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Discussion Wii Hidden Gems

I'm really partial to We Love Golf!, which is a Camelot-developed, Capcom-published Mario Golf-like game even possessing various Capcom costumes like Apollo Justice, Arthur of Ghost 'n Goblins fame, Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, and Guile of Street Fighter fame, etc.

There's also The Munchables, which is a cross between Katamari Damacy and Pac-Man, sort of.

The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces is a terrific Ace Combat-styled game based on an anime, which I haven't seen. Though I've heard the anime/movie is dreadfully boring, unlike the game. The game also contains a stellar soundtrack.

Rabbids Go Home is a fun 3D platformer with players controlling a Rabbid driving a shopping cart, gathering junk to build a tower to the moon. ha

Dewy's Adventure is a motion-controlled (gyro) 3D platformer made by the same team behind Elebits (arguably another hidden gem on the Wii), IIRC. It's a great game, looks beautiful too.

Kororinpa (both the original and Marble Saga) are two marble-rolling puzzle games that are a lot of fun. They both use the Wii Remote cleverly to move your customizable marble through various stages.

Phew! I think I listed too many, but the Wii really has a lot of wonderful gems in its library.
 
Thanks for these excellent recommendations @Phil32!

I'm just going to link Phil's review archive here because he is one of the best sources for excellent hidden gem reviews on Nintendo consoles 😃


There are 1,026 total and they cover a ton of different systems! They've helped me find many gems I wouldn't have checked out otherwise.
 
Wii gems I enjoyed:

-Fishing resort : XSEED released this in the west. An open world fishing game with motion controls for fishing. I love fishing in games, and this hit the spot!!

-My Life as a King: download only Square title where you build up a city from scratch. Not complex but VERY addictive.

-The Last Story: Sakaguchi RPG where you have a city home base and go out on missions. Uses an aggro system like MMOs so you have to manage aggro and have tanks/healers etc. good music and really fun gameplay, if pretty non-traditional

-Opoona: really weird RPG where you learn licenses for life skills, explore a world around a city, help residents, battle is unique, music is great, art style is weird in a good way. It’s hard to describe and has issues but I really dug it!

-Rune Factory Frontier: not sure if this counts but I love farming life sims and this game is fun. Gorgeous for the time, and has dungeons and combat in addition to the usual farming, romance, etc systems. It’s also got a ton of content if you want to dig deep.
 
Alright, my time to play! Just because I already posted a message about my translations doesn't mean I can't put a few names here.

A lot of gems have already been mentioned (Sin & Punishment, HotD Overkill, etc.), but there's a game that truly deserves to be known, and that's "Prince of Persia: the Forgotten Sands".

If you're like me, you probably thought back in the days it was a watered-down version of the HD game (after all, it shares its title and packaging), and you couldn't be more wrong!

PoP FS for Wii is a totally different game and, dare I say, far much better than its brother : it takes you to a cursed land that is plagued with evil vines, and makes a fairly good use of the pointer to use magic powers never seen anywhere else.

Plus, it has tons of bonus content, including the very first version of PoP for Mac that you can unlock!




I think the misunderstanding about it being a port hurt its sales pretty hard. It's fairly cheap, so anyone should really give it a try.



Now, for some other names:

I don't think anybody mentioned "A shadow tale" ("Lost in Shadow" in America) : it ressembles Ico a lot esthetically, and you play the shadow of the hero, meaning you never actually interact with "real" world, but only with shadows, making for really interesting puzzles. I believe it's one of the last games published by Hudson:





Among the "Operation Rainfall" games, Pandora's Tower is probably the least remembered, but its use of motion controls, compelling story and great gameplay make it a real experience:





Disney's Guilty Party : don't be fooled, it has nothing to do with Mickey and his friends. It's actually a very good "Clue" game, with minigames to unveil clues that will help you unmask the culprit at the end of each level. And it even has replay value and can be played by several players! A really fun "Scoobygang" adventure!





Lastly, I wanna talk about a game I love to hate : it's called Baroque, and is a remake of an early Saturn game (though heavily updated). You play an amnesic boy in a twisted world after the Armageddon, sent to the deepth of the Neuro Tower by an archangel to "purify" a mad god.
It's a very bizarre roguelike game where death is mandatory to progress. The gameplay is stiff and I hated it at first, but the atmosphere does everything to me.




Sorry if I got carried away, I'm just too much of a Wii fan!
 
Great stuff @Brand.Newman ! I have Lost in Shadow but haven't played it yet. It's in my backlog alongside Dewy's Adventure, Fluidity, Options, Elebits also noted in this thread. Y'all have me wanting to break out the Wii this Wii-kend but come to think of it my Wii U is plugged in and ready! 💡🔌
 
+1 for Kororinpa, Excite Truck, Elebits, Zack & Wiki, Sakura Wars V, Ghost Squad, Silent Hill Shattered Memories, Sin & Punishment 2, Endless Ocean 2, Opoona and others already appeared in previous posts.

My two contributions not yet cited are

Dragon Quest Swords
Fun arcade-style first-person spin off of the Dragon Quest series.

Dragon_Quest_Swords.jpg


TrackMania
There aren't many great racing games on Wii (Excite Truck is a must play though) and TrackMania certainly belongs among the small group of quality games in the genre.
It's an arcade racing game, whose series born on PC, based on elaborated track design, in fact a track editor is included in the game.
Think of it as hot wheels in videogame form.


TM_Wii_TrackMania.png
 
The truly hidden gems are the ones that aren’t even available anymore due to the Wii Shop Channel closing, and among those, one of the best, most charming WiiWare games I’ve played is Bonsai Barber.




It’s been ages since I’ve played it, but I have such fond memories of the game. It’s so sad that pretty much no one else is ever going to play the game again since it’s not available anymore and will likely never be ported to a newer console… =(

Good morning @Tye

Thank you for bringing our attention to this game I had never heard of! Just installed it and it's pretty nice indeed.

I thought I might leave a message for people meeting issues with the "AN ERROR OCCURRED" red screen.

If you try to boot the wiiware from a loader (like USB loader GX), be sure to set the nand emulation setting to "Neek".

Any other setting gave me a failure. I'm guessing it might be connected to the game checking your calendar, but I might be wrong.

Anyway, works like a charm now, I thought you'd like to know if you wanna give the game a try.

Have a nice WE.
 
  • Dead Space Extraction
  • Red Steel 2
  • Zack and Wiki
  • The Conduit
Some of the ones I enjoyed that I remembered getting little fanfare.
 
Hello everybody! I don't know if many of you are still coming here, but I wanted to inform you my "Chibi-Robo English translation patch" for the Wii version of the game has been released!

The game is the same as its Gamecube counterpart (albeit a lot cheaper), except for some different designs (the Rangers, the Space Scrambler), and the fact that it has "New Play Control" feature!

As a matter of fact, it's the only game of the "New Play" collection that stayed in Japan.

The translation is not totally identical to the GC version for several reasons (lack of space, a translation that is closer to the original meaning, etc.), and I hope this gives you the motivation to play the game again, should you have played it before on GC!

 
Good evening everyone, and thanks @curl-6 for creating this really nice topic.

I'm Brand Newman, amateur translator of Japanese Wii games.
I hope this won't come as pretentious, but I've already read about two games I've translated on this thread. So I thought I might leave a little message about them, considering some can be easily seen as "gems".

So, here's the trailer for "Zangeki No Reginleiv", a hack-n-slash, nordic mythology version of EDF:



I also read someone talked about Earth Seeker, a "Monster Hunter"-like game of some sort with a really strong appeal:



I also did "Ikenie No Yoru", a very effective horror game that can be played with the Wii Balance Board:



Takt of Magic, a game that makes real good use of the Wiimote, allowing you to cast spell by drawing "runes" with it (and the music is marvelous):



And finally, there's a Wiiware called Line Attack Heroes, that was supposed to be released worldwide by Greezo (the company behind the "Ocarina" remakes for the 3ds), and ended up stuck in Japan:



All these translations can be downloaded following the links in the descriptions.

I'm currently working on Chibi-Robo (the "New Control" version, only released in Japan), and hope I can released it by the end of the year.

If you happen to like what you see in these trailers, give these games a chance, I think some of you might enjoy them!

And if you want to stay up-to-date with my progress, you can find me on Twitter, where I (BrandNewman06) : I try to publish info and new pictures on a semi-regular basis! ;)

Everybody has a good day, and keep playing the Wii!

I played hundred of hours of Zangeki no Reginleiv in japanese and this makes me VERY HAPPY.

I'm unboxing my Wii U so i can install this and play this translation. Thanks!
 
World of Goo was another really lovely little game on Wii, it was basically an indie gem before indies were really a thing.
It's simple but satisfying gameplay made it a great pick-up-and-play experience.



I also bought Ghost Squad just recently, but with my backlog piling up like the beer bottles in a college dorm, it will probably be quite some time until I actually get around it.
 
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