Wii Sports
With 47.62 million games sold in 2009 according to Wikipedia, List of Best-selling Video Games, 2009, Wii Sports leads the pack by almost double the sales compared to the other four top-selling video games. It’s an easy game which anyone can play and comes free with Nintendo Wii hardware. The sports games of tennis, baseball, bowling, golf and boxing may be a little short on depth sometimes, but a novel experience nevertheless.
One of the most attractive features is its ease of use with each game needing basic movements associated with the sport to play. Its mini-sized consoles are also very light and players can choose to play with the computer through artificial intelligence.
Wii Play
This video game features minigames that use characters from the Mii Channel with several of the games featured from E3 2006 demos like the Duck Hunt-styled shooting demo. A Wii Remote comes bundled with the game. Wii Play is the best-selling unbundled game of all time, with 22.98 million copies sold worldwide in 2009 according to Wikipedia, List of Best-selling Video Games, 2009.
Wii Play has nine games –Shooting Range, Find Mii, Table Tennis, Pose Mii, Laser Hockey, Billiards, Fishing, Charge! and Tanks!. The games are designed for two players but can also be played by a single player with a computer-controlled second player. A game is unlocked after playing each game until all nine games are available.
Wii Fit
Wii Fit with sales of 21.82 million, cited Wikipedia, List of Best-selling Video Games, 2009, is an outside-the-box idea that brings together gaming and exercising. Players stand on a balance board that can sense how well or poorly one is playing in various activities. Nintendo’s marketing of the game as one that is a fun fitness activity works pretty well, however, its downside includes not being able to create exercise programs and health safety may be an issue.
The game is broken down into four different categories: yoga, muscle, aerobic, and balance. The yoga and muscle categories feel the most like traditional exercise, with 15 yoga poses and 15 muscle-toning moves to work through. Yoga poses range from the very simple like standing still to the quite difficult shoulder stand. The muscle-toning section is similar with basic lunges mixed in with harder activities such as the parallel stretch and push-ups. Virtual trainers also guide players through the yoga and muscle exercises.
Mario Kart Wii
This game with sales of 17.39 million according to Wikipedia, List of Best-selling Video Games, 2009 features the famous Mario Brothers competing on go-karts on the racetrack. The main event of Mario Kart is the Grand Prix mode playing alongside eleven other computer-controlled competitors in a race to the finish on a four-course cup event. Grand Prix offers selections from three different engine sizes/difficulty settings, and there are initially four cups available, with four more that are unlockable by conquering their predecessors, making a total of 32 different courses.
Super Mario Smash Bros. Brawl
Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the third instalment in the Super Smash Bros. series of crossover fighting games with sales of 8.43 million games according to Wikipedia, List of Best-selling Video Games, 2009. The number of characters that players can control in Brawl has grown from that in Super Smash Bros. Melee and Brawl is the first game in the series to expand past Nintendo characters and allow players to control third-party characters. To win the game, a player must knock an opponent off the screen. It includes a more extensive single-player mode and is plot-driven featuring computer-generated cut scenes.
The worldwide success of the Wii has caught third party developers by surprise since its launch in the U.S. in 2006, with the most successful game being Wii Sports which has surpassed Super Mario Bros. as the best-selling game of all time, according to Wikipedia, Wii, 2009. With new games scheduled to launch in 2010, Wii gamers will have more to look forward to in the coming years.
