Topic: Best of the Wii U eShop (Bonus Round G: Wii VC)

[Mr. Bungle]

Background
The Wii U eShop will only be open for a limited time so it is worth looking at the games there while there is still time to buy them. In the first few months we looked at all the available eShop games, but we omitted the Virtual Console releases, until now! Nintendo introduced the Virtual Console (VC) with Wii as a way to sell games from previous systems a la carte. That same service continued with Wii U and 3DS before being replaced with a Netflix style service bundled with the Nintendo Switch's Online membership.

The Nintendo Wii Virtual Console
The Wii is Nintendo's best selling home console to date. At about 101 million units sold, it was the predecessor to the Wii U. Since the Wii U is backwards compatible it can natively play Wii discs and so no emulation is needed for these titles. It is worth noting that the Virtual Console branding of these games was only done by Nintendo of America. From January of 2015 to July of 2017, 30 Wii games were made available on the Wii U eShop and all appear to still be there. The games are priced at $19.99 in the US.

The Games
The following 30 titles comprise the Wii VC for Wii U with information in the following order
Game Title (Release year, Developer, Current disc cost*)
* Loose disc only, USD, source: https://www.pricecharting.com/

• Donkey Kong Country Returns  (2010, Retro Studios, $15)
• Donkey Kong Jungle Beat  (2009, Nintendo, $11)
• Excitebots: Trick Racing (2009, Nintendo, $7)
• Kirby's Epic Yarn (2010, Good Feel, $8)
• Kirby's Return to Dream Land (2011, HAL, $30)
• Lost in Shadow (2011, Hudson, $13)
• Mario Sports Mix (2011, Square Enix, $17)
• Mario Strikers Charged (2007, Next Level, $8)
• Mario Super Sluggers (2008, BNEA, $11)
• Metroid Prime Trilogy (2009, Retro Studios, $65)
• Metroid: Other M (2010, Team NINJA, $6)
• Pandora's Tower (2012, Ganbarion, $39)
• Pikmin (2009, Nintendo, $24)
• Pikmin 2 (2012, Nintendo, $41)
• PokePark Wii: Pikachu's Adventure (2010, Creatures Inc., $19)
• Punch Out!! (2009, Next Level, $15)
• Rayman Raving Rabbids (2006, Ubisoft, $4)
• Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition  (2007, Capcom, $6)
• Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles  (2007, Capcom, $7)
• Rhythm Heaven Fever  (2012, TNX/Nintendo, $83)
• Sin & Punishment: Star Successor  (2010, Creatures Inc., $15)
• Super Mario Galaxy  (2007, Nintendo, $14)
• Super Mario Galaxy 2  (2010, Nintendo, $23)
• Super Paper Mario  (2007, Intelligent Systems, $13)
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword  (2011, Nintendo, $25)
• Trauma Team  (2010, Atlus, $10)
• Wario Land: Shake It  (2008, Good Feel, $10)
• WarioWare: Smooth Moves  (2007, Nintendo, $11)
• Xenoblade Chronicles  (2011, Monolith Soft, $23)
• Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure  (2007, Capcom, $9)

The Highlights
There are actually quite a few of these games that have released on other systems. Jungle Beat and both Pikmin games were originally on GameCube. Donkey Kong Country Returns and Kirby's Epic Yarn received 3DS releases. On Switch you can buy Resident Evil 4, Super Mario Galaxy, and Skyward Sword. Rayman Raving Rabbids has a DS version. Xenoblade Chronicles has the honor of being available on four systems: Wii, Wii U, 3DS, and Switch.

There is certainly more of a case to just get a used Wii disc here since Wii U is backwards compatible. However some of these titles exceed the $20 download cost. Most notably, Metroid Prime Trilogy ($91 CIB), Rhythm Heaven Fever ($104 CIB), and Pikmin 2 ($59 CIB).

While most of the list was developed by Nintendo and second party studios, there are some deep cuts from third parties like Lost in Shadow and Trauma Team.

Comments
I welcome any corrections to the information I found when compiling the list. The price information here is for the US so let me know about differences in other regions. Not sure what to comment, consider questions like:

• Do you consider these Virtual Console Games?
• Which of these titles will get released on Switch next?
• Will Skyward Sword get de-listed on Wii U once the Switch version comes out?

Next Round
Join me next week as we post the results and credits for the Best of the Wii U eShop.

[pokepal148]

The poll only let me pick one option.

[Mr. Bungle]

The poll only let me pick one option.

Yeah, that is my fault. I can't change it but messaged a moderator to help fix it.

[NWR_insanolord]

Fixed it for you.

[Mr. Bungle]

Fixed it for you.

Awesome! Thanks Insanolord.

[Order.RSS]

Didn't play too many of these, but the ones I did and wanna highlight:

- Donkey Kong Country Returns is a very good, and very difficult towards the end 2D platformer. In some ways I think it has been made wholly obsolete by its sequel, Tropical Freeze, but there are people who prefer the Wii entry. I played this on Wii, so including waggle, not sure if you can remap those controls here. Cool game, hate the final boss.

- Sin & Punishment: Star Successor is the best game on Wii in my opinion. A stupid fast railshooter with excellent pointer controls, a bonkers story, and a barrage of creative and difficult bossfights. This is peak Treasure. Cut-scenes are very ugly, and the art style (while a big improvement over the first one on N64) doesn't really live up to their clean work on Ikaruga. But who has time to stare at textures when there's ten bajillion bullets coming at you?
Multiply HIT!

- Pandora's Tower gets a tentative recommendation, BUT be aware that the American eShop sells the XSeed version, rather than Nintendo's own. The XSeed version contains a game-breaking bug just ~2 hours before the ending which can irreversibly wreck your save game. Besides importing, there is a work-around to avoid the glitch which I wrote about here.
My admiration for this game has grown a lot over the years, but it has a lot of problems besides the technical ones. Fans like me tend to compare it to a mix of Castlevania, Shadow of the Colossus, and Twilight Princess, but all of those game are far more polished than this ever gets. It's a rough game with opaque systems, constant time pressure, and a degree of unpredictable RNG.

May still get Punch-Out and WarioLand Shake It one day, they seem beloved. Playing Resident Evil Revelations right now is also making me think I should check out Resi 4 this way, but that game seems longer than I expected.

[Khushrenada]

Fixed it for you.

Did you? Because I fixed it yesterday....

EDIT: Maybe you did. When I went to edit the poll, it said people could choose up to 32 options which seemed strange to me but I thought maybe it was something to do with entering the edit screen. So, then I changed that to 32 and allowed the option to change one's vote so I guess I fixed it better.

[Mr. Bungle]

The Reviews
The following review data has information in the following order
Game Title (Metacritic Score, NWR Review Link/Score)

• Donkey Kong Country Returns  (87, 9.5 from NWR)
• Donkey Kong Jungle Beat  (78, 7 from NWR)
• Excitebots: Trick Racing (77, 9 from NWR)
• Kirby's Epic Yarn (86, 10 from NWR)
• Kirby's Return to Dream Land (77, 9 from NWR)
• Lost in Shadow (68, 7 from NWR)
• Mario Sports Mix (64, 7 from NWR)
• Mario Strikers Charged (79, 8.5 from NWR)
• Mario Super Sluggers (69, 8 from NWR)
• Metroid Prime Trilogy (91, 10 from NWR)
• Metroid: Other M (79, 7 from NWR)
• Pandora's Tower (73, 7.5 from NWR)
• Pikmin (77, 8 from NWR)
• Pikmin 2 (NA, 9.5 from NWR)
• PokePark Wii: Pikachu's Adventure (62, 8 from NWR)
• Punch Out!! (86, 10 from NWR)
• Rayman Raving Rabbids (76, 6.5 from NWR)
• Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition  (91, 9.5 from NWR)
• Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles  (75, 9 from NWR)
• Rhythm Heaven Fever  (83, 9.5 from NWR)
• Sin & Punishment: Star Successor (87, 9 from NWR)
• Super Mario Galaxy  (97, 10 from NWR)
• Super Mario Galaxy 2  (97, 9.5 from NWR)
• Super Paper Mario  (85, 9 from NWR)
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword  (93, 10 from NWR)
• Trauma Team  (82, 9 from NWR)
• Wario Land: Shake It  (78, 9 from NWR)
• WarioWare: Smooth Moves  (83, 8.5 from NWR)
• Xenoblade Chronicles  (92, 10 from NWR)
• Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure  (87, 8 from NWR)

The Highlights
The average Metacritic score for this batch is about 81 and the average review score from NWR is 8.7. This shows how many well received games are in the list above. For the best of the best we have six games to get a 10 from NWR!! They are Kirby's Epic Yarn, Metroid Prime Trilogy, Punch Out!!, Super Mario Galaxy, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and Xenoblade Chronicles.

Looking at metadata we see some overlap with the six games to have over a 90 average. Those games are
Metroid Prime Trilogy, Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and Xenoblade Chronicles.

On the bottom shelf we see the Rabbids getting the only sub 7 score from NWR and PokePark Wii getting a mere 62 Metacritic score.