10 Great Wii Games That Are Fun from the Start

10 hours ago 3

Published Mar 31, 2026, 2:34 PM EDT

Daniel has been playing games for entirely too many years, with his Steam library currently numbering nearly 750 games and counting. When he's not working or watching anime, he's either playing or thinking about games, constantly on the lookout for fascinating new gameplay styles and stories to experience. Daniel has previously written lists for TheGamer, as well as guides for GamerJournalist, and he currently covers tech topics on SlashGear.

The Nintendo Wii, bless its white, plasticy heart, hasn’t had the best time of things in the retrospective. Yeah, it was one of Nintendo’s most profitable consoles to date, basically printing money, but its heavy emphasis on family-friendliness and a library saturated with shovelware didn’t endear it to the major gaming crowd, whom Nintendo wouldn’t win back until the Switch came out. All the same, I owned a Wii as a lad, and despite the waggling and shovelware, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t have an enduring place in my heart.

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While you did have to sift through a lot of half-baked garbage to find it, the Wii was home to some proper gems of games. Perhaps, as a side effect from the family slant, many of the Wii’s best games are fun right from the get-go, with minimal setup, tutorials, and plot-dumping. The circumstances surrounding that quality may not have been ideal in the long-term, but you can’t deny they worked for what they were.

10 No More Heroes

Irresponsible Lightsaber Behavior

Due to its aforementioned family-friendliness, the Wii wasn’t exactly the premier destination for M-rated games. There were a few games, some actually pretty good, but you had to either dig around for them or stumble upon them by chance. Coincidentally, the latter is exactly how I got tuned into the original No More Heroes, one of the wildest, strangest rides brought to us by Suda51.

No More Heroes starts firing on all cylinders with an extremely rapidly-paced intro cutscene, launching immediately into the game’s first combat area in Death Metal’s seaside mansion. You get a quick crash course in using Travis Touchdown’s high-low beam katana stance system, but after that, you’re slashing away at hordes of thugs, loudly bisecting them into showers of blood and driving them to the ground with pro wrestling moves.

Immediately starting with a combat area was a smart move on this game’s part, because it’s followed by the open-world, money-gathering aspect that usually precedes these areas, which probably wouldn’t have made the best first impression. Still, if that first area, not to mention the first boss against Death Metal hooks you, you’ll be more than willing to keep playing to see the other bosses.

9 De Blob

In Living Color

There’s a very particular kind of gameplay loop that’s largely been credited to the Katamari series: it’s always satisfying to start out small and insignificant, then gradually work yourself up to being a force of nature, with visual changes to accompany. An excellent example of this, and one of the better third-party games on the Wii, is De Blob.

De Blob has you playing as the titular splotch of living color in a world that’s been rendered dull and grey by authoritarian invaders. To fix this mess, you bounce about freely, reclaiming stolen color and splashing paint onto every floor, building, and citizen you come across. As you bounce around, the level gradually returns to life, with vibrant colors and catchy BGM.

In the same vein as Katamari, there’s just something immediately wonderful about starting from zero and seeing your efforts have a tangible effect on your environment. Though, rather than rolling up and destroying things, you’re bringing everything back to its former glory. I guess it’s kind of like a reverse Katamari in that way.

8 Rayman Origins

A Brief Moment of Recollection

The early days of the Wii saw the release of Rayman Raving Rabbids, which in turn led to those screeching monstrosities supplanting Rayman entirely as Ubisoft’s mascot. He was basically an afterthought in Raving Rabbids 2, and was taken out entirely following that. However, years later, someone at Ubisoft suddenly, momentarily remembered who their mascot was supposed to be and finally gave him a proper game to call his own: Rayman Origins.

Rayman Origins is a high-speed sidescrolling platformer with a big emphasis on bouncing and momentum, not unlike a Sonic game. It was the first 2D Rayman game since his very first title, and it was an excellent showing. Based on the title, I think it’s supposed to be an origin story of sorts for the rebooted Rayman setting, but that’s not really important, nor excessively touched upon.

Rayman Origins uses an exceptionally simple control scheme and core gameplay loop, never needing anything more complicated than jumping and punching stuff. The strength is in the level design, which will hook you very fast and absolutely refuse to let go.

The Peak of the Plastic Guitar Years

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

The mid-2000s were the prime time of plastic instrument games, kicked off by the original Guitar Hero in 2005. By the time the first two games had released, everyone who was anyone wanted a piece of this pie, including Nintendo, which is how Guitar Hero 3 made its way to the Wii with the help of a modified, Wii Remote-compatible guitar peripheral.

Guitar Hero 3 is functionally the same as its predecessors: colored notes fly in on a track, you tap the buttons and strum on the guitar controller in time with them, and awesome rock music happens. The game has several difficulties, each using a different number of fret buttons to help ease you into the untraditional grip, but generally speaking, it’s simple enough that anyone can pick a song and get right into it.

Speaking of, as you may expect, the songs are what really brought home the bacon for this game. In addition to a healthy library of classic rock tunes, Guitar Hero 3 also challenged the gaming community at large with Dragonforce’s infamous “Through the Fire and Flames,” which became a badge of honor for anyone who could clear it on the highest difficulty. It also had a pretty awesome rock cover of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” that I still listen to regularly.

6 Punch-Out!!

Everyone Loves Pummeling Glass Joe

Nintendo has a massive back catalog of IPs dating all the way back to the NES era, and whenever a new console rolls out, it usually dusts off a couple of them to give us something new and interesting. For the Wii, the comeback kid was Punch-Out, which remains just as immediately fun, yet deceptively deep as its Mike Tyson-sponsored ancestor.

The Wii Punch-Out uses most of the same mechanics as the NES version specifically, rather than the SNES’s Super Punch-Out, including spotting fighter weak points and farming stars off of them to use your powerful uppercut. The first fight against Glass Joe remains a solid warm-up, easing you into the mechanics, while the extremely exaggerated animations and voice acting help to make it all more entertaining to experience.

After the first couple of fights, the game starts taking the blinders off and hitting you harder, gradually building you up into a sight-reading, timing master, watching for telegraphs and expertly counter-punching. It’s a game of pure progress, each victory carefully feeding into the next, with an exceptionally sweet feeling accompanying each one.

5 Donkey Kong Country Returns

It Sure Does

Throughout the 2000s, Donkey Kong had a generally diminished presence compared to other Nintendo IPs. The third Donkey Kong Country game had come out all the way back in 1996, and following that, the gorilla got more unusual and divisive titles like Donkey Kong 64 and Barrel Blast, with the closest to the classic formula being Jungle Beat. In 2010, we finally went back to our roots with Donkey Kong Country Returns.

Despite being the first Country game to be made without Rare’s involvement, Returns generally did a pretty good job of capturing the vibe of the classic games right away, giving you minute, responsive control of both DK and Diddy and a cavalcade of immediately distinct levels. You could play by yourself or co-op with a buddy, with DK and Diddy either moving independently or riding piggyback as a singular unit.

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It also helped, at least in my opinion, that Country Returns didn’t require an excessive degree of Wii Remote waggling to play. You could just hold the remote sideways and use it as a controller, which helped make it both more accessible and generally appealing for traditional gamers.

4 Kirby’s Return to Dream Land

Kirby Brought His Friends

Kirby's Return to Dream Land

In a similar vein to Donkey Kong, Kirby hadn’t had a proper console game in a hot minute by the time the Wii rolled around, having been mostly relegated to the DS with titles like Canvas Curse and Squeak Squad. The Wii’s era was, somewhat ironically, a time for revival amongst Nintendo’s IPs, and for Kirby, that came in the form of Kirby’s Return to Dream Land.

A 2.5D platformer cast in the image of the classic Kirby’s Adventure, Return to Dream Land had Kirby, as well as up to three friends, rolling through linear levels and uncovering secrets, all with the goal of unlocking more levels and building up to the game’s secret ending. It was the most robust a Kirby sidescroller had been in a while, with Kirby’s Copy Abilities being immediately fun and satisfying to use, especially when you got to take the game’s new super abilities for a spin.

Rather than playing as an ally representing a single Copy Ability like in Kirby Super Star, co-op buddies got their choice of King Dedede, Meta Knight, or Bandanna Waddle-Dee (who still really needs a proper name), each with their own unique movesets. Obviously, they weren’t as flexible as Kirby himself, but they brought a nice variety to the field for co-op play.

3 New Super Mario Bros. Wii

It’s a Winning Formula

New Super Mario Bros. Wii

In 2006, the same year the Wii came out, Nintendo had a major hit on its hands in the form of New Super Mario Bros. on the DS. After letting it simmer for a few years, that game got a direct follow-up on the Wii as the aptly-titled New Super Mario Bros. Wii, sparking off the New sub-series in earnest and showing off Nintendo’s 2D platforming chops.

Much like its DS-based predecessor, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is a retro-styled 2.5D platformer, opting for the traditional approach of timed, linear levels with a spattering of secrets scattered throughout. The major departure from the previous game was that New Super Mario Bros. Wii was built with co-op in mind, supporting up to four players as Mario, Luigi, and two Toads. Playing with all four players at once was wacky and chaotic, and tons of fun at LAN parties.

In a somewhat controversial move, New Super Mario Bros. Wii also introduced the Super Guide feature, in which repeated failures in a level would prompt the game to offer to handle it for you. This was… not warmly received by the gaming community at large, but admittedly, it was a helpful feature to have for those with kids or young siblings.

2 Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Not the Best, But Still Fun

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is considered something of a black sheep within the Smash series, especially to those who were particularly smitten with Melee and its breakneck pace of gameplay. Indeed, compared to Melee, Brawl is a much less competitively-viable game. Remember, though, being competitively-viable and being fun aren’t mutually inclusive.

Compared to Melee’s more mechanics-focused approach, Brawl is more of a party game, introducing a greater quantity of wacky items, events, and modifiers in its gameplay that generally make the whole experience unpredictable, from the then-new Final Smash abilities to the infamous tripping mechanic. It’s not a game to get sweaty with, but if you just wanted to play a Smash game, and goodness knows we all did after waiting seven years from the release of Melee, you were happy to have it.

Let me put it like this: the day my dad brought my copy home from the store, I booted it up to play through the single-player campaign, and then I blinked, and it was dark out. I had been playing for what must’ve been around six straight hours without even realizing. A game that can manage that has to be doing something right.

1 Mario Kart Wii

Everyone Owned It, Everyone Played It

Remarkably, despite how integral Mario Kart games are to the whole Nintendo empire, Mario Kart Wii was not a launch title for the Wii. We had to spend two years busying ourselves with whatever random kart game knockoffs we could find, of which there were many on the Wii of extremely dubious quality. Thankfully, in 2008, we finally got the Mario Kart game we all wanted, and what a game it was.

Mario Kart Wii, especially compared to the GameCube’s Double Dash and Mario Kart DS, was absolute dynamite right out the gate. It gave us new mechanics, new characters, new vehicles, and both new and retouched classic tracks. It was faster, more responsive, and generally set the standard for what a really good Mario Kart game looked like. It was everything a new Mario Kart game needed to be, and it was beloved immediately. In fact, many mechanics we’ve seen in the most recent, most popular Mario Kart games were pioneered in Mario Kart Wii.

Besides all that, Mario Kart Wii was also the first console Mario Kart game to feature online play, which you better believe was a game-changer. Yeah, DS had it too, but it was like night and day compared to playing on a console with a steady connection.