The Wii was an absolute revelation when it launched
in 2006. After a tough previous generation with the
criminally under-appreciated GameCube, Nintendo needed a win, and my goodness did they bounce
back in style. Motion controls had officially arrived, or
at least had arrived to a mainstream casual market, normalising the act of swishing your
arms around like a mad person and trying not to destroy your TV. But destroy TV’s it did, despite the numerous
warnings about safely securing the Wiimote to your arm, and although it became a haven
for horrifying shovelware, the wii was also home to several total game changers. Even the console menu made an impact, housing
a Mii creation suite and a shop, both of which featured the greatest music ever to grace
a games console. And so, we’re going to look back at the
19th of November 2006 US launch line up to see what all the fuss was about, and as I
do this alphabetically, I’ll be saving the best until last. Are you ready? Let’s do this. It’s a game based on that very popular nickelodian
series up first, a title where avatar, and right cheeky lad, Aang is training in the
North Pole. A sort of action RPG, you get to play as four
different characters and run around completing quests while struggling to beat up wolves. The combat is where avatar the last airbender
– or Avatar: The Legend of Aang if you wanna get European about this – struggles, merely
consisting of pressing a to hit, and z to block. You do unlock more skills as you level, and
can even equip armour you find in the world or purchase from vendors to bolster your character,
but these combat abilities require you to swing the wiimote around and have it register
– a goal that’s sometimes harder work than it should be. 56% on Metacritic for the Wii version, with
the most innovative usage of the Wii’s features coming in the form of focus moves where you
copy patterns to uncover treasure. Shame. We’ve done this game before! Significantly less pretty than its PS3 big
brother, the Wii version of Call of Duty 3 insisted on coming out to play anyway. A world war 2 first person shooter, this time
you get to fight motion controls as well as Nazis. I honestly felt drunk, it was like learning
to walk all over again as I veered from left to right by pointing with the wiimote and
manoeuvring with the nunchuk. Grenade practice didn’t go much better,
with accurate trajectory prediction posing a real challenge, causing my war colleague
to tease me and be very rude. Could hear the sergeant this time around which
was nice and while I wasn’t on board with the bullying of ferris beuler, I was just
glad I wasn’t the butt of the jokes anymore. See what bullying can do?! If you’ve ever wanted to live out that scene
from Inglorious Basterds where they kill Hitler, then this is the game for you! Spray and pray is the only way. A very nice 69% on Metacritic. Cars is unsurprisingly a movie tie-in for
the Disney pixar’s cars movie. Weirdly however, it doesn’t take place during
the events of the film at all, instead being set after. While I will maintain until my dying breath
that the Cars movies are rubbish and for stupid babies, the game does let you approximate
the closest thing to vehicular intercourse we’ve seen so far. Good stuff. The game is based entirely within the town
of Radiator Springs, which you can drive around at will, all two streets of it. You can also crash into other cars for fun
and drive through some fences that’re destructible, and some that aren’t. It has poor draw distance pop-in, and tricky
driving as tilting the Wiimote to steer isn’t always easy, especially when it comes to slowing
down and turning simultaneously. 65% on Metacritic, with many outlets rightly
pointing out that this game is for children. Wow, look at all the gokus! And there’s a mewtwo! I know my anime. [clip of cg intro] I really don’t know my
anime, but I’ve long admired the video game adaptations that attempt to replicate the
absolutely bonkers combat featured in the animation. Appropriately, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi
2 is just that, a fighting game. So I’m off flying around the planet which
is super cool, and can touch down in various cities to see what’s going on – it’s
just one small explorable square though. It offered to teach me the controls but I’m
alright thanks, I’m gonna get FURIOUS and HURT THIS OLD MAN. I quickly learned that spamming the same attacks
without blocking was the way to go, but my luck ran out when both green boy and goku
tasted defeat at the hands of receding hairline goku. There’s definitely something here for fans
of Dragon Ball Z, but not for me. It was awarded 72% on Metacritic for its efforts,
with IGN saying “the general combat will eventually come down to two buttons, making
the game amazingly easy to learn, but nearly impossible to fully master." The second of many racing launch games, Excite
Truck let’s you pick from several powerful vehicles to fly through the respective courses
as fast as possible. The million dollar question when it comes
to driving titles on the Wii is, does it control well? Sort of, yes! You get a real sense of speed with excite
truck, accelerating at absurd speeds, narrowly missing trees, and getting so much air time
you need a commercials pilots license. There are even powerups that deform the terrain
around you, and you get star ratings and scores depending on how crazy you get. Usual wii quirks still apply OH JESUS CHRIST,
and you will struggle to turn with a great degree of accuracy when travelling fast, but
on the whole it’s a great little racer and achieved 72% on Metacritic. GT Pro Series looks like an old arcade game,
and GT Pro Series plays like an old arcade game where the steering wheel’s come a bit
loose. Visual naffness aside, the game is seriously
hampered by bad motion controls, and at this point I’m starting to realise this is a
wii issue as much as it is a developer issue. I picked a Subaru impreza because I’m a
very cool boy and I hit a lot of walls really hard. I then entered the ENJOY CUP and HANG ON,
I don’t think that’s okay. Picking the best car I could find – a Toyota
people carrier – I was absolutely untouchable in my quest for speed and safety supremacy,
consistently delivering my kids to school 10 minutes early, and won’t you know it,
I GET A GOLD CUP. Gamespot said "The visual presentation in
GT Pro Series looks like something from the Nintendo 64 era, and the sound isn't any better"
awarding 5.1/10 with the Metacritic ultimately sitting on 41%. Another movie tie-in game, Happy Feet has
the distinction of being the only dancing game in the Wii’s launch line up. Featuring a returning voice cast including...
barry bee benson, what? Citation very much needed on that one, Elijah
Wood’s Mumble has to win the heart of Gloria and save the Emperor penguin nation. How does he do that? By dancing of course! Except it’s really quite uninvolved. You would’ve thought motion controls would
make this DDR clone a little more interesting, but no, it’s just swinging your Wii mote
in the direction of the prompts. You can probably play it on the toilet. There are other minigames to play like fishing
and sledding, but it didn’t sit well with critics at all, earning just 46% on Metacritic,
with one outlet calling Happy Feet “a new standard in how incomplete a game can be”. Ouch. Oh yeah, here we go, sports time! I’ve played this American football game
before, but I’ve never watched American football, so I’m going to give this everything
I’ve got. Iiiiiiiiit’s the 69ers! Oh man, this game is really not very pretty
on the Wii. I struggle at the best of times attempting
to play US sports games without reading the rules or learning the controls, but I could
at least muddle through. Now however, with motion controls in the mix? This is a whole other universe of confusing. I could tackle well enough, but passing was
my kryptonite. I tried to get involved with the other team’s
scrum – got a penalty – and did my best to run away. In spite of my own shortcomings, Madden NFL
07 reviewed surprisingly well for the Wii, achieving 81% on Metacritic. Shows what I know. Another repeat from the PS3 launch line up,
Marvel Ultimate Alliance on Wii is very much the same, the only difference being that it’s
uglier and has worse controls. Mercifully you can press the A button to attack
instead of waggling the Wiimote like a lunatic, but it still all boils down to pressing one
button to beat up baddies before interacting with panels and opening doors. There’s a fun super hero story in there
to experience, and it’s nice to exist in a universe of all the marvel superheroes and
villains, and not just the avengers or x-men, but that didn’t stop the Wii release landing
the lowest Metacritic average from 7 platforms at 73%. Reviewers praised the strength of the game’s
roster, but almost universally decried the forced implementation of the Wii’s motion
controls. I’m still hoping we one day get a game that
lives up to that intro cutscene, but there we are. It’s another racing game! And I’m fairly sure they just killed a guy?
Remarkably not affiliated with the energy drink, Monster 4x4 World Circuit is a by-the-books
arcade racer with just-okay motion control steering. There are a number of cars available to choose
from, but why anyone would scroll beyond what is essentially Mr Bean’s mini on stilts,
I don’t know. There’s some variety to the racing, with
barrels you can launch at your competition, and speed boosts littered around the course,
but it really does all come down to those controls. The game encourages you to do tricks in the
air when jumping over ramps, but given you have to spin the Wiimote to pull them off
– you know, the thing you’re also using to steer – it often ends with you landing
in a weird place or veering off in every direction. 51% on Metacritic, and I for one am glad that
there are no more racing games to get through. Oh for god’s sake, last one I PROMISE. How many times do I have to tell you that
I cannot be tamed, and I will take the lessons learned here to homebase carpark at 2am. This visual style might look familiar to returning
viewers of this series, as Need For Speed Carbon is indeed a direct sequel to Xbox 360
launch title Need For Speed Most Wanted. Oh god you scared me. But, being scared is part of the game here,
as you try to take over the city from rival racing crews. You can even take different types of wingmen
with you like my boy Neville here – he just killed a police officer. I’m grateful to Carbon for constantly reminding
me what a burden I am to the state, but this game is not great with the Wiimote. I’m sure there’s a case to be made for
acclimatising to the motion controls, but for me it didn’t translate at all, and I
was bumping off walls constantly like a right grandma. It even has you connect the nunchuck on start
up, browse the menus with the Wiimote held vertically, and then race with it held horizontally
– mixed messaging to say the least. Makes sense then that the Wii release of Need
For Speed Carbon is the worst reviewed, sitting at 67% on Metacritic. The final entry in the rampage series before
Midway games was snapped up and rolled in Warner Brothers Interactive, Rampage Total
Destruction is a game about a soda company whose new soft drink has a 100% success rate
at turning those who drink it into horrifying monsters. Should’ve seen it coming really, I mean
SCUM soda. Come on. Anyway, you get to control said monsters,
and there are a lot of monsters to control, smashing up various stages and fulfilling
challenges to earn a high score. It controls horribly, with no clear way of
navigating the confusing depth of each environment, resulting in you contorting your arms around
before waggling your hands like your god’s first attempt at birds. The original titles were great and worked
well as arcade games, but this home console release just feels a bit empty, devoid of
much to do. It’s good news then that the original rampage
games are also included, so you can just play those instead. 46% on Metacritic. We’ve all been there. You’re enjoying a nice picnic in the park
with your froggy friends when rabbits cursed with the soul and eyes of a Victorian child
burst from the ground, and a BDSM rabbit snatches you up to take you to his special room. This is a minigame collection ostensibly,
and a surprisingly competent one at that. I always wrote Rabbids off as some insidious
children’s distraction from real video games but I’ll hold my hands up and admit I quite
enjoyed my time with Rayman Raving Rabbids. First I was given a bomb and had to run it
over to an unsuspecting victim, which is a kind of victory I suppose. Then there was the cow hammer throw. It was a little tricky to get the timing right,
but look at that baby fly. It was time to trace around the shape of food
next, and of course I drew a Wilson, but the game ended before I could finish. Then there was a dancing game and an on-rails
shooter with a western theme, honestly, I was really rather impressed, and they all
controlled competently! Hooray! Bucking the trend the Wii version of Raving
Rabbids scored the highest on Metacritic with 76%. Still waiting on them to follow through with
that BDSM bunny though. Red Steel is a game about a lady who really
likes fish. No, as in, she really likes the fish. You, cool, a
former bodyguard, are meeting with your girlfriend’s father, well-dressed, quite clearly involved
in organised crime, for the first time, and naturally there’s trouble afoot. After storming the hotel where you’re due
to dine, enemies take both your girlfriend and girlfriend daddy hostage, and it’s up
to you to wobble around from room to room killing people like you’ve never seen a
gun before, let alone used your neck to turn your head. What I’m trying to say is that red steel
does not control well. You use the Wiimote to steer while the nunchuck
walks, but to accurately aim you must extend your arm to zoom in. This often confuses the sensor which leaves
you facing the wrong way, standing out in the open, and absorbing a load of bullets. It’s a cool concept at least, even giving
you a samurai sword to slash at foes with, but Gamespot put it best when they said it
"feels more like two cavemen hitting each other with clubs than like two highly trained
samurai going at it." The review scores vary wildly from outlet
to outlet, but the Metacritic landed on a disappointing 63%. SpongeBob Squarepants creature from the krusty
krab is a platforming-racing-flying game where you control Patrick, plankton, and the eponymous
bob himself in various dream sequences. Yes, apparently none of the levels are real,
which really gives them creative license to just go a bit mental with it all. First up was a racing segment where a bed
becomes a car and spongebob turns into a spooky man in a completely different art style speaking
like this. I then did a spot of platforming before hitting
a brick wall – this winch would not open. Turns out it’s a known issue with the emulator
I was using, but given I found a couple of posts from people with this same problem who
were presumably playing the real game, it’s safe to say that the Wii version of SpongeBob
Squarepants creature from the krusty krab doesn’t control all that well. With unresponsive controls and complaints
of the game’s darker themes and design not matching the cartoon, the title did not go
down very well at all, achieving just 57% on Metacritic. YES! There’s just something so bloody lovely
about the soundtracks of Japanese video games where you roll monkeys down a hill in a giant
ball, ahhh, love it. A Japanese video game where you roll monkeys
down a hill in a giant ball, super monkey ball banana blitz was a Wii exclusive upon
its release, and having played the PS4 remaster last year, I’m here to tell you that somehow,
miraculously, the Wii version controls better. And that’s to say it controls quite well! A giant monkey has stolen you and your friends
precious golden banans, and there’s only one way to get them back! You guessed it, rolling monkeys down a hill
in a giant ball. You get points based on how fast you make
it to the end of each stage and how many bananas you collect along the way, with a boss fight
awaiting you at the end of each world. It’s simple and fun, and if you like Japanese
video games about rolling monkeys down a hill in a giant ball, then you’re in for a treat,
friend. 74% on Metacritic, with outlets split once
more. Some liked the controls, some didn’t, and
some thought it was quite short. I liked it though. Based on a Cartoon Network series I’ve never
heard of, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy sees Grim’s mojo balls stolen, and they
only way to get them back is to beat the ever-loving-stuffing out of one another. A fighting game, for some reason, your mileage
with it is likely going to come down to how much you enjoy - or are even aware of – the
cartoon, with cutscenes playing out between bouts. Can we get a wellness check on Billy though,
please? Mercifully it has very limited motion controls,
meaning you can mostly play it by pressing the face buttons of the Wiimote. There are powerups, lives, and environmental
hazards, and it all gets suitably chaotic when 4 characters are on screen at once. I can’t tell you if that’s a good thing
or not, but there’s certainly a lot going on. Described as repetitive and with “few technical
limitations”, the grim adventures of billy and mandy didn’t go down particularly well. 61% on Metacritic. It’s shocking to see a Nintendo console
launch without a Mario game, but fret not, here’s link to save the day! The legend of Zelda twilight princess sees
link battling to prevent Hyrule from being taken over by a corrupted parallel dimension
known as the twilight realm. He can’t just do this in stupid regular
link form however, so he also takes the guise of a spooky wolf, not only looking cool, but
awakening a whole generation of furries. Twilight princess was originally planned as
a gamecube exclusive but was delayed for a Wii port, which ultimately didn’t negatively
impact the reception among critics – they bloody loved it, 95% on Metacritic – but
it did receive criticism for its motion controls, with outlets calling them "forced" and "tacked-on". I obviously didn’t play for long enough
to get stuck into the meat of the adventure, but I did enjoy awaking in the world’s most
needy town. Everyone had a job for me: cats missing, beehive
needs knocking down – by hawk no less - there’s fishing to be done, a slingshot needs buying,
and a parcel needs to be delivered to the hyrule royal family? Find someone else mate, I’ve got way too
much on my plate. It’s a Zelda game, and obviously it’s
really, really good, but part of me wished I could just sit back and enjoy it without
having to use motion controls. It’s time for a bit more of the radical
cool skater boy bird man! You can’t have a console launch without
Tony Hawk poking his beak in – it might actually be illegal to exclude him – so
here comes Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam, a game where you go downhill as fast as possible
and try to beat your opponents. No sign of jam though. First up is the worst creation suite I’ve
ever seen. What am I even looking at here? This thing is a TOTAL NIGHTMARE. All of the skaters appear to be fictional
apart from Tony boy, and the story is filled with edgy skater dialogue like this. Rad stuff dude. It controls alright, having you play with
a horizontal Wiimote and tilting to steer. There’s even combat... for some reason,
and once you’ve done enough tricks you can get a speed boost by filling the... zone bone,
before jerking the Wiimote to activate it. No really. Taking you around the world to such lovely
destinations as San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Edinburgh, the game takes Tony Hawk’s
skating franchise in a new direction, but that’s mainly because when you bounce off
objects your character turns around and then you can’t turn back around easily because
of the tilt controls. A very nice 69% on Metacritic. Have you ever played a Persona game and thought
to yourself, man, I wish I could remove foreign bodies from a person’s ribcage. Good news! Here’s trauma center second opinion, a remake
of the Nintendo DS original, not only are you basically playing a big game of operation,
cutting open arms, removing glass fragments, and cleaning wounds, but you’re also wrapped
up in a visual novel, filling the medical scrubs of one doctor Derek stiles, who by
all accounts is just a bit crap at his job. Which is appropriate really. WELL WHICH IS IT? You can’t put the glass back in somewhere
else when you remove it which is a shame, but it makes great use of the Wii functionality
while also grounding you in its story an universe, an impressive feat all things considered. Gamespy called it “an essential purchase
for Wii owners” with the game achieving 80% on Metacritic. Oh yeah, here we go, sports time! I’ve played a sports collection before,
but... oh come on you know the score, it’s Wii bloody Sports! Here’s the one you’ve all been waiting
for – the best minigame collection ever and a fixture of youth centres and church
groups the world over. As I was emulating I didn’t have access
to custom Mii’s, so I was thrilled to discover our very own Tiny Peter hiding amongst the
presets. Tennis has you move automatically, only requiring
that you swing your Wiimote to hit the ball. Naturally you can waggle as fast as possible
to look like a crazy person with... mixed results, but up to four of you can play, and
that’s fun. Baseball’s a little trickier, requiring
decent timing when batting, as well as determining whether or not it’s necessary to properly
swing, or just jerk your wrist. Pitching’s easier then, allowing you to
throw wicked curve balls, hahah, take that idiot. Next up is bowling, and yes, you can throw
it backwards and see your mii’s react in horror. I’d say bowling above all others makes you
simulate the sport it aims to replicate most accurately and I love it. You’ve also got golf which is really hard
due to slightly wonky power readings, and all the spectators sound sarcastic. And finally there’s boxing, where you repeatedly
hit a mii in the face until it gets brain damage and collapses. This is mainly achieved without tactics by
flailing the Wiimote and nunchuk back and forth, but it’s still a good laugh. I think the power of Wii sports lies in its
use of your custom Mii’s. While I didn’t have any here, it was amazing
stepping out onto the field in baseball to see a random line-up of your school friends,
or punching the hell out of grandma. Given the undeniable lasting impression the
game has left on popular culture, it’s sort of unthinkable for it to only have received
76% on Metacritic, but we all know the truth, don’t we? That 76% brings the total average score of
the Wii’s launch line up to 66%. Big thank you to Mr Robot monkey for suggesting
I provide the average score of all releases – great idea. And so there we are, all of the Wii’s US
launch line up sort of reviewed in 2020, what was your favourite, and why was it Wii sports
or Zelda? Let me know in the comments below. Be sure to follow me on twitter for updates
on future launch game videos, and why not like this video and subscribe to the channel. Thanks so much for watching, and I’ll see
you next time, bye!
