Wii would like to play these games again
A few weeks ago, Seth Sturgill, a podcast acquaintance of mine, put out some feelers on Twitter for games to cover on his Keep Nintendo Weird podcast. I’ve been on the show twice before, talking about Pocket Card Jockey and Part Time UFO. If you know anything about me, you know I hold both those games close to my heart. So I was happy to give them just a little bit more coverage on his podcast, even if I stumbled over my words more than Joe Biden stumbles up the stairs. With Seth’s latest call for titles to talk about, there was only one that came to mind. It’s this weird Nintendo exclusive designed by Martin Hollis, arguably best known for his work with Rare on Killer Instinct, Perfect Dark, and GoldenEye 007. Those games are a far cry from the one that popped into my mind. Bonsai Barber has no blood or bones, but it does have berries. And carrots. And corn. And cauliflower.
It’s a delightful game, and while I’m sure I’ll appear on the Keep Nintendo Weird podcast to gush about my love for it someday in the future, reminiscing about my time spent with it got me thinking about how it’ll one day be a piece of lost media. That’s because Bonsai Barber was only released through WiiWare, a service Nintendo killed for good back in 2019. Saying goodbye to that digital shop was a tough one for me because it’s something that brought me so much joy. I mean, that was the service where I discovered LostWinds and Cave Story and Mega Man 9. All three of those games had the good graces to jump to other platforms, but not every worthwhile title did. And that’s the point of this list.
Media today is as fragile as it’s been since the birth of media. There are so many television shows and movies from the early years of the industry that are forever lost to time because legacy wasn’t something anyone was thinking about back then. The industry is doing it again right now with all these streaming services permanently deleting shows that didn’t garner enough buzz, robbing future generations of a chance to discover them years in the future the way everyone discovered Columbo during the pandemic.
In the gaming sphere, Nintendo is the absolute worst at this. We know this. We know there is a 50% chance when the successor to the Switch releases, there will be a countdown clock for when access to the Switch eShop will be cut off. That’s just the terrible, terrible chance you take with Nintendo.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Nintendo could commit to making all future hardware backward compatible with the Switch. There’s no money in it, but you can’t put a price tag on showing your fans how much you appreciate them and their years of purchases. Sadly, it’s too late for WiiWare to get such treatment, but that doesn’t mean these games should be lost to time. There are plenty of games on the service from big-name publishers that can be revived on modern hardware. Other games from smaller developers, well…it might be difficult, but I’d still like to see them. That’s why I’ve put together this top 10 list of 15 games that should be saved from WiiWare purgatory. And we start with one from the South Pole.
10. Snowpack Park
Not every game you see on this list is going to be a title that was well received. Snowpack Park was a love-it-or-hate-it game, the point of which was to help a huddle of penguins return to their home and keep them happy. You could pet, feed, and play games with penguins, which made up the bulk of the gameplay. If it were released today, the word “cozy” would pop up about 10 times in its reveal trailer. I found it to be a charmer, but the real reason I want this to find new life on modern hardware is that it was made by Skip Ltd., best known as the developer of the Chibi-Robo series. I have no idea what’s going on with this studio. It’s probably defunct, which is a sad failure of the industry, and I’d rather not see any of the games it produced in its short life lost to history.
9. Monsteca Corral
Monsteca Corral is like Pikmin on drugs. Developed by Onteca, this WiiWare exclusive challenged players to control a herd of Stompies as they worked together to reclaim their home planet from invading robots. To escape to safety, the Stompies had to collect gas bubbles that would be fed to a giant Astromaggot. When the maggot ate enough gas, it would bloat up like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade balloon and whisk them off to safety. It’s a weird game that looks weird and plays weird, and that’s exactly what I want an Astromaggot to come and whisk it away from the defunct WiiWare platform. There is not enough strangeness in the industry today, and I’d like this game to remind indie developers that it’s okay to go against the grain and be weird. Plus, it’s genuinely fun.
8. Bonsai Barber
The reason behind this whole article, Bonsai Barber is an adorable foliage pruning game where you handle the scissors and clippers of a veggie and fruit barber. Your clients come in, tell you want they want, and you give it to them using the tools at hand. Any mistakes can be fixed, so there really isn’t a way to lose in this game. You just have to enjoy giving potatoes and celery sticks haircuts. I know this title wasn’t for everyone, but I kept up with daily appointments for an entire month after buying it. It is a delightful, quirky game, and I’d love to see it gain new life on something like Apple Arcade.
7. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Adventure Team Games
It is hard to believe there was a Pokémon game released on WiiWare that didn’t go worldwide. Yet, that is exactly what happened with the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Adventure Team trio: Blazing Adventure Squad, Stormy Adventure Squad, and Light Adventure Squad. Developed by Chunsoft, these games used the art style of the Pokémon Rumble games to create the first 3D entry in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon sub-series. The games played like the previous entries but included a new feature where Pokémon could stack on top of one another to unleash team attacks on enemies. These were also the first games to not begin with a personality quiz, allowing players to choose their first two characters from nine possible options depending on which version they picked up. While each game had just 15 dungeons, they’re unique to the game they appeared in, making for 45 in total. That’s on par with Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX. I’m a sucker for those Mystery Dungeon games, so I can only hope the Adventure Team games find their way onto Switch or its successor. And if they do, localize them this time, darn it!
6. The Konami ReBirth Games
Three games. Three franchises. Three excellent titles audiences should get another shot at. Konami may not be doing much with new games these days, but its recent spat compilations have been exceptional. A ReBirth collection would be swell, a considering the developer of these games was M2, a company known for its work on retro collections, it would be pretty fitting to bring these games back in one downloadable package. The ReBirth games consisted of Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth (a remake of Castlevania: The Adventure for the Game Boy), Gradius ReBirth, and Contra Rebirth. While they may not live up to the greatness of other entries in their series, they’re solid action games in their own right that don’t deserve to go down with the S.S. WiiWare.
5. MaBoShi’s Arcade
This one is special. MaBoShi’s Arcade is a simple action puzzle game with brilliant execution. In Europe, it was known as The Three Shape Arcade, a name that better illustrates the concept of the title. You’ll play one of three games based on three shapes: circle, square, and line. With the circle, you’ll control a ball as it rolls around a circular stage, trying to knock out little bug creatures. With the square, you’re setting fire to other squares on screen in a game that is vaguely similar to Snake. Finally, with the line, you’re protecting a little round core with a short line that is constantly spinning as you try to make your way up through each stage. Each game is played simultaneously, either by AI or local co-op. What happens in one game will affect what happens in the others, and the end result is beyond perfect.
4. Jungle Speed
Say hello to the best party game of 2009. Next Level Games’ adaptation of the Jungle Speed card game was a riveting multiplayer experience, allowing up to eight players locally to compete using Wii Remotes and Nunchucks. The object of the game is simple. The first player to get rid of all their cards won. Each player flips over one card at a time from their deck, and as you go around to each player, you need to keep your eye on the symbols. When two cards are played with matching symbols, it’s a race to see who can grab the totem in the middle of the table first. If you do, all your played cards get sent to the loser. There are also Fast Grab and Color Match cards that add new reasons to reach for that totem. It is an incredibly twitchy card game that would work perfectly on Switch with Joy-Con controllers and online.
3. Fluidity
This one is kind of cheating as, unlike the rest of the games here, Fluidity did pop up on another platform when it got a sequel on the Nintendo 3DS. But, considering Nintendo has also shut down that eShop, I’m making an exception. Fluidity is an awesome action puzzler that uses water physics and tilt controls to move a giant pool of water around 2D storybook stages. Not only were there numerous small puzzles to solve throughout each stage, but there was also an enormous challenge in just making sure you had enough water in your pool to make it to the end. It’s gorgeous, it’s fun, and there is no reason why Nintendo shouldn’t have kept going with this series. It’s time to bring it back by bringing the WiiWare original to modern hardware.
2. Space Invaders Get Even
One of the big problems plaguing WiiWare in its early years was space. Games could only be stored on the limited console memory when the service launched. So if you bought a lot of WiiWare and Virtual Console titles, you had to delete the old to make way for the new. Games were also limited by size restraints. It’s amazing we got as many great titles as we did with that 40 MB restriction. For comparison, Cut the Rope is 150 MB.
I imagine both elements played a role in how Taito and Square Enix decided to release Space Invaders Get Even, a brilliant spin on the arcade classic that had you playing as the aliens invading Earth and destroying everything in your path. The game was released with just three levels for about $5. To get the full game, you’d have to spend another $15, getting the rest of it piece by piece. Twenty dollars doesn’t sound like a bad deal today, but this was still in an era where download-only titles were cheap. Also, the game was huge in terms of how much space it took up on your Wii. It’s a shame it launched when it did because just a few months after its debut, Nintendo added the SD Card Menu with the 4.0 version of the OS, allowing Wii owners to play their games directly from their SD cards. While that wouldn’t have solved the pricing structure of Space Invaders Get Even, it would have solved the space issue at launch.
Either way, this game is just plain fun, and I have to imagine it would thrive today as an action-arcade series with the right studio behind it. There aren’t nearly enough games where you play as invading aliens, which is why this one deserves a second shot at life.
1. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King/My Life as a Darklord
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King gave us false hope for what the WiiWare service would ultimately be. Here was a game that looked just as good as retail releases on the Wii and was part of a then-popular sub-series of a classic video game franchise. The expectations for the service were set way too high with this launch title, but My Life as a King remains a deep and engrossing city-building sim oozing with that cute and quaint Crystal Chronicles‘ style. It proved popular enough to warrant a sequel in the form of My Life as a Darklord, which is a lovely little tower defense game. I didn’t own these games until just days before the Wii Shop Channel shut down, so I don’t have longstanding memories of playing either title. All of my memories are recent, and I absolutely adored going through them both at the start of the pandemic. I just wish I didn’t have to boot up the Wii Menu on my Wii U to keep them in my life.
