Simply the Best

I played the three Super SW games on the SNES, but the only things I can remember about them are the lives trick that's been mentioned, and that one of the speech samples sounded like "The Florce is with you, young Ski Worker". So the winner can only be:

LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga - a game I only bought on NGamer's say-so, as I'm not that into Star Wars, really. The cute and rabidly acquisitive gameplay has sustained me through several LEGO games, few of which bettered this one. In total agreement that they nailed the gameplay from the off, and were generally funnier when the characters couldn't talk during cutscenes.

I've been wanting to do this for ages. Everybody's played at least a few games from the Wii Series, so let's have a bash at it.



Let’s kick off with the ‘Other’ games. Firstly: Wii Chess. That’s my analysis of it.

Moving on, let us be honest here: Wii Music was a laugh to piss about with for ten minutes, but it’s entertainment value after that was virtually non-existent. I usually like this sort of game (hence I’m doing a list of my favourite games from the Wii Series), but Wii Music was too simple and unconvincing to be worthwhile. The best thing about it was the shiny cardboard sleeve for the box, which was indeed a belter. Wii Music had great promise, and it didn’t fulfil it. On the musical theme, I didn’t bother my arse with Wii Karaoke U, but if it were an instrument, I bet it would be a bum trumpet.

‘Ain’t no party like a Wii Party *gunshot*’, as the NGamer review tagline probably read. I wasn’t as into Wii Party as I thought I was going to be, truth be told. Parts of it appeal, and parts don’t. It’s nobody’s favourite game, and I’d argue that this is the point where the Wii Series began to jump the shark. In late 2010, folk were ready for the next generation of gaming, not a repeat of the last one. 2013’s Wii Party U was instantly forgettable, already old when it came out, and an inadequate demonstration of the Wii U GamePad working alongside your TV.

It’s hard to believe that Wii Fit shifted the units that it did, and that so many folk bought into its hype. I wasn’t one of them to be honest, but I ended up getting it years later when most folk had decided that, aye, they liked being a fat bastard. Fair play to Nintendo though – the technology and idea behind it was quite innovative for the time, and it’s clearly one of the most successful things that they’ve ever published. Also, there’s something that’s definitely likeable about a game that encourages you to better yourself, so all credit to them for that. Yet I didn’t feel that it was a meaningful substitute for a proper walk (to the pub). Wii Fit Plus is literally Wii Fit...Plus. That’s your whack. It’s an upgrade, not a sequel. It’s as enjoyable as the one before, and probably about as healthy.

Although an entertaining game in it’s own right, the fact that Wii Fit U was a thing was a step too far. Nobody was looking for a Wii Fit Plus sequel in 2013, or to get into gamercise on the Wii U; that ship had sailed years beforehand. However, it took better advantage of the GamePad than 90% of other Wii U games, and it does some smart things with the hardware. That pedometer was good too, and I got good value from that. Give Wii Fit U a go by all means, but if you’re anything like me you’ll wonder why Nintendo bothered developing it. Nintendo are quite good at developing games that nobody wants, aren’t they? Metroid Prime: Federation Force, Chibi-Robo: Zip Lash, The Legend of Zelda: Tri-Force Heroes...and Wii Fit U, to name four.

Wii Play feels ancient in 2018. It feels like the first game ever made. Honestly, go back and play it – it’s so shallow, limited and basic. It doesn’t really excel at anything either. But still, it had more staying power than the likes of NGamer and ONM said it would, and I played it for hours at the time. I still look back on those hours with a bit of fondness, and, all in all, I quite like Wii Play. Tanks is brilliant, Billiards has a stoater of a tune, and Charge! is daft. Packing it in with the remote was Wii Play’s real genius though. Wii Play: Motion came with a remote too, but I don’t remember hearing about it selling four hundred billion copies because of it. Anyway, the game itself a fairly creative showcase of the MotionPlus, but it’s ambition goes no further than that. As I recall, Wii Play: Motion came out a good two years after MotionPlus did, which was two years too late. It causes no offense and some of the games are absolutely fine, but there’s not much to type about it in 2018 either.

Wii Sports is the game that got the whole ball rolling. It’s as important to the Wii as the Wii is important to it (if that makes sense). As well as being an indispensible part of the Wii’s catalogue and of Nintendo’s history, it’s an absolutely brilliant game. It’s just everything I look for in a computer game. I’ve massively enjoyed every session I’ve had on Wii Sports, all the sports are great, and many of my fondest gaming memories are related to the game in one way or another. I’ve said it before, but I’d probably have packed in gaming for good if Wii Sports hadn’t come along. It’s a classic and maybe in my top ten of all time.

Remember how excited youse all got before Breath of the Wild came out? That’s what I was like with Wii Sports Resort release. I remember heading into town on the Friday it came out, and feeling a bit miserable with myself after getting banned for my local nightclub and being hungover to oblivion. £50 for the set, a short hop on the bus home, and I plonk the disk into my Wii. No joke, as soon as I heard the title theme, I was cheered right up. Like it’s prequel, I stuck a lot of time into it, and while admittedly some things don’t work all that well, it’s still Wii Sports Resort. What a fucking game.

I have very little affection for Wii Sports Club, sadly. Although it’s the same basic game as the first Wii Sports, it feels badly underdeveloped. The online multiplayer never ran smoothly, it’s interface is weirdly unintuitive, and the GamePad use is mostly a pain in the arse. While it’s playable enough otherwise (except Boxing, which was mince), what I dislike most about Wii Sports Club is that it’s obviously living off past glories. Bollocks to Wii Sports Club, and – while we’re at it - bollocks to the Wii U.

Makes me realise I haven't actually played too many of these. Um. Wii Play was fun for a while, and I genuinely enjoyed Air Hockey. Wii Sports Club was Wii Sports without any of the charm: the latter was fun for a bit, but I never saw the magic that everybody else did in it. It felt like it was cashing a cheque that it couldn't quite deliver. Wii Sports Resort could, though, that was genuinely top-notch.

So!

Wii Play was a good bit of fun that came extra on launch day, as GAME had run out of Remotes to sell. The minigames were fun for a while but they were mostly paper thin. Better in the memory than in the present day, I would say.

Wii Fit was probably not going to make you that much healthier, if we're honest, but it was at least cute. It also made for great entertainment at parties: a friend of mine pulled it out once for us to all have a go at the 'head the football' game. Seriously, we should try it one time, once we've all had a little to drink.

Wii Fit U was more of the same but with the GamePad. There were extra games in it, though, which almost justified the upgrade... but equally made us all think that the Wii Fit concept was over. Now we're just awaiting the Arzest-developed Wii Fit Trainer 2D platformer.

Wii Sports Resort built on the original by charging in various directions at once. It definitely lacked the pure focus of its predecessor but was also much more game-like. A beautiful thing that, somehow, didn't quite supplant the best Wii series game from my heart...

Wii Sports. So many millions have words have been expended on it that whatever I put here will be like a drop in the ocean but, well, you've got to try, haven't you? For a long time I used to take the Wii to my parents' house at Christmas to play some Wii Sports with them. My Dad became a champion golfer and my brothers would regularly ask "Can I tonk you at bowling?" [sometimes yes, sometimes no] It's a game that everybody could access and everybody did. Absolute genius stuff that I don't think we'll ever see repeated.

Wii Fit was a bit of a laff, but ultimately meant doing things in the living room that I didn't want to be doing. And I got told off for not doing the jogging properly.
Wii Fit Plus I personally used once to make a cat Mii of our cat.
Wii Sports I got quite a lot of mileage out of; the tennis was a bit disappointing (my sister gave up playing pretty soon after the launch, having been a Mario Tennis pro), but I really liked golfing, and baseball was nice in that you had a big team of friendly Miis.
Wii Sports Resort was my fave - I love the basketball games to this day. I just wished they made the flying more freeform.

Jimbob wrote:

Wii Sports ... baseball was nice in that you had a big team of friendly Miis.

My sister and I played game upon game of baseball, just to make Hitler hit the ball over a yeti! Didn't they make them generic team-mates in Wii Sports Club too? Another nail in that game's crucifix.

I've only played Wii Play and Wii Sports so instead... I'll rank the games within those games! Considering I've only played Wii Play like twice and that was at a mate's house 11 years ago, my memory of that one will be hazy at best.

Pose Mii: Literally no memory of this. We probably skipped it.

Fishing: I remember this being fiddly and ultimately shite.

Shooting Range: I also don't remember this, but it's probably better than Fishing.

Table Tennis: I remember this being also a bit fiddly (as was much in the early days of Wii) but I was a big fan of Table Tennis so I remember trying to force myself to have fun here.

Find Mii: I actually remember this one reasonably well because I was shit hot at it and I forced my mate to play this for far too long. Middle of the road.

Laser Hockey: I mean, I think it looked pretty, maybe? ...okay I just YouTubed it, it wasn't really. It was decent though!

Billiards: Probably should be higher, but I was utter shite at it so it's getting punted down the list.

Baseball: The Wii Sports game I got on with the least. Nobody likes baseball, really.

Charge!: We're getting to the cream of the crop on Wii Play here and I've only listed one Wii Sports game. Charge! was good, silly fun.

Boxing: A bit fiddly and the Wii Sports game with the least replayability in my eyes. Still cracking, mind.

Golf: I've never been a big golf game fan, but this was good enough to still chart highly here.

Tanks!: Worth the price of admission alongside that free Wiimote. Legendary.

Tennis: Conversely, I love tennis games. I infamously purchased Tennis on NES as my first Virtual Console game. This version of Tennis is leaps and bounds better than NES Tennis. I wouldn't wish NES Tennis on my enemies.

Bowling: The king of sports. The TV destroyer. Friend of grans and Christmas overlord. The pinnacle of Wii Sports.[/b][/b]

JayMoyles wrote:

Baseball: The Wii Sports game I got on with the least. Nobody likes baseball, really.

Balladeer wrote:

Jimbob wrote:

Wii Sports ... baseball was nice in that you had a big team of friendly Miis.

My sister and I played game upon game of baseball, just to make Hitler hit the ball over a yeti!  Didn't they make them generic team-mates in Wii Sports Club too?  Another nail in that game's crucifix.

LITERALLY THE POST ABOVE

Balladeer wrote:

JayMoyles wrote:

Baseball: The Wii Sports game I got on with the least. Nobody likes baseball, really.

Balladeer wrote:

Jimbob wrote:

Wii Sports ... baseball was nice in that you had a big team of friendly Miis.

My sister and I played game upon game of baseball, just to make Hitler hit the ball over a yeti!  Didn't they make them generic team-mates in Wii Sports Club too?  Another nail in that game's crucifix.

LITERALLY THE POST ABOVE

You mean... you read these things?

Sling your hook, Jay, fishing was amazing. 👌

~

Good to see folk posting in this, and reading everybody's thoughts. I've already got the next Simply The Best typed up, so unless anybody's got anything else to say about the Wii series, I'll stick up the next one in the coming days.

Balladeer wrote:

LITERALLY THE POST ABOVE

Yeah... but you don't REALLY like baseball. It's only because of the funny Miis. I stand by my point.  

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Sling your hook, Jay, fishing was amazing. 👌

I could never get it to work. Maybe that's down to me not understanding what the Wiimote was expecting me to do with it, but the frustration of trying to catch a fish nibbling at the rod and having nothing happen on screen meant it sunk to the bottom of the ocean for us on our Wii Play sessions.

I'm with Jay, could never get Fishing to work for me. Air Hockey's far too low though. (And yes, fine, Baseball's actual gameplay was rubbish... but that wasn't the point, damn it!)

I'm late to the party; anyway.

Wii Play I don't really remember anything about this, apart from being underwhelmed.

Wii Music Utterly stupid, there are shadows with more depth than this thing. I have a soft spot for it though because it got a play every Christmas with all the family. That's one of the great things about all the Wii games tat, they're accessible and, even if stupid, fun with the right people.

Wii Fit I remember more about this. Probably overpriced tat at the end of the day, but I didn't buy it so it's just the memories of family gathering around this weird board every now and then that live on. I liked it a lot, wouldn't buy a modern day equivalent unless I was rolling in dough though. .

Wii Sports Absolute classic, and the greatest system seller of all time. Had the accessibility of the above, while providing a bunch of fun games that showed off what the Wii was all about: intuitive, original, fun. A blast of fresh air in an industry that was otherwise careering towards an obsession with graphical fidelity, lengthy install times, and an online focus that started doing away with local multiplayer. Wii Sports is indicative of the Nintendo way.

As for rankings its games, that's easy.

5: Tennis: Easy and fun to play, but never a multiplayer mainstay. Lacked the personality some of the other sports had. I remember it had that advert that sponsored Channel 4 comedy shows though. 10/10

4: Golf: This is assuming you play the easy holes only, if you include the harder ones I'd drop this a spot. Particular highlights involved watching family members fail to use a backswing, instead flicking the remote forward, and still being better than me. 10/10

3: Boxing I got quite into this, getting almost as far as the highest single player AI opponent. Good game, makes you move and look a bit silly but don't play it with Drunka. 10/10

2: Bowling This was a good game. Nice and fast meaning that there was never as much downtime between goes as Golf, even if you had a big group playing. I enjoyed flicking the ball backwards at the crowd just to see which Miis were there.10/10

1: Baseball The undisputed king. Always a treat seeing the teams line up, taking stupid bets against your opponent about how said lineups would impact the match. There was a solid little game under the hood too, a variety of pitching styles, and a knack to swinging at the right time which was neither too involved nor impossible. 11/10

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Good to see folk posting in this, and reading everybody's thoughts.  I've already got the next Simply The Best typed up, so unless anybody's got anything else to say about the Wii series, I'll stick up the next one in the coming days.

I'm happy to move on - I love this thread and the different ways you group games together for us to think about.

Hope its one I can take part in as I only ever played Wii Sports.

Kept you waiting, huh?

Wii Play Motion
I think, like Wii Play and the remote, I probably picked this up just to get hold of an additional Motion Plus. I don't really remember anything, so it can't have been too great. I did like the ice cream pouring though, so it had that I guess.

Wii Fit
As others have said, I don't think this was actually much cop as a health or weight loss product. It was impressive tech though, and Nintendo found fun ways to use it like skiing, a sort of Galaxy-lite platforming challenge and so on. A curio which will hopefully stay in the past.

Wii Party U
I didn't play much of this, but a friend brought it to a couple of game nights. The main board mode was just a poor man's Mario Party, which isn't the richest game to begin with. There were some fun games around the edges though, letting too players play on either end of the gamepad (these should be recreated on Switch) or, in the pick of the bunch, tasking the player on the pad with pulling faces to represent emotions the players on the TV then have to guess. Hilarious.

Wii Sports Resort
This never got anything close to the playtime the original did. The oversaturation of so many games, the slightly more complicated, gamey mechanics. I can see why someone who is into playing videogames might prefer it, but busting it out with friends or family it was never the instant crowd-pleaser. Slightly too high a barrier to entry, I feel.

Wii Play
Horrendously underrated, this! Considering it was essentially a fiver with a remote, games like the ice hockey, the shooting gallery or billiards were multiplayer treats. Then there's tanks, a genuinely exciting and addictive cooperative masterpiece.

Wii Sports
Obviously. I can't add to the conversation here. This was a mainstay at lunchtimes, family gatherings, weekends, parties, pre-drinks and everything in between for the Wii's whole lifespan. Whether I was 16, playing it in my bedroom with Muss and co, drinking 2-litre bottles of Dr Pepper and demolishing whole bags of Tesco bakery donuts or I was 22, playing it in my first flat with crates of booze and actual human girls, it was always perfect.

• Golf was the most involved but we had some cracking afternoons on it as a group of lads, trying trick shots and mad shortcuts.
  
• Bowling was a little long-winded sometimes, but when we had a sunday to spare it was ideal. Special shout-out to when we got into our heads to turn our backs or go outside and try to make shots.
  
• Baseball was simple, but like Muss says the random teams of Miis were hilarious, especially in the days when my Wii contained everyone from school, all my family, all the meme favourites liek Mr T and Chuck Norris, the casts of DC and Marvel, random celebrities and novelty faces . . .
  
• Tennis was genuine magic. It worked. The day I got my Wii home and switched it on . . . wow.
  
• Bowling . . .

Muss wrote:

Boxing I got quite into this, getting almost as far as the highest single player AI opponent. Good game, makes you move and look a bit silly but don't play it with Drunka. 10/10

Undisputed KING!
I ought to play more ARMS with the motion controls. I wonder how transferable the skills really are?

I never actually played Wii Music.
We should totally get Wii Sports on at a meet-up someday.

This is the Simply The Best that I should have done three weeks ago. It came to my mind as soon as I posted the one for the Wii Series, and hopefully you can't blame me for rushing it out so soon after; it either had to be done now, or in two-and-a-half years time. I also appreciate that this will be the least popular one yet, which is something that dawned on me when I put the last full stop on the last sentence. Anyway, Mario & Sonic~!



Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games is genuinely rubbish, and a firm fixture of any dishourable mentions list that I’ve typed up for our vote threads. This should have been the best Mario & Sonic Olympics game up to that point, with it debuting on a system that really could have progressed the tired forumula and injected it with a vital dose of new ideas and new gameplay mechanics. Yet no: this was the beginning of the end for the series. The problem is that it’s such a complicated and confusing mess, which had you juggling all the different controllers in ways that lacked consistency between the different types of event. It’s so stop-start as a result, and that’s not helped by all the tutorials, menus and general fannying about that you have to do between events. The GamePad implementation was mildly intriguing at times (like with Curling), but it was mostly something that just got in the way. MotionPlus works fine, but I hate the fact that the game just assumes that you’ve already got a load of Wii remotes kicking about. It’s full of cheap and nasty recycling of previous assets right the way through as well, which just highlights what a half-arsed sequel it is. On the plus side, it looks nice, and many of the remixes of old Super Mario and Sonic The Hedgehog tunes that feature in the games soundtrack are absolutely sublime. Those are well worth seeking out on YouTube, but otherwise it’s a wholly unsatisfactory effort.

Mario & Sonic at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games doesn’t exist, but even so, it’s better than Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games.

I think that I’m the only person on the planet that bought Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. What sets this apart is that it does away with all the motion controls that the previous four console games had, while doing absolutely hee-haw with the Wii U GamePad. It’s properly old-school, and plays more like International Track & Field and Athelte Kings (with a Splatoon-like hub) than it does any other games in the series. That’s okay, and for a while, you could almost kid yourself that it’s a good game. That’s what I did, and I really liked this for the first weekend that I had it. After that though, I played it more and realised that it all lacks variety, surprises, personality and depth. Too many games just don’t change it up enough – they get more challenging as you play through the tournaments, but they’re exactly the same at their core. I kept playing so I could unlock the carnivals and the amiibo features, but the grind wasn't worth the reward. The questionable design of the menu annoyed me too, and it became downright tedious after extended play. That Mario and Sonic are here almost feels coincidental, which is a waste of the licences. Looking back, it's hard to see M&S 2016 Wii U as anything other than a very ordinary, average Olympics game that is overall quite missable. I don’t recall any of the events being especially bad, but there definitely wasn’t anything to get excited about either. It’s much the same on 3DS, and nothing to write home about.

Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games is the same simple, accessible and family-friendly crossover that the rest of them are. Simply put, if you’ve played one of them, then you know what you’re getting here. And that’s fine, it’s good enough on paper. The stuff that they added isn’t too clever though. To be blunt, Volleyball, Football and Badminton aren’t good, and a few of the Dream Events have no lasting power beyond giving them a shot once. I felt that M&S 2012 missed a trick with the way it plays too; MotionPlus had been out for over two years by the time that this was released, yet it isn’t used at all. As a result, the controls are badly outdated, and they’re just not precise enough for a game that came out five whole years after the Wii itself did. It’s got a London Party mode too, which is the 362nd best Party Mode in a Wii game. Like with much of the content of this game, I played London Party once, and never again. On 3DS, it’s quite the same, but with an episodic story mode and the obligatory touch screen controls. The only thing that’s really remarkable about it is that it’s really nice to look at – if you squint, you’d think that it looks like the Wii version.

I had lots of good times with Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. Amazing as it is to look back, in 2007 this was quite fresh and new, and it made mostly good use of the Wii remote. This is what replaced Wii Sports as my group of mates’ multiplayer game of choice: for us, it was the right game at the right time. I think a lot of other folk felt the same way – it’s still SEGA’s biggest-selling non-bundled console game ever, isn’t it? I remember it being sold out for months everywhere. Definitely, it did the job, from a sales and a gameplay point of view. It lacks individuality and style to be honest, but nonetheless I think this is one of the better Mario sports games (a list I’ll do later this year, natch) and it’s well worth a place in anybody’s Wii collection. It’ll wreck the buttons and screen on your DS if you play that version though, so give that one a bye.

Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games is the best of the lot, and, in my opinion, one of the vest best sports minigame compliations going. It’s a proper sequel in the sense that it added many new events, unlockables, trivia and characters, and it addressed all of the complaints about the Beijing 2008 version. The lack of online was really baws at the time, but what’s here is high quality, well done and worth anyone’s attention. The DS one has a genuinely decent single player as well – none too shabby at all!

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Mario & Sonic at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games doesn’t exist

I wonder why it doesn't, I can only think the license was up as I'ver never played one of these and I sure would have played this if it came to Switch, hopefully, we get one for the summer games in 2020.

I've not played any of those M&S (I keep thinking about the supermarket using that abbreviation...) games besides the first one, but I remember having a blast with it back in the day. The Wii Sports comparison is apt and it was much the same at my place too in that it replaced Wii Sports for most of our family game sessions.

masofdas wrote:

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Mario & Sonic at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games doesn’t exist

I wonder why it doesn't, I can only think the license was up as I'ver never played one of these and I sure would have played this if it came to Switch, hopefully, we get one for the summer games in 2020.

Good question that. I would've said "Japan and Korea - gulp!" but then the first one they did was for Beijing 2008, and "Japan and China - gulp!" I fear the bubble's burst on these games; we may get a 2020 one because it's in Tokyo, but that'll probably be the last one.

Balladeer wrote:

Of the big franchises that we haven't voted for, I'd say there's room for a Pokémon vote on the forum, so perhaps leave that one aside?

JayMoyles wrote:

Agreed with Balla though - Pokémon is huge and we've all probably played enough Pokémon games to cover a vote nicely down the line.

Crumpy Andy wrote:

Aye, I was thinking that as well, would likely get a more successful spin off vote with that one too.

UUURRRGGGHHH FFFIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNEEEE.

I'll create a Pokémon Vote, in Association with Luke Loves Pokémon. I've already written most of my responses

YA BASTARD! I was typing up one of these for Mario Tennis! Still, that can wait for later in the year, and I'll post some Pokemon stuff soon.

I'll be honest: I'm still hoping this will be vote material. In the middle of next year perhaps, if the 3DS is still chugging away. I know not everybody's as fond of vote threads as me, though: if enough people want to put it here instead, Can always tally up the points.

Going to have a bash at this starting with the worst to the best:

Pokémon Shuffle
Pokémon Go
Pokemon Rumble U
Learn with Pokémon: Typing Adventure
Pokémon Conquest, Didn't play much of this as I think I traded in to have credit towards a 3DS or something
Pokkén Tournament
Pokemon Trading Card Game
Pokémon Mini, The system in general
Pokémon Puzzle League
Pokemon Stadium
Pokémon Snap
Pokémon Colosseum

The mainline games are all rather similar to me that it was hard to rank these but as you may have seen elsewhere Gen 2 is taking my highest spot
Pokemon Black and White
Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire
Pokemon X and Y
Pokemon Sun and Moon
Pokemon Red and Blue, Yellow
Pokemon Gold and Silver, Crystal