I played it 3 days ago on my new OLED TV just to see the result. Of course IQ isn’t good today.
But I still play it sometimes on the CRT by RGB, the best way to play BotW Master mode and Star Fox Zero that are great games to me.
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YES! Can’t remember what triggered me to do it but I bought a new and sealed cheap copy of Star Fox Zero a couple of weeks ago.
Figured the game can’t have been deserving of its poor reputation, and I’ve been basically playing one new Wii U game a year, the last two being Luigi U in 2023 and Devil’s Third in 2024. If Devil’s Third made the list, why not this?
And the game is, for the most part, fantastic, it’s rare we see pure arcade games from Nintendo, but this absolutely fits the bill:
- The second screen being your cockpit echoes a unique way to play that you would expect from the arcades
- Despite the move away from single runs like Star Fox 64, the game’s structure doesn’t feel bloated.
- Platinum has added additional depth to scoring - there’s a new manual charge shot that doubles your score at the cost of losing lock-on.
It’s not without its flaws - the gyrocopter missions can drag - but I’m enjoying it so far. The boss fights in particular are inventive and it’s shocked me how much mileage they get out of the concept of having both a third and first person viewpoint. Dogfights in particular are always thrilling.
When the game began and you’re told to turn up the volume on the Wii U GamePad to hear inside the cockpit, I immediately began grinning.
I’m really happy to hear your affirmation for Game & Wario too, took a punt on that one earlier this week, hoping it arrives tomorrow.
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Ha! That’s an 84” LG in my photo. 84LM9600 to be exact, and I was actually really impressed with the picture quality of the games as a whole! Even Lords of Thunder looked great on Wii Virtual Console. Game & Wario was sharp.
OMG @harborline_765 are you in for a treat with Game & Wario! It’s packed with silly fun and little techy things just like that Star Fox gamepad volume bit you just mentioned. I will say no more. Report back!
I absolutely love Wii U and it was bittersweet for me playing last night as it was the last time my sons and I were all together in the same house playing games together many nights in a week and on weekends. We spent so many fun times with these games. I texted my middle son a couple photos of Game & Wario and his immediate first reply was “Throwing Fronks?” Lol!
If you’ve played Game & Wario… you know… 
I’d always heard Game & Wario wasn’t good, but at this point I can’t remember why. I’ll have to give it a shot one of these days…! I love the Warioware games, and that’s one I’ve not played.
And in the case you don’t know, there’s still the classic arcade mode to unlock later.
It has some little specific features and it’s great.
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Made time for Game & Wario this weekend! And I’ve been hooked to it since starting a few hours ago, unlocked the first seven games.
Ski and Kung Fu have been 100%'d, and I’m looking forward to returning to Camera and Arrow. It’s Gamer that’s the genuine surprise…I wasn’t sure what the fuss was about from its inclusion in WarioWare Gold, but on its natural Wii U home it makes so much sense.
The GamePad’s audio clashing with the surrounding audio from the TV, and the need to literally juggle two separate screens, makes it such a tense affair. Still haven’t been able to clear level 2, the unpredictability from both your bedroom surroundings and from the microgames themselves makes it feel like a genuine evolution beyond what the very first (and imo, best) WarioWare games were trying to do.
It’s nice to see something different from the minds behind WarioWare, too, even if the game is over a decade old. Everything from Gold onward has felt hamfisted.
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Played through more games to the credits, it’s been hard moving on from some of these games before I master them!
Pirates is fantastic and I can see why it was originally going to be a Wii U pack-in game before it was fleshed out to become Game & Wario. Probably one of the best games for conveying that space between GamePad and TV, and the motion controls are so good you can just move to block without even glancing at the screen.
Taxi does the same - this is again another game that wouldn’t work without the non-gameplay screen being the bigger, HD screen. Frantic stuff, and fantastic level design. Hopefully you unlock some sort of endless timed score attach mode after mastering all three levels.
I guess the problem (and this is a great problem to have) with both this game and Nintendo Land is they all thoroughly explore what can be done with the GamePad, and flesh these ideas out into games that you could happily play at the arcade with a bespoke controller. It’s no wonder we didn’t see many games that really took advantage of that metaphorical space between TV and GamePad, save for Star Fox Zero which I really need to go back to!
Games currently cleared to 100%:
- Ski
- Kung Fu
- Design
- Ashley
- Taxi (almost - so close to Taxi King on stage 3!)
Edit
A sequel to that four year old video confirming the Wii U can burn digital games to DVD-RW discs:
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I made a list of my top 10 games of the 2000s the other day
Donkey Kong Crash Course (Nintendo Land, Wii U) was on the list!
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A week after Switch 2 launch and I remembered I had some unfinished business…
The highlight for me was how the cinematic camera in the top screen was used. If Star Fox 64 let you play through cinematics from a fixed viewpoint, Zero makes it feel like you’re part of a film - the lock-on in particular elevates all-range mode significantly beyond 64 and all of the boss fights force you to look at the unfolding cinematics to help guide your piloting in first person.
Definitely from a different era of Nintendo where a game would present a new way of playing and wring everything out of that concept, it really pushes you to better yourself over time, to the point where I felt the real game begun after the credits rolled for the first time, which was 5 hours of flight time for me.
I’m now playing through Star Fox Guard and enjoying it greatly.
I need to go back to Nintendo Land, as much as I enjoyed Game & Wario I think Nintendo Land has more robust high-score chasers.
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Nintendo Land is more full featured across its minigames than Game & Wario but in spite of the different approach, both are fantastic.
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