Legends replaces Trine 2: Director’s Cut, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD take the spot once held by Mighty Switch Force: Hyper Drive Edition and The Wonderful 101 muscles out Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.
04/18/13: Slowly but surely, the Wii U’s software library is getting stronger. Games like Lego City Undercover and Runner 2—both new additions to this Bests list—offer up fun and clever experiences for Nintendo’s newest home console. Give ‘em a warm welcome, won’t you?
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Want more of the best games on each system? Check out our complete directory:
The Best PC Games • The Best PS4 Games • The Best Xbox One Games • The Best Nintendo Switch Games • The Best Wii U Games • The Best 3DS Games • The Best PS Vita Games • The Best Xbox 360 Games • The Best PS3 Games • The Best Wii Games • The Best iPhone Games • The Best iPad Games • The Best Android Games • The Best PSP Games • The Best Facebook Games • The Best DS Games • The Best Mac Games • The Best Browser Games • The Best PC Mods
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Note: While some games on this list are download-only, most if not all of them can be purchased through the Wii U’s online store. If you buy any of these games through the retail links in this post, our parent company may get a small share of the sale through the retailers’ affiliates program.
You may be hesitant to explore the mysterious world of Wii Homebrew, in which devoted hackers have created a system that allows gamers to install software such as console emulators and media players onto their Wiis. There are risks; it could void your warranty or even put your console at risk. Homebrew also has the potential to confuse and aggravate - but once you take the plunge, you may find it opens up a world of new Wii possibilities.
Homebrew refers to the ability to run software on the Wii that is not licensed or sanctioned by Nintendo. This includes homemade games, game engines that can run old PC games and applications that do things like play DVDs through your Wii or use the balance board as a scale. You can even back up your Wii settings and save games to an SD card so you can restore them in the event your Wii goes bad. This last technique can also be used to run pirated games, which is one reason Nintendo keeps trying to eradicate homebrew with system updates.
The software to do all this is free, although some shady operators package and sell these free tools. Don’t buy anything; just refer back to the tutorial mentioned at the top of the page and do it yourself.
Hackers look for hidden passages into the heart of a machine, and the first secret door found in the Wii was the Twilight Hack, which used an oddity in the game The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess to allow users to install homebrew software.
One of Nintendo's periodic system updates closed the secret Twilight Princess door before we'd ever heard of it. But later a new hack arrived called Bannerbomb. Unlike the Twilight Hack, Bannerbomb does not use a game to open up the Wii, but rather uses the console’s own operating system. Bannerbomb opens up a hidden passage for a program called the HackMii Installer that can install the Homebrew Channel, an interface through which you can use Homebrew applications. HackMii also installs DVDx, which unlocks the capability of the Wii to read DVDs (one of the mysteries of the Wii is why Nintendo doesn't support this functionality even though it's built into the hardware).
Put Bannerbomb and the Hackmii Installer on an SD Card and you can soon have your own Homebrew Channel. This shows up in your main Wii menu like every other channel, offering a portal to homebrew software.
After installing the Homebrew Channel by putting Bannerbomb and the Hackmii Installer on an SD Card, putting that in a Wii and following the instructions on the Bannerbomb site, we wound up with a screen showing bubbles continually floating upward. Needless to say, it was confusing.
Bannerbomb doesn’t explain this, but you also need to put applications on that SD Card in a folder called /apps. First download the Homebrew Browser (HBB), which allows you to browse a list of homebrew games and software and download them directly to your Wii from the Internet. If you have problems with HBB try reformatting the SD disk. The HBB should work after that, making installing new homebrew software as simple as choosing it from a list and clicking Download. Without HBB you have to copy software from your PC to your SD card to install it.
Next, we installed SCUMMVM, which lets you play old LucasArts point-and-click adventure games on the Wii. To do this, you need to copy the original game files to the SD card or a USB drive, so you need to already own the PC game itself. There are a few games you can download for free from the SCUMMVM website, including Beneath a Steel Sky (from the folks who went on to make the Broken Sword series) and Flight of the Amazon Queen.
There are other old games you can play, including Doom and Quake (once again you need the original games, but you can also play the original freeware demos), and emulators for the Genesis, SNES, Playstation and other consoles.
Besides games, there are Homebrew applications such as an FTP server, MP3 players, a metronome and, of course, Linux and Unix shells (because if there’s one thing all hackers love, it is Unix).
The application you may find most useful is the media player MPlayer CE. If you often download video from the internet and watched it through your TV via the Playstation 3, you probably already know the PS3 doesn’t support a lot of video formats. Sometimes you need to convert files before you can play them. If you switch the external hard drive with your videos from the PS3 to the Wii, you may discover it can play everything you have, making your hacked Wii a better multimedia player than either the PS3 or the Xbox 360.
Homebrew is not for everyone, requiring a higher degree of comfort with technology than many people have. But if you’re up to it, and if you would like to play freeware Wii games and do things on the Wii that Nintendo never intended to let you do, homebrew is a fascinating possibility.
Now that the Wii has been superseded by the Wii U, you might wonder if there is homebrew for it as well. There apparently is, although you may have a Wii U that's updated to a version that can't be hacked (at the moment).
The Wii U contains the software architecture of the original Wii, and that homebrew can be installed within the game's Wii mode.
Nintendo's Wii U has launched, and the company hopes to capture a whole new generation of fans. Wii owners know the console's WiiWare platform is host to some of the coolest little titles ever to hit a Nintendo machine, but if you're a Nintendo newbie, how do you know which downloads to sample first?
Well, obviously that's a somewhat rhetorical question as you're already reading an article in which we tell you exactly what you need to know. So let's get on with the business of recommending some games..
Two things that you stand a far better chance of encountering outside your living room are pinball machines and extra-terrestrials. So thank goodness for Alien Crush, which allowed shut-ins of the early 90s a chance to get their fix of multipliers, Action Ball showdowns and Giger-esque space creatures; and thank Battle Arena Toshinden developer Tamsoft, for updating the cult TG16 title with Wii-era physics and visual flair.
Alien Crush Returns marries the tactile physicality of three xenomorphic-looking pin-tables to a videogame-ready structure of alien-hunting, powerup-collecting and boss-battling. It's not as substantial as the likes of the XBLA/PC's Pinball FX 2; but then again, this is the only pinball game that doubles as an off-brand Alien adaptation, which must count for something?
Twitch-gaming may have had its birth in the unforgiving arcade shooters and console platformers of the bygone 80s and 90s, but the genre continues to scale new heights of amphetamine-paced insanity with series like the Bit.Trip sextet. Oh, quit your giggling: that's the proper term for a six-member musical ensemble, and Bit.Trip is as musical as it is retrogamer-friendly.
The games' Atari-inspired graphics mask a multi-colored, gorgeously chiptune-ful aesthetic that gets richer and more rewarding the closer you get to the series' frenetic, strobe-pumping heart. You haven't truly learned the meaning of the words just one more try until you've guided CommanderVideo through this six-phase epic of hyperspeed reflex-action.
As you'll see in the recommendations to come, the oh-so-contemporary WiiWare platform turned out to be the perfect outlet for no small number of retro reimaginings - playing host to titles whose post-2000 revival demanded a little more polish than a simple Virtual Console dust-off could provide. Blaster Master: Overdrive is one such, reskinning Sunsoft's 1988 platform-shooter for the new millennium with tweaked gameplay and all manner of natty cosmetic touch-ups.
Underneath it all, though, fans of the original will find much unchanged: you're still a plucky human commanding a superpowered tank with the same moniker as our esteemed EIC, leaping along side-scrolling segments broken up by top-down exploration and wishing the controls were a little more user-friendly. (Come on, like the NES original was such a triumph of ergonomic intuition).
While Japanese players were offered the option of a full-fledged Bomberman Blast complete with extensive story mode, English-speaking explosion-enthusiasts have to settle for this lower-priced release focusing entirely on the game's Battle Mode. What kind of a monster would slash the price of a Bomberman game by offering only the bit people actually want to play, right?
While contemporary titles struggle to fit two players onscreen without compromising too many pyrotechnics, Bomberman Blast can do eight-player local matches without breaking a sweat. Whether the Wii U's way of handling Gamecube controllers will half this number, we've yet to discover; but with the game still offering worldwide online PvP, even this compromise would hardly be a deal-breaker.
Nowadays you may know Taito's bubble-spitting dinosaurs from the ubiquitous Puzzle Bobble, but let's not forget where Bub and Bob got their start: in the original platformer-with-a-twist, 1986's Bubble Bobble. It's hard to think of many mid-80s actioners that hold up this well today but the faithfully-recreated original is just Bubble Bobble Plus!'s opening salvo.
Besides 100 levels of authentic one- or two-player whale-slaying fun, Taito's in-house remake offers modern additions such as 100 new levels, a four-player Arrange mode starring new dragon-ladies Pab and Peb, and downloadable plus-difficult level packs offering further four-player challenge.
A retro treat that consciously harkens back to the series' cartridge-based glory days, Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth (lordy is that an unwieldy title) won't have you breaking out the graph-paper like the series' contemporary offerings; instead, retro-revival specialist M2 offers a SNES-flavored reimagining of the series' first Game Boy outing.
With such an old-skool pedigree (The Adventure was the third original title in the series), M2's game eschews the massive, retread-heavy gameplay of post-Symphony of the Night titles in favor of tight, scrolling gauntlets of zombies, Draculas and yes! Medusa Heads. If that gets your pulse racing in a good, non-homicidal way (those Flea Men, right?!), this bracingly straightforward jaunt is worth a look.
Do you like games where you can explore a vast environment from the perspective of a solitary humanoid character, gradually unlocking new paths and abilities through your intrepid attention to detail and enemy-fighting prowess? Given that you're reading about Nintendo games, we're going to guess probably. They don't call it the Alex Kidd-Vania genre, after all.
Cave Story is a contemporary tribute to formative titles like Castlevania and Metroid, built from pixels, love and sweat off the brow of indie developer Daisuke Pixel Amaya. The title borrows liberally from the structure of those games and their ilk, but Amaya shows himself a canny interpreter of modern gaming trends, with a well-constructed internal universe whose own story unfolds alongside your own. Battle chess for windows 10.
As you may've noticed by now, sometimes when classics this old come back for another round, 100% authenticity isn't actually the first thing we want out of them. A title like Excitebike may have thrilled audiences in 1985, but then so did Lionel Richie - so to appeal to the discerning ADD standards of today, many NES-era classics look better buffed up with some new-millennium sizzle.
Excitebike: World Rally is a prime example: based on the landmark racer that served as a US launch title for the original NES, the game's WiiWare update got a new 3D gloss courtesy of Monster Games (brains behind underloved semi-sequel Excite Truck). The result's a twitchy little time-trial racer that, while no challenger to today's full-fledged exemplars of the genre, bridges the 25-year gap since NES owners first discovered Excitebike.
The original LostWinds was a launch title for the WiiWare platform, and immediately started the service off on the right foot with its clever incorporation of the motion-controls that, back in 2008, we still thought might be a passing fad. Here was a platformer whose central point-'n'-blow mechanic set it apart from all the press-A-to-jump adventures that'd gone before, while honoring the formula with plus-sized Metroidvania-style level design.
For the quickly-approved follow-up, LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias, Frontier Developments set its sights higher, beefing up the relatively scant playtime with more abilities, a deeper story, and a season-changing game mechanic. The result was a self-contained adventure that's won acclaim on Wii and iOS alike though the tactile experience of guiding hero Toku with WiiMote-controlled gusts of wind still can't be beat.
Hail, ye Nintendo faithful! Loyal folk that you are, a Wii U rests beneath your TV. The console never quite hit its stride and has now been replaced by the Nintendo Switch, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still some good games for it.
Check out the list below for the games that make the Wii U shine.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a monumental artistic achievement, a video game so creative and full of surprises that we’ll be talking about it for years to come. It’s also unlike any Zelda game before it. For years, Zelda games were defined by “no.” You can’t reach this place until later; you can’t solve this puzzle until you get the right item. Breath of the Wild is the best Zelda game to date, and it accomplishes that simply by saying yes.
A Good Match For: Anyone who likes games that let you explore and make your own fun; horse lovers.
Not A Good Match For: Anyone who preferred the strict structure of other recent Zelda games.
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Read our review.
Study our tips for the game.
Watch it in action.
Purchase From:Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | Gamestop
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The great EAD Tokyo studio makes their Wii U debut with Super Mario 3D World, a game as attractive and fun as those others. It’s a hell of a time, an enjoyable hybrid of the more linear, classic side-scrolling Mario games and the go-anywhere 3D Mario games like Super Mario 64.
You can play as Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach or Toad or, with friends in the same room, all four at once. Some of the game might feel familiar, but this is not one of those safe New Super Mario games. Yes, there are plenty of goombas to hit and fireballs to throw. There’s also a lot that feels fresh.
A Good Match for: People bored of standard Mario fare who want something more experimental than the New Super Mario Bros. games.
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Not a Good Match For: People hungry for a game that makes the most of the Wii U. You can play the game entirely on the controller and sometimes have to blow on the GamePad or tap it from time to time.
Read our review.
Watch it in action.
Purchase from: The Wii U eShop or Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
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Have you ever wondered who would win in a fight between Peach and Luigi? What about between Luigi… and the Wii Fit Trainer? Okay, what about a fight between Peach, Luigi, the Wii Fit Trainer, and the dog from Duck Hunt? Thanks to Super Smash Bros, you can find out.
Super Smash Bros. contains a seemingly endless supply of bonus modes, alternate gameplay types, and hidden secrets, on top of all the fighting. But while there may be a lot of weird, funny side stuff to explore, the game still thrives in the ring.
A Good Match For: People who like playing games with friends and roommates, anyone who wants to watch Duck Hunt Dog repeatedly get his ass kicked by Little Mac.
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Not A Good Match For: People who don’t often have friends over to play games, people who don’t own a bunch of controllers for their Wii U, anyone looking for a game with a meaningful story.
Read our review.
Watch it in action.
Purchase From: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | Gamestop
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The Wii U’s big competitive online shooter isn’t much like other competitive online shooters; it’s more “Nintendo” than that. You play as a handful of squid-teens who compete with each other by shooting ink-guns all over the place, then quickly transforming into cephalopod form and zipping from place to place. Splatoon revels in its different-ness, and ornaments its joyful gameplay with a snappy, exuberant sense of style.
A Good Match For: Competitive players, people who like squids, people who like their shooters with a little (or a lot of) personality.
Not A Good Match For: Those looking for a more traditional online shooter, or more traditional shooter controls.
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Read our review.
Watch it in action.
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Take the demon battles of Shin Megami Tensei and the strategy of Fire Emblem. Mix in a bunch of Japanese teenagers who want to be famous but discover the pop idol world of Tokyo is infested with demons. What do you get? Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE.
The story is often silly and occasionally juvenile, but the modern Tokyo setting is refreshing. More importantly, the game’s turn-based battles, which are presented through the visual metaphor of transformed super-charged pop stars battling in crowded concert arenas, are satisfyingly strategic. The game also nicely uses the Wii U GamePad as a sort of smartphone that displays the many, many text messages characters send each other throughout the game.
A Good Match For: Fans of role-playing games looking for something not set in the usual locales.
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Not A Good Match For: People who don’t care about or dislike modern Japanese pop culture—this game is drenched in it.
Read our impressions of the game.
Watch it in action.
Purchase From:Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | Gamestop
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Bright lights, loud music, and a towering dominatrix beating the living hell out of a bunch of monsters: Bayonetta gets the sequel she deserves. Everything the first game did, the second game does just as well, while throwing in a bunch of new weapons and abilities in on top. If you’ve ever wanted to whip a massive angel into submission using your hair, this is your game. Strike a pose.
A Good Match For: Fans of fast-moving action games like Devil May Cry and, well, the first Bayonetta.
Not A Good Match For: Anyone looking for something relaxed to play, people who prefer games with a more subtle, low-key aesthetic.
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Read our review.
Watch it in action.
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Take one of the prettiest games in the Legend of Zelda franchise. Re-master the graphics in high-definition and add stuff that streamlines and improves the play experience. You’ll wind up with a game that will make you re-think its place in the canon of Nintendo’s action RPG series.
A Good Match for:Zelda fans, people who hated the sailing in the original Wind Waker. The HD version introduces a Swift Sail tool, which improves the speed of your boat and frees you up from having to shift the wind on longer voyages.
Not a Good Match For: Players who wanted that too-long final section trimmed down. The infamous quest before Wind Waker’s ultimate showdown is still bloated and still kills the game’s momentum.
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Watch it in action.
Purchase from:Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
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Supposedly conceived while Mario and Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto was thinking about gardening, the Pikmin games let players control an army of up to 100 little colorful creatures who behave like a cross between plants and ants. The game is played more or less from an overhead view.
The playing field is a zoomed-in version of Earth where, to our titular characters’ view, flowers might as well be trees. Players control any of three diminutive explorers from Alph, Brittany, Charlie, all of whom can pluck the Pikmin out of the ground, marshal them to swarm big bug-like enemies and haul what are, to our explorers, massive, house-sized pieces of fruit. The better you do this stuff, the easier it will be to grow a bigger Pikmin army, which can in turn take on tougher enemies and overcome trickier, puzzling obstacles. This Wii U sequel introduces excellent co-op and competitive modes to supplement a fairly brief nine-hour campaign.
A Good Match for: Strategy-gaming fans who enjoy the likes of StarCraft or Command & Conquer and are therefore looking for a game that involves using wits and reflexes to conceive a complex a multi-unit plan and carry it out.
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Not a Good Match For: Those who played Pikmin games on the GameCube or Wii already and are looking for something that feels more like a sequel than like a refinement of something they played before.
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Watch it in action.
Purchase from:Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
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Do you like Mario? Of course you do. Well, thanks to Super Mario Maker, you can now have endless on-tap Mario and eat mushrooms until your eyeballs pop out. Mario Maker is ostensibly a game that lets you make your own custom Mario levels—and it’s very fun to do that. But it’s just as fun to be a player, working through the Nintendo-made levels on the disc before branching out to see if you can survive the weirdest, funniest, hardest fan-created Mario levels you’ve ever played.
A Good Match For: Mario fans, people who’ve always wanted to try designing video game levels but haven’t had the tools.
Not A Good Match For: People who hate Mario, those who would prefer to just play straightforward Mario game.
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Study our tips for how to find the best stuff.
Check out our list of 20 courses you should play.
Purchase From:Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | Gamestop
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Ah, the blue shell. There may be no better metaphor for the bleakness of life. One minute you’re cruising along, on top of the world, and then… BAM, you’re totally hosed. Just when you thought you had it in the bag, life throws a blue shell.
Mario Kart 8 isn’t really all that philosophical, of course. It’s the same Mario Kart formula re-tuned and polished to an absurd degree, easily one of the most fun party games you can play and one of the best games for the Wii U.
A Good Match For: People who like moving really fast, people who like seeing Luigi look really mean.
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Not a Good Match For: Those who loved Battle Mode in past Mario Kart games. For some inexplicable reason, MK8’s battle mode takes place on normal racetracks, which significantly dilutes the appeal.
Read our review.
Watch a huge tournament that we staged at Gawker HQ.
Purchase From:Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | Gamestop
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Being a superhero is fun enough on its own—being 100 superheroes at once is just ridiculous. As the eponymous Wonderful 100 (the extra 1 is YOU), your job in this game is to, naturally, save the earth from marauding aliens. You do this by morphing your gang of caped crusaders into guns and swords and boomerangs in a series of satisfyingly chaotic fights. Combine frenetic action with some spectacular fights across giant robots and incredible landscapes, and you’ve got one of the Wii U’s most original games.
A Good Match For: People who love fast-paced action games that challenge both minds and thumbs. This is a game that takes commitment, and if you stick with it, you’ll be rewarded.
Not a Good Match for: Folks wanting a game that’s easy to pick up and enjoy. This one takes some learning.
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Watch it in action.
Purchase from: The Wii U eShop or Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
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ZombiU’s undead apocalypse feels fresher because of its London setting, but it’s really the chain-link single-player campaign and asymmetrical multiplayer that make it shine. There’s something morbidly apropos about having to find and loot the walking corpse of the character you previously controlled—to keep the best gear after you die—while playing solo. And facing off against others in the game’s asymmetrical multiplayer battles makes controlling the bad guys more fun than being the hero.
A Good Match for: Passive-aggressive survival horror fans, those looking for a game that uses the Wii U controller in interesting ways.
Not a Good Match For: Those who want meaningful relationships with playable characters. Other than “Zombies! Holy crap! Don’t die!”, the avatars you’ll control in ZombiU single-player don’t get much in the way of backstory and motivation.
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Watch it in action.
Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
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How has this list changed? Read back through our update history:
Update 3/16/2017: In what may be this list’s final update, we’ve added The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and removed Nintendo Land.
Update 8/18/2016: We’ve added Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE and removed Little Inferno. Dea schedule of drugs.
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Update 10/2/2015: Super Mario Maker easily earns a spot on the list, edging out Rayman Legends.
Update 6/29/2015: Splatoon ink-blasts its way onto the list, and The LEGO Movie Videogame steps down.
Update 11/25/2014: Two games enter, two games leave: Bayonetta 2 and Super Smash Bros. Wii U make it on the list, while Bit. Trip Runner 2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution say adios.
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6/25/2014 Update: Surprising no one, Mario Kart 8 breezes its way onto this list, knocking off Need for Speed: Most Wanted U.
5/2/2014 Update: One LEGO game enters, another leaves - the terrific LEGO Movie Videogame finally unseats Lego City Undercover for a spot on the list.
12/11/13 Update: With a new design comes an opportunity to add some overlooked games and remove a couple of others. Both Mass Effect 3 and Scribblenauts Unlimited leave to make room for Deus Ex: Human Revolution: The Director’s Cut and Need for Speed: Most Wanted U.
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11/22/13: Super Mario 3D World won our hearts and attention just in time for the end of the year. It’s edged off New Super Mario Bros. U for a spot on this list.
09/20/13: The moment you’ve waited for is here. At last, Nintendo’s latest home console has gotten a price drop. Lucky for you, the Wii U’s library has swelled with more great games since the machine’s launch. So, in celebration of affordability and quality, we’re updating the list of what we think are the best games on the platform. Pikmin 3 bumps Assassin’s Creed III, Rayman Legends replaces Trine 2: Director’s Cut, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD take the spot once held by Mighty Switch Force: Hyper Drive Edition and The Wonderful 101 muscles out Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.
04/18/13: Slowly but surely, the Wii U’s software library is getting stronger. Games like Lego City Undercover and Runner 2—both new additions to this Bests list—offer up fun and clever experiences for Nintendo’s newest home console. Give ‘em a warm welcome, won’t you?
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Want more of the best games on each system? Check out our complete directory:
The Best PC Games • The Best PS4 Games • The Best Xbox One Games • The Best Nintendo Switch Games • The Best Wii U Games • The Best 3DS Games • The Best PS Vita Games • The Best Xbox 360 Games • The Best PS3 Games • The Best Wii Games • The Best iPhone Games • The Best iPad Games • The Best Android Games • The Best PSP Games • The Best Facebook Games • The Best DS Games • The Best Mac Games • The Best Browser Games • The Best PC Mods
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Note: While some games on this list are download-only, most if not all of them can be purchased through the Wii U’s online store. If you buy any of these games through the retail links in this post, our parent company may get a small share of the sale through the retailers’ affiliates program.