[Adapted from a post in this thread.]
I got my old Wii back in 2007, I think. Some time around when it was new and every store was out of them. Most of the games I remember playing back when the console was new were Twilight Princess, Super Paper Mario, (despite its shortcomings and differences, I still think it's great) Brawl, WarioWare: Smooth Moves, Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart Wii, and Metroid Prime 3.
One of my fondest memories with the console was modding it for the first time. I bought a 1 gig Sandisk SD card, backed up my family's Twilight Princess save, put the Twilight Hack on (the Twilight Hack was the first method of softmodding the Wii. It involved executing a stack smash by making the name of Epona longer than the character limit would allow. The resulting crash was used to load unauthorized data from the SD card.) and watched the magic happen. The Wii was the first thing I ever modded, too. The Homebrew Channel opened up a whole new world of things to do with my Wii (and thus I have created the most out-of-context sentence in my history of writing). Mostly what I did was install emulators, which I used to play a lot of the Contra games, Mega Man Zero, Wario Land 4, and loads of shmups.
Eventually as time went on, I stopped using the Wii as much. I did get a new game or two which revived the Wii's usefulness, but only until I'm finished with the game. In these later years, I played Mario Galaxy 2, Sin and Punishment 2, (Not So) New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Animal Crossing City Folk, The Legend of No Exploration Allowed: Skyward Sword, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Wario Land: Shake It, Kirby's Return to Dreamland, and Sonic Colors. Out of the games I've played, I've made a top ten list of my favorites below.
10 - WarioWare Smooth Moves
I'm not really a fan of motion controls, though I can make an exception for this game. This iteration of the WarioWare series found some creative uses for the Wii remote, like holding it in your hand and lifting it like a dumbbell, using it like a rolling pin, and like a mortar and pestle for microgames. Like all of the games in the series, they're challenging, addicting, and just plain fun.
9 - Super Paper Mario
Like I said earlier, this game gets a ton of flak for straying too far from its predecessors by being a platformer with RPG elements rather than an RPG with platformer elements. Regardless, this game is still great. It doesn't lose the charm that Paper Mario's well-known for and it's got a great story with some witty writing. The bosses are WAY too easy, and there is some bullshit in the game (literally holding right for several minutes), but it's still worth a shot.
8 - Super Mario Galaxy 2
This game didn't impress me as much as the first Mario Galaxy as it reuses many of the same ideas from the first game and acts like the plot of the first game didn't happen at all (not a major issue, though it shows that Nintendo got lazy in this department). With that said, this is still a good game. With 240 stars to collect, it's twice as long as the first one, has new powerups (and has Luigi as a playable character, thus canonizing Stone Luigi), and plenty of new levels.
7 - Super Mario Galaxy
I like the first one better, possibly due to the impression it gave me when I tried it out for the first time. Tons of unique platforming concepts were thrown into this game, such as planetoid-hopping and gravity puzzles. The orchestral music, while somewhat unfitting in a Mario game, helped give this game that "grand" feeling, like you're about to experience something ground-breaking that you've never seen before.
6 - Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Easily the weakest entry in the Prime series, but hey, it's Metroid fucking Prime, there's no way it can be bad. At the start, it seems to abandon the feeling of emptiness and loneliness that many other Metroid games have, though it's still present later in the game when you explore planets on your own, though not to the extent as the other games with the Aurora unit contacting you every now and then with mission requests. Like with WarioWare, I like the use of motion controls here. Makes aiming a breeze and can let you move your gun very quickly from one part of the screen to the other, which I don't think you could do in Prime 1 and 2 for the Gamecube. The door-opening motion control segments were kinda dumb, but aside from those, the motion controls in this game are solid.
5 - Sonic Colors
After watching the demise of the Sonic franchise online with numerous Sonic '06 reviews and fan reactions and being frustrated with the night stages of Sonic Unleashed, this game was a huge improvement on not just Unleashed, but the series as a whole. This game ditches the gritty, serious storylines Sonic games were plagued with in favor of a cheesy, Saturday cartoon-like plotline with funny writing and light-hearted environments and themes. The sillier atmosphere, coupled with outstanding graphics (for Wii standards) and a kickass soundtrack made this game a damn fun experience. Not only that, but it restored the hopes of many for the future of the Sonic franchise, which is really impressive considering IT'S NO USE THAT TORNADO'S CARRYING A CAR IT LOOKS LIKE ELIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISE MEPHILES DAMN WHERE'S THAT FOURTH CHAOS DAAAAAAAMN
4 - Donkey Kong Country Returns
Retro's take on Donkey Kong Country was a move that surprised many, but turned out to be a great reboot. The atmosphere isn't quite the same as the original, though this game has a great atmosphere of its own. The level design is excellent; just about every level in the game has something unique about it that makes it stand out from the rest of them. Like Sonic Colors, the graphics are also really good. The colors are bright and vibrant, and during certain portions, the camera will zoom in or out, depending on whether or not you need some extra viewing area. This game isn't a short ride either. There's a total of nine world (ten in the 3DS port, IIRC) with KONG letters and puzzle pieces to collect in each one. While the game lacks Kremlings, it's certainly not lacking any fun or entertainment.
3 - Sin and Punishment 2
If you've ever played Sin and Punishment, then you'll know why the Wii's controls would be perfect for it. Thankfully, Treasure made a sequel a few years back with that in mind. Again, this is one of the few Wii games were motion controls are great and aren't shoehorned in with the Wii remote's lack of extra buttons as an excuse. In fact, the Wii remote + nunchuck combination is the best way to play this game. As for the game itself, it's a big step up from the first Sin and Punishment. With a more powerful console, there's a lot more enemies to shoot and slash. In addition, you aren't limited to the ground anymore, and you can run on the ground or float freely while aiming. This is another one of those games that's really, really fucking fun to play and challenging, which is native to Treasure.
2 - Kirby's Return to Dreamland
It took HAL several years and redesigns before they got this game onto shelves. The game design that won was a classic-style platformer, very similar to Kirby's Adventure in its level structure with linear level progression with hidden items to be found, though gameplay elements are borrowed from other games, like multiple moves for abilities in Super Star and the GBA/DS games. What I love about this game is how it's a Kirby game with actual challenge, especially for someone who's played Kirby games since they were a kid, though you won't reach it until you beat the game once and unlock the extra mode. Overall, this and Super Star Ultra are the best Kirby games out there.
1 - Metroid: Other M
And that was my impression of Arin Hanson.
1 - Wario Land: Shake It!
I fucking love Wario. Out of all the characters in the Mario series', spinoffs, and sister series', he's the most entertaining out of all of them. He's a fat, greedy, pudgy Italian stereotype. He's basically the closest thing we can get to Danny DeVito as a playable character. As a kid, I adored the Wario Land games and Shake It didn't disappoint. Shake It ditches most of Wario's "abilities" from enemies (save for Fire Wario and Snowball Wario) and the metroidvania-styled maps in WL3 in favor of gameplay similar to WL4, with entering a level and then gotta go fast-ing once you reach the end. Like all Wario Land games, this one also focuses on dolla dolla bill, ya'll and lets you shake the everlasting fuck out of moneybags and enemies, too. This game is also gorgeous and has some very impressive sprite work. Everything is animated very fluidly and pleasingly colorful and cartoony. The game also has an excellent soundtrack with some familiar-sounding desert themed instruments combined with an electronic beat for desert levels to smooth jazz for a hazy mine level. While there's little dialogue in the game, the humor the series is known for is still there. I don't want to spoil it, but if you've seen the ending to the game, you'll know what I mean. Oh, and the cutscenes are also great-looking. They're done by Good Feel who, if I'm not mistaken, also worked on Kid Icarus Uprising. But yeah, WAAA, WAAAAAA, WAAAAAAARIIIIIIOOOOOOOOO
I got my old Wii back in 2007, I think. Some time around when it was new and every store was out of them. Most of the games I remember playing back when the console was new were Twilight Princess, Super Paper Mario, (despite its shortcomings and differences, I still think it's great) Brawl, WarioWare: Smooth Moves, Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart Wii, and Metroid Prime 3.
One of my fondest memories with the console was modding it for the first time. I bought a 1 gig Sandisk SD card, backed up my family's Twilight Princess save, put the Twilight Hack on (the Twilight Hack was the first method of softmodding the Wii. It involved executing a stack smash by making the name of Epona longer than the character limit would allow. The resulting crash was used to load unauthorized data from the SD card.) and watched the magic happen. The Wii was the first thing I ever modded, too. The Homebrew Channel opened up a whole new world of things to do with my Wii (and thus I have created the most out-of-context sentence in my history of writing). Mostly what I did was install emulators, which I used to play a lot of the Contra games, Mega Man Zero, Wario Land 4, and loads of shmups.
Eventually as time went on, I stopped using the Wii as much. I did get a new game or two which revived the Wii's usefulness, but only until I'm finished with the game. In these later years, I played Mario Galaxy 2, Sin and Punishment 2, (Not So) New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Animal Crossing City Folk, The Legend of No Exploration Allowed: Skyward Sword, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Wario Land: Shake It, Kirby's Return to Dreamland, and Sonic Colors. Out of the games I've played, I've made a top ten list of my favorites below.
10 - WarioWare Smooth Moves
I'm not really a fan of motion controls, though I can make an exception for this game. This iteration of the WarioWare series found some creative uses for the Wii remote, like holding it in your hand and lifting it like a dumbbell, using it like a rolling pin, and like a mortar and pestle for microgames. Like all of the games in the series, they're challenging, addicting, and just plain fun.
9 - Super Paper Mario
Like I said earlier, this game gets a ton of flak for straying too far from its predecessors by being a platformer with RPG elements rather than an RPG with platformer elements. Regardless, this game is still great. It doesn't lose the charm that Paper Mario's well-known for and it's got a great story with some witty writing. The bosses are WAY too easy, and there is some bullshit in the game (literally holding right for several minutes), but it's still worth a shot.
8 - Super Mario Galaxy 2
This game didn't impress me as much as the first Mario Galaxy as it reuses many of the same ideas from the first game and acts like the plot of the first game didn't happen at all (not a major issue, though it shows that Nintendo got lazy in this department). With that said, this is still a good game. With 240 stars to collect, it's twice as long as the first one, has new powerups (and has Luigi as a playable character, thus canonizing Stone Luigi), and plenty of new levels.
7 - Super Mario Galaxy
I like the first one better, possibly due to the impression it gave me when I tried it out for the first time. Tons of unique platforming concepts were thrown into this game, such as planetoid-hopping and gravity puzzles. The orchestral music, while somewhat unfitting in a Mario game, helped give this game that "grand" feeling, like you're about to experience something ground-breaking that you've never seen before.
6 - Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Easily the weakest entry in the Prime series, but hey, it's Metroid fucking Prime, there's no way it can be bad. At the start, it seems to abandon the feeling of emptiness and loneliness that many other Metroid games have, though it's still present later in the game when you explore planets on your own, though not to the extent as the other games with the Aurora unit contacting you every now and then with mission requests. Like with WarioWare, I like the use of motion controls here. Makes aiming a breeze and can let you move your gun very quickly from one part of the screen to the other, which I don't think you could do in Prime 1 and 2 for the Gamecube. The door-opening motion control segments were kinda dumb, but aside from those, the motion controls in this game are solid.
5 - Sonic Colors
After watching the demise of the Sonic franchise online with numerous Sonic '06 reviews and fan reactions and being frustrated with the night stages of Sonic Unleashed, this game was a huge improvement on not just Unleashed, but the series as a whole. This game ditches the gritty, serious storylines Sonic games were plagued with in favor of a cheesy, Saturday cartoon-like plotline with funny writing and light-hearted environments and themes. The sillier atmosphere, coupled with outstanding graphics (for Wii standards) and a kickass soundtrack made this game a damn fun experience. Not only that, but it restored the hopes of many for the future of the Sonic franchise, which is really impressive considering IT'S NO USE THAT TORNADO'S CARRYING A CAR IT LOOKS LIKE ELIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISE MEPHILES DAMN WHERE'S THAT FOURTH CHAOS DAAAAAAAMN
4 - Donkey Kong Country Returns
Retro's take on Donkey Kong Country was a move that surprised many, but turned out to be a great reboot. The atmosphere isn't quite the same as the original, though this game has a great atmosphere of its own. The level design is excellent; just about every level in the game has something unique about it that makes it stand out from the rest of them. Like Sonic Colors, the graphics are also really good. The colors are bright and vibrant, and during certain portions, the camera will zoom in or out, depending on whether or not you need some extra viewing area. This game isn't a short ride either. There's a total of nine world (ten in the 3DS port, IIRC) with KONG letters and puzzle pieces to collect in each one. While the game lacks Kremlings, it's certainly not lacking any fun or entertainment.
3 - Sin and Punishment 2
If you've ever played Sin and Punishment, then you'll know why the Wii's controls would be perfect for it. Thankfully, Treasure made a sequel a few years back with that in mind. Again, this is one of the few Wii games were motion controls are great and aren't shoehorned in with the Wii remote's lack of extra buttons as an excuse. In fact, the Wii remote + nunchuck combination is the best way to play this game. As for the game itself, it's a big step up from the first Sin and Punishment. With a more powerful console, there's a lot more enemies to shoot and slash. In addition, you aren't limited to the ground anymore, and you can run on the ground or float freely while aiming. This is another one of those games that's really, really fucking fun to play and challenging, which is native to Treasure.
2 - Kirby's Return to Dreamland
It took HAL several years and redesigns before they got this game onto shelves. The game design that won was a classic-style platformer, very similar to Kirby's Adventure in its level structure with linear level progression with hidden items to be found, though gameplay elements are borrowed from other games, like multiple moves for abilities in Super Star and the GBA/DS games. What I love about this game is how it's a Kirby game with actual challenge, especially for someone who's played Kirby games since they were a kid, though you won't reach it until you beat the game once and unlock the extra mode. Overall, this and Super Star Ultra are the best Kirby games out there.
1 - Metroid: Other M
And that was my impression of Arin Hanson.
1 - Wario Land: Shake It!
I fucking love Wario. Out of all the characters in the Mario series', spinoffs, and sister series', he's the most entertaining out of all of them. He's a fat, greedy, pudgy Italian stereotype. He's basically the closest thing we can get to Danny DeVito as a playable character. As a kid, I adored the Wario Land games and Shake It didn't disappoint. Shake It ditches most of Wario's "abilities" from enemies (save for Fire Wario and Snowball Wario) and the metroidvania-styled maps in WL3 in favor of gameplay similar to WL4, with entering a level and then gotta go fast-ing once you reach the end. Like all Wario Land games, this one also focuses on dolla dolla bill, ya'll and lets you shake the everlasting fuck out of moneybags and enemies, too. This game is also gorgeous and has some very impressive sprite work. Everything is animated very fluidly and pleasingly colorful and cartoony. The game also has an excellent soundtrack with some familiar-sounding desert themed instruments combined with an electronic beat for desert levels to smooth jazz for a hazy mine level. While there's little dialogue in the game, the humor the series is known for is still there. I don't want to spoil it, but if you've seen the ending to the game, you'll know what I mean. Oh, and the cutscenes are also great-looking. They're done by Good Feel who, if I'm not mistaken, also worked on Kid Icarus Uprising. But yeah, WAAA, WAAAAAA, WAAAAAAARIIIIIIOOOOOOOOO