I don’t mean to get personal, but I’ve got a few quarrels with the Nintendo Wii. Despite selling over 100 million units in its lifetime, it’s the console that nearly made me break up with Nintendo… for good.
What made me so angry at Nintendo? It was all due to the terrible titles that cluttered their platform, AKA the worst Wii games.
The Wii’s motion gimmick opened the floodgates for novice developers to enter the industry and make substandard products. As long as it had motion controls, these developers figured, gameplay didn’t matter. Month after painful month, terrible new titles hit the shelves of Toys ‘R Us, only to end up in the bargain bin a few weeks later. And Nintendo was only too happy to take its share of the sales and look the other way.
I’m happy to report that those dark days are gone! Nintendo has won me back over with the Switch, and I rarely think about those awful Wii games anymore. This article is my final tribute to those times gone by. May the worst Wii games finally lay in rest and never, ever return.
10 Worst Wii Games
Starting at number 10, let’s work out way down to the worst Wii game ever made.
10. M&Ms Kart Racing
Genre: Racing
Developer: Calaris Studios
Release Year: 2007
Who doesn’t love M&Ms? You know — those delicious chocolately morsels that melt in your mouth… ahhh, heaven.
The one place you shouldn’t put M&Ms? Behind the wheel of a vehicle.
A few games in this vein debut every so often. Various companies like Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon come along, slap their trademarked characters on a fighting or racing game, and hope that children will see their favorite animated faces on a product and pester their parents to buy it. That approach is understandable, but M&Ms? That leaves you scratching your head rather than reaching for a controller.
This kart racing game came out in December 2007 and features the four most “well-known” M&Ms — Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue. That said, character selection has literally zero bearing on anything related to gameplay. However, there are a handful of unlockable vehicles that you can attain by collecting chocolate coins during the races.
M&Ms Kart Racing is certainly less offensive than some of the other worst Wii games on this list, but the track design is pretty dire, and the gameplay uninspired (to say the least). Why you would choose to buy this game over the immensely better Mario Kart Wii is anyone’s guess.
9. Monkey Mischief! Party Time
Genre: Party
Developer: Ivolgamus
Release Year: 2008
Next on our list of the worst Nintendo Wii games?
Say hello to Monkey Mischief! Party Time, a Mario Party wannabe published by Activision. How would we describe this game in just a few words? To put it politely, Monkey Mischief! Party Time is an absolute dumpster fire that even PETA would be reluctant to put out.
The game itself consists of the player and up to three friends running riot and causing mayhem in a zoo, playing various animal-themed mini-games to earn the highest score and become the outright winner. It sounds like it could be fun, right? Wrong.
One of the primary reasons for the game’s inclusion on this list of worst Wii games is its lack of an objective. Mario Party has a primary focus with its virtual board game, and the mini-games simply punctuate the action and give opportunities for players to change their fortunes. Monkey Mischief! Party Time is just a slew of sometimes confusing and downright difficult to complete mini-games (mainly because the controls are terrible) — kind of like WarioWare if you took out the absurdist humor and put blocky graphics in its place.
With titles like MarioParty and WarioWare existing, there is no reason to stoop down to the level of Monkey Mischief.
8. Alvin & the Chipmunks
Genre: Rhythm
Developer: Sensory Sweet Studios
Release Year: 2007
Even on the surface, Alvin & the Chipmunks annoys pretty much anyone over the age of 6. To be sure, the franchise’s “unique” genre of music instantly ruins every song transmogrified into the high-pitched style.
To everyone’s dismay, the Alvin & the Chipmunks Wii game has you playing as the Chipmunk band in a Battle of the Bands. Your goal? To save a music club by playing alone to the Chipmunks’ butchered song covers.
Developed by Sensory Sweep Studios (who have a decent library of titles under their umbrella), Alvin and the Chipmunks is meant to be a lighthearted rhythm game where kids can enjoy playing pop songs with some cartoon characters. On the surface, you could easily say that A&tC is Guitar Hero that’s been modified for motion controls and aimed at a much, much younger audience. The main difference is that Guitar Hero consistently works. This does not.
To play along with the songs, you have to move or shake the Wii Remote in one of the four corners of the screen in time with the notes that appear while holding a specific button, similar in style to the Sega title Samba De Amigo. However, the game is consistently too sensitive to your movements, meaning you hit the notes out of time, or it ignores you completely, meaning you miss the notes altogether.
Graphically, the game looks like it would have been more at home on the PlayStation 1 or Nintendo 64, and the cut-scenes that break up the gameplay have weak writing and weaker jokes that would be embarrassed to come out of a Christmas cracker.
7. Rock ‘n’ Roll Adventures
Genre: Platform
Developer: Data Design Interactive
Release Year: 2007
The first game created by Data Design Interactive on this list of worst Wii games (but I assure you, not the last) is Rock ‘n’ Roll Adventures.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Adventures is a 3D platformer that has you assume the role of Elviz as he looks to “cleanse the world of off-beat tunes and the nightmare sounds.” Your mission? To travel across musical-themed levels and fight instrument-based enemies with your array of audio armaments.
The game has basic and uninspired design in terms of levels and menus (get ready to hear lines like that in other entries in this list). Still, the enemies are at least a little bit creative in this game, as they’re based on different musical instruments and audio devices. Sorry, folks, that’s the last bit of praise that I will bestow upon this game.
The game controls very awkwardly, as the developers attempted to crowbar in motion controls that, on a good day, work about 20% of the time. Being a game that focuses so heavily on music, the actual soundtrack is generic and cheap-sounding and seems like it’s doing its best to cash-grab on Elvis without being sued for copyright.
I’d also like to see a Venn diagram comparing children under 10 and Elvis fans. Somehow, I don’t expect you’d see a very big audience.
6. My Aquarium
Genre: Virtual Pet Simulation
Developer: Hudson Soft
Release Year: 2008
It’s a bit of a stretch to call My Aquarium one of the worst Nintendo Wii games, as it’s not really a game. The fact that it was marketed and sold as a game probably left everyone who bought it wishing they’d just downloaded a screensaver.
My Aquarium (known as Blue Oasis in Japan) was developed and released by Hudson Soft in 2008. Yes, Hudson Soft — as in the people that made the popular puzzle game series known as Bomberman. Technically, the game is categorized as a “virtual pet experience.” However, if you’re coming to this title for gameplay, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Or, in this case, swimming up the wrong reef?
Leaving awful puns behind, the game boasts that you’re able to manage up to six fish tanks filled with fish of your choosing. And, you can share your creations with other players. You can also choose which types of plants populate your submerged environment and change the fish tank’s background. Other than that, there’s not anything else to the “game.”
The only unique feature of this WiiWare experience was that it would take information from the Wii’s Forecast Channel (a weather app built into the Wii) and use that information to give you lighting and weather that would be that of your local area. While that’s actually kinda cool, there’s no real content to speak of in My Aquarium, making it perfect for this list of worst Wii games.
5. Action Girlz Racing
Genre: Racing
Developer: Data Design Interactive
Release Year: 2007
Looking to cash in hard on the kart racing genre and mimic the success of the hugely popular Mario Kart Wii, Action Girlz Racing (it’s spelled with a Z, so you know it’s cool) does an incredibly lackluster job imitating the titan of a series. It features poor track design, loose controls, and blatantly recycled mechanics and assets from games previously made by the developer.
Created by Data Design Interactive and released in 2007, AGR had already shown its pretty shameful face on the Playstation 2 and PC before being ported over the family-centric Nintendo console. Unfortunately, the developers did not use any of the time between releases to improve or redesign any aspects of the game. It was merely adapted to work on Wii hardware and shipped out the door.
Action Girlz Racing utilizes the same kinetic functions as Mario Kart Wii, where players use the Wii Remote tilt sensor to steer. The game also ties the 1 and 2 buttons to brake/reverse and accelerate, respectively. But this is where the comparisons end, as the controls (something racing games practically live and die by) are nowhere near as precise as they need to be.
Now, that wouldn’t be a huge issue if the tracks were open and easily maneuverable. But the layouts of the generic courses all too often featured random hairpin turns or challenging S-bends. It was so confusing that you’d constantly (and unknowingly) start heading in the wrong direction!
This game is understandably marketed and designed for a younger age demographic, but designing a game for kids doesn’t excuse bad game design, nor should it facilitate it. Without a doubt one of the worst Wii games on this list.
4. Ninjabread Man
Genre: Platform
Developer: Data Design Interactive
Release Year: 2007
Owner of the prestigious Gamespot award “Worst Multiplatform Game” in 2007, this is another entry from the poster boys of bad game design, Data Design Interactive. It followed the same trend as previous entry Action Girlz Racing in that it was formerly released on the PS2 and PC 2 years before appearing on the Wii. And it was nothing more than a shameless port.
Ninjabread Man is a platformer with a cute skin slapped on it, more than likely to lure parents into buying it for their kids, as it was free from violence and profanity. Unfortunately, the gameplay itself is way more offensive than anything games like Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption could conjure up.
Suffering from wayward and poorly executed controls (something I’ll keep repeating), Ninjabread Man’s method of movement allows you to arrive at the very apex of frustration. The game turns running and jumping into something that would frustrate even the most placid adults, let alone an impatient child.
Like so many of Data Design’s other games, viewing NBM in isolation makes it look bad, but when you bring in its extended family, the lethargy and feeling that the devs didn’t give a damn about the quality of their product is palpable. Place in-game screenshots of Ninjabread Man and Anubis II next to each other, and the UI for each game is exactly the same, bar the icon of your playable character.
This game is nothing more than shovelware put out by developers that had no love for the material they were working on. This is blatant in not just this game, but all of Data Design’s work.
3. Major Minor’s Majestic March
Genre: Music
Developer: NanaOn-Sha
Release Year: 2009
While this may look like some weird fever dream involving the Happy Tree Friends, this title (that’s often abbreviated to MMMM) is the true definition of a “one-trick pony,” hinging its gameplay on one single action to be repeated ad infinitum.
This bizarre experience does have an element of plot. You play as Major Minor, a young cat who wants to start a marching band, but has no band members, instruments, or experience. His friend Tom then tells him to use his “Great Great Grandmother Gladiola’s famous baton” (I swear I’m not making that up), which turns out to be magical. Thus, Major Minor embarks on his journey to continue the family lineage of drum majors.
Believe it or not, the in-game tutorial specifically requests that you not be too enthusiastic about playing this game! They don’t want you doing some crazy freestyle stuff or giving a half-hearted performance. As grandma Gladiola says, “the best march leaders have poise and grace.”
The one merit of the game lies in its slight element of challenge, where you have to adjust your constant swinging ever so slightly, either faster or slower, to keep the members of your marching band happy. The lack of precision of the Wii Remote, however, makes this much more annoying than it should be. At its core, the gameplay is literally just moving your arm up and down, which becomes very boring, very quickly.
It’s evident that getting the player (in this case probably meant to be a child) up and moving was the overall goal, with little to no thought given to the actual game itself.
2. Anubis II
Genre: Action
Developer: Data Design Interactive
Release Year: 2007
Being responsible for multiple games on this list should tell you something about the pedigree of Data Design Interactive. At least they’re consistent in creating bad Wii games, eh?
Anubis II does nothing to shake DDI’s poor reputation. In fact, quite the opposite — this is among the worst Wii games ever created.
Anubis II follows the titular Anubis as he seeks to save Egypt from darkness brought about by an evil god. Upon launching the game, the tutorial immediately introduces you to your first challenge — learning to work with the game’s disastrous controls by jumping across the first set of platforms (warning, this will take multiple attempts).
Being a 3D platforming game, Anubis II competes with exceptional titles like Spyro the Dragon, Crash Bandicoot, and various Super Mario games, some of which exist on the same system. Unfortunately, those stellar titles only serve to highlight how poorly executed Anubis II is.
Anubis II misses the mark by a long way in this regard, making avoiding and defeating enemies, completing a level, even getting around the environment a herculean feat that requires as much luck as it does patience.
If you’re looking for a great platformer on the Wii, Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 are light years ahead of this game.
1. Billy the Wizard: Rocket Broomstick Racing
Genre: Racing & Platform
Developer: Data Design Interactive
Release Year: 2007
Data Design Interactive closes out this list with the worst Wii game of all time. Billy the Wizard: Rocket Broomstick Racing wins this award for all the wrong reasons. It features awful gameplay, a lazy copy & paste UI design, and abysmal controls that make the game practically unplayable.
If you’ve been unlucky enough to play any of Data Design’s affronts to gaming, you’ve probably noticed that their UI is always recycled from older games, most egregiously from the hot mess that is Anubis II. To be totally fair, it’s worth mentioning that reusing assets isn’t inherently a bad thing, and it sometimes makes sense. But viewing the two games’ menu screens side by side screams “lazy design” in block capital letters.
But that’s not the worst of it. Not even close.
For some oddball reason, the developers thought it would be a great idea to map your movement to the Nunchuck, with motions that even the Wii Remote would have struggled to detect at the best of times. Throw in Billy the Wizard: Rocket Broomstick Racing’s 3D axis controls, and the game’s directional elements are nonexistent. No joke — it’s virtually impossible to accurately and consistently direct your character around the game’s levels.
As one hilarious reviewer states, the Nunchuck doesn’t have a gyroscope built into it, so how it’s processing your movements is a complete mystery.
Billy the Wizard: Rocket Broomstick Racing is the king among the worst Wii games of all time. Now that is quite the achievement.