According to MTV Multiplayer (courtesy of NPD), it’s Wii Play.

1. Wii Play 5.28
2. Madden NFL ‘09 5.25
3. Grand Theft Auto IV 5.22
4. Mario Kart w/ Wheel 5.00
5. Call of Duty: World at War 4.63

So should it count? Debatable, given that most people are clearly buying it for the new controller, and it makes sense to get another game for a few quid extra. That said, the same post also refers to the play data which suggests Wii owners spend on average nine hours with Wii Play. Which seemed a little high to me, but then I realised I’ve played it for at least six or seven hours, and possibly a lot more - well, laser hockey is pretty addictive, and that tanks game, too.

Mario Kart on five million, though - that’s really good going. Amazing what bundling your game with a little plastic wheel can do. It’s by far the biggest-selling Mario Kart to date, beating the original, which some - though not I - would say is still the best.

Bets on Nintendo releasing a Wii Play 2, showcasing the beauty of MotionPlus? I’d say chances of that happening are fairly high, but then perhaps Nintendo thinks Wii Sports Resort alone is enough. Either way, we’re in for another fascinating year. Will 2009 be the year Wii truly goes hardcore? Will sales of those evergreen Nintendo titles start to tail off?  Will Wii Play top the charts for two years in a row (surely not)?

Patience, WiiWii.tv readers. The answers are coming.

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Here we go, then - the five games which I feel represented the very best on Wii this year. Once again, feel free to add your thoughts if you spot any glaring omissions. And I’m sure a few people will argue about the game in the number 2 slot. Opinions, eh?

5. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

To all extents and purposes it’s a GameCube game. It doesn’t have particularly good graphics, nor does it make any use of the Wii remote’s pointer functions (surely that could have been included as an optional control scheme?) and it’s best played with a Classic Controller - or, better still, a WaveBird. But it’s lost none of the series’ inherent charm, and has a few tweaks to its mechanics that make it a better game than the Cube’s own Path of Radiance. Some interesting story stuff, too - flitting between characters at key points yet still allowing the player to retain an affinity for his or her troops. Hopefully one day, Nintendo will throw a bit of money at this franchise and it can have the presentation and polish it deserves.

4. Super Smash Bros. Brawl

A love letter from Nintendo to itself, with its most hardcore fans CCed in. Brawl, for my money, is a far superior game to the overly-hectic Melee, dialing down the pace a notch or two for a four-player battler that’s still frantic but arguably a little more tactical. What makes Brawl so great is the wealth of content - the ridiculously large cast of characters, the frightening number of extras and the encycopaedic information about past franchises. With stages that reference Electroplankton, collectable stickers of the Ouendan and assist trophies from Sin and Punishment, Brawl is happy to celebrate Nintendo obscura as well as its biggest franchises. And finally, Mario and Sonic got to face off against each other. Throw in an appearance from Solid Snake and you’ve got a game that, for all its inherent shallowness, is a true celebration of Nintendo, and an essential lesson in gaming history.

3. Mario Kart Wii

Play it in single-player and you may wonder what the fuss is about. Hoping to get your mates round for a bit of local multiplayer? You might well be disappointed in the ‘improvements’ Nintendo has made. No two ways about it - there are better Mario Kart games for offline players. Go online, and suddenly it all slots into place. Twelve-player races are undeniably fantastic - very light on lag (I’ve rarely experienced any) and the wider tracks and increased number of racers make perfect sense. My very first online win is one of my gaming highlights of the year - pipping two other racers to the post at literally the last few metres. The downloadable ghosts and the twice-monthly online challenges add substantial longevity, and the Wii Wheel is a great balancer if you’re playing with non-gamers or casual players. So, after an initial period of disappointment, Mario Kart Wii leapt up in my estimations, becoming one of the best Wii games of the year. It’s not perfect, but hopefully the sales of this will encourage Nintendo to get a sequel out sooner rather than later.

2. Wii Music

Like all the best art, Wii Music is incredibly divisive. Many critics hated it. Quite a few serious fanboys denounced Nintendo and Miyamoto after the (admittedly faintly embarrassing) E3 demonstration. Then people played the game, and word of mouth started to spread - people forced to eat their words as they realised that Shigsy hadn’t lost it at all. Wii Music is certainly not for everyone - it’s bound to be too simplistic for some, while the tracklist is off-putting to many. But its simplicity is one of its strongest suits - making it accessible to casual players who just fancy a quick jam session, while affording more creative types the chance to stamp their own personal touch upon a tune without ever getting bogged down in needless complexities. Crafting a unique take on a song is amazingly rewarding, and sharing with others sparks a creative flame which inspires you to try and try again. In future years, Wii Music might just be hailed as a stroke of genius. It’s certainly one of the most innovative titles of the year, and while it might have a slightly more niche appeal than Nintendo would have hoped for, anyone falling into that niche will undoubtedly look back fondly on their time with the game. You never know - it may even inspire future generations of musicians. Though it needs DLC now, please, Nintendo.

1. No More Heroes

Mad as a box of frogs and with more rough edges than a sandpaper decahedron, No More Heroes deserves top spot on this list by virtue of its sheer, gleeful invention and gloriously exuberant iconoclasm. It’s a game that’s not afraid to take pot shots at both itself and other videogames, simultaneously celebrating and laughing at videogame traditions. It also plays brilliantly - the lightsaber combat besting both Wii Star Wars games released this year by a long way, simply by using remote-waving judiciously and sensibly, rather than requiring arm-knackering movements for every sword slash. At first it seems too much of a button-masher, but the further you go, the more the combat opens up, and you’ll have to dodge, block and parry with well-timed blows. And those finishers are incredibly satisfying - enemies exploding with booming sound effects as you slice through them with Travis’s beam katana. Throw in some terrific use of the remote’s speaker, scalpel-sharp writing, a terrific story, memorable characters and an audacious finale (indeed, the true ending is one of the best climaxes to a game I’ve ever seen) and you’ve got easily the most exciting and unique Wii game of the year. A sequel is already in the offing - with the potential for MotionPlus-enhanced combat, the enigmatic Suda 51 could well have the best Wii game for two years running.

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Top Five time, then, and one of these entries will shock you to your very bones. Perhaps. It’ll more likely make you all go ‘uh?’ with confusion, as you probably won’t have heard of the game in question. Oh, and there’s no Chrono Trigger because I haven’t played it yet. And because I’m giving it a run at the number one slot for next year. Anyway, without further ado, here are my five best DS games of 2008. Read on, and feel free to vent your anger - or offer your congratulations at my excellent taste - in the comments thread below.

5. Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword

Basically, the best controls on the DS since Phantom Hourglass. Gaiden might not have seemed a natural fit for the handheld (and indeed its sales seem to suggest that potential purchasers dismissed it for that very reason), but Dragon Sword is a bit of a corker. It’s a little repetitive at times, but performing Izuna Drops with just a couple of swift stylus flicks feels incredibly empowering and wonderfully intuitive. Its combat is every bit as fluid and enjoyable to watch as its console cousins, which is quite some achievement. Looks a million dollars, too.

4. Trauma Center: Under The Knife 2

Amazingly, only the second most palm-sweatingly panic-inducing game on the DS this year. TC:UTK2 didn’t quite have the thrill of the new the original had, but with a slightly fairer difficulty curve, some excellent borrows from the Wii games and that really really brilliant level where you’re operating by torchlight in the back of a moving car make this the tightest, most refined game in the series to date. It misses the co-op of Wii title New Blood and that game’s online scoreboards (definitely the most glaring omission) but a compelling story and the return of franchise favourites Derek and Angie just about make it the best entry point to the series - if you’ve not tried Trauma Center before, here’s the place to start.

3. Air Traffic Chaos

Air Traffic Whatnow?, more like. Sure, you might not have heard of it. And not, it’s not exactly had many raves from the critics who did bother to review it. But Air Traffic Chaos offers two things which make it so good. Firstly, it’s an entirely fresh approach to the strategy genre, feeling both familiar in its sense of escalating challenge and very different in its setting and its requirements of the player. Secondly, it’s utterly daunting in that it forces you into doing those things us men are normally so terrible at - multi-tasking and snap decision-making. In other words, Air Traffic Chaos makes a better man out of you. The fairer sex would probably find it comparatively easy, because they can do those sort of things. But this left me in a state of near-constant tension. In a really, really good way. Hugely compelling and addictive, you owe it to your DS to pick up a copy of this unheralded gem.

2. Professor Layton and the Curious Village

Best. Twist. Ever. Besides a story reveal that’s right up there with ‘Bruce Willis is a ghost’ and ‘it’s Gwyneth’s head in a box’, Layton had lots more to offer those tempted into uncovering the secret of titular hamlet St. Mystere. With a cast of memorable characters, some truly charming presentation - Studio Ghibli by way of Belleville Rendez-vous - were it not for its puzzles, Level 5’s cracker would still have plenty to recommend it. But coupled with those fiendish brain-teasers - often so cleverly worded that you’d kick yourself when the answer finally revealed itself - it transcended its genre origins to become a game which both casual and hardcore embraced warmly. No wonder it’s sold out everywhere. Now let’s see the second and third games in 2009 please, Nintendo.

 1. The World Ends With You

 

I’ve probably said enough about TWEWY this year to leave this entry entirely blank. But its achievements really do deserve to be celebrated - if only because it was so shamefully ignored by the gaming public when it was released. TWEWY is a true RPG classic - in many ways it’s like a modern day Chrono Trigger, in that it dares to eschew genre convention to forge its own path, with fresh ideas sprinkled liberally throughout this twenty-hour adventure. Its Shibuya setting is beautifully realised, its characters relatable, its story gripping and its unique battle system (after a period of adjustment) constantly surprising and refreshingly different. And it’s a game with a message - one that’s put across very intelligently, and absolutely not hammered home with all the subtlety of your average Kojima monologue. Its endgame is remarkable too - offering a wealth of additional content once you’re done with the main story, including one self-referential extra which shows it’s not afraid to laugh at itself. For this, and for many other reasons, TWEWY is easily the DS game of the year, and one of the top three games on the handheld full stop. If, for some reason, you’ve not played it yet, then get it added to your Christmas list pronto.

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Next week I’ll be running the top ten Wii and DS games of the year, but today seems as good a time as any to pick my top five WiiWare games. Launching in May, Nintendo’s service has provided a steady stream of content - not all of it good, but there have been plenty of crackers on there. Here are the five titles which I think represent the best WiiWare has to offer so far.

5. Art Style: ORBIENT

This minimalistic puzzler started life as a GBA title - one of the Japanese-only Bit Generation series, a set of seven games which were released on the GameBoy Advance, and whose remit was to strip down gaming to its bare essentials. While it perhaps fit the handheld a little better, ORBIENT is still a cracking WiiWare title, with just two buttons used to control the game, as you guide a satellite through several galaxies. The idea is to pick up moons and planets as you increase in size, while being careful not to smash into anything as you push against and pull into various gravitational fields. At just 600 points, this is well worth the outlay (it should be hitting the PAL service in two weeks’ time).

4. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A King

Square-Enix’s first WiiWare title was the most expensive of the launch games, but more than justified its price-tag with a city-building game that is not just deep but ferociously addictive. It’s almost the polar opposite to the traditional Final Fantasy experience, as you play a stay-at-home king, tasked with keeping your township’s settlers happy and expanding your settlement while you send various adventurers to dungeons to do your bidding. Its genius was to save the game just as you started a new day, tempting you into viewing the reports from your dungeoneers and cajoling you into playing for one more in-game day. Which would then turn into two, then three, then eight… While it eventually becomes repetitive, I’ve not sunk as many hours into any other downloadable title this year, even if sometimes I hated myself for doing so.

Hit the jump for the top three

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Japanese site Oricon Life has compiled a poll of Japanese men and women to find out the nation’s favourite videogame character - and it will come as no surprise that Mario nabbed the top slot, with his trusty steed Yoshi coming in third. Final Fantasy favourite Cloud was sandwiched between the two in the runner-up slot. Everyone’s favourite unbearably shrill lightning conductor Pikachu chirruped his way into fifth.

Elsewhere, there are some slightly more unexpected entries are in the form of Chocobo (7th), Toad (joint 8th) and a personal favourite, Professor Layton, at number 10. Indeed, this just jogged my memory that the latter’s adventure hasn’t yet made it to European shores - it’s even been launched in Australia, for pity’s sake!

Evidently, Mario was top dog with men and women, with the female vote positing Yoshi in second, with males preferring Solid Snake.

Presumably the upshot of all this is that Sakurai will be hoping to get Cloud in the next Super Smash Bros game. And Layton? If he was confirmed as a fighter, I’d be in there like a shot.

Thanks to Kotaku.

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Of all the consoles currently available, the DS in particular has a thriving import scene. Why? Well, because the DS itself is region-free, so it can play carts from any country, plus unlike Sony, Nintendo hasn’t imposed any restrictions on retailers flogging games to overseas players.

There’s also the simple fact that a great many games never make it to Western shores. Sometimes, it’s because their inherent Japanese-ness would be a turn off to most, while others are too niche for publishers to take a chance on localising. If you’re a DS owner and you’ve never imported, then you really don’t know how much you’re missing out on. With US releases commonly appearing months before their PAL counterparts - and usually for a lower price - there’s no reason why you shouldn’t.

For this feature, I’m focussing my attention not on the games which may reach PAL shores but haven’t quite yet, but the games which will never see the light of day outside the land of the rising sun. So hit the jump for the Top 5 Japanese Imports on DS.

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Inspired by sister site Tech-Digest’s run-down of features they’d like to see on Nintendo’s new DS (the subject of which may or may not be revealed to an expectant world at this year’s E3), we’ve come up with five “improvements” we really don’t want to see Nintendo introduce.

Hit the jump for our thoughts, but be sure to check out the Tech-Digest list first. Some real food for thought there, particularly for those wanting to see some multimedia functionality on their handheld. Read the rest of this entry »

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Nothing but a logo. And probably a faked one at that (come on, it looks more like an Xbox game logo). But enough to get the internet a-wonderin’ about the possibility of an F-Zero game on the Wii. And the internet obviously includes us, so here we are with a list-type feature about what we’d like to see in such a game. Yay us!

Read on, enjoy, and comment on anything YOU would be particularly keen to see happen - if, indeed, F-Zero Z comes to fruition. Bet you we hear something at E3, though. Hit the jump, and see if you agree with our suggestions.

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When Nintendo first unveiled the Wii remote, it came accompanied by a video that instantly made people realise how brilliant this new controller was. It allowed you to do anything from chopping vegetables through wielding a samurai sword to shooting bad guys, and potentially much more besides. We’re almost eighteen months into the Wii’s life now, and it’s fair to say that not enough developers have made the most of this revolutionary piece of hardware. Perhaps the revolution that Nintendo talked about wasn’t quite what we all expected - that the controller’s true purpose was simply to level the playing field - to make gaming much more accessible to people who’d never played a videogame before. Nowadays, every man and his dog knows how to use the Wii remote, while a 360 or PS3 joypad remains alien to all but the most regular gamer. It’s a qualified success, but a success nonetheless.

And plenty of developers HAVE managed to turn the remote into something very special indeed. The very best games on Wii - with one or two exceptions - all make terrific use of this wonderfully malleable controller’s unique abilities. So we thought it was high time we took a look at some of the best examples of remote use in the Wii’s software library to date. Follow the jump for our personal Top Five…

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…of this horrid, flu-ridden day. And it’s poll time! Basically, I’m planning a Top 5 on an as-yet-undetermined topic, and I’d like you - yes, you, the gloriously attractive and sweet-smelling WiiWii readers - to decide what it’s going to be. Please make your choice from the following three options, by commenting underneath this blog post:

1. Top 5 Nintendo sidekicks

2. Top 5 Nintendo games that never made it to the UK

3. Top 5 uses of the Wii Remote so far

There you go. Plenty to ponder there. I’ll announce the poll winner once I’ve had a reasonable number of entries. Which means 3 or more, essentially.

 Go vote! It’s what your forefathers died in the war for, after all.

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