Kinda salty. I had 30 bucks credit and never was able to access to shop and spend those. Kept getting weird errors and no time to troubleshoot.
That’s a bummer. Server issues on the last day were to be expected though, unfortunately. Everyone is probably hammering it at once.
I think it’s interesting to think about the Wii U’s library - I presume it will look slightly less appealing in future years depending on how many more games get ported to the Switch - and in the opposite direction, BOTW needs to be counted as a big plus for the Wii U library!
I think it’s a great system and has a few experiences that probably won’t be seen again in their perfect form - Mario Maker (the perfect use of the game pad!), TV DS emulation w a “bottom” touch screen, Ninendoland…
Hey guys. I’m trying to round out my Wii U collection with some must have titles. I’m not going for a full set, but just really great games as well as exclusives on Wii U. Here is what I have so far; Am I missing any ‘must haves’?
Bayonetta 2
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
Devil’s Third
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
Game & Wario
Kirby and the Rainbow Curse
Mario Kart 8
Mario Party 10
Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash
Need for Speed: Most Wanted U
New Super Mario Bros. U + New Super Luigi U
NintendoLand
Paper Mario: Color Splash
Pokken Tournament
Sonic Lost World
Star Fox Guard
Star Fox Zero
Super Mario 3D World
Super Mario Maker
Super Smash Bros. - Wii U
Tank! Tank! Tank!
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD
The Wonderful 101
Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE
Wii Party U
Wii Sports Club
Xenoblade Chronicles X
Yoshi’s Woolly World
Off the top of my head.
NES Remix Pack
Pikmin 3
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If you’re OK with stuff mostly the same as other platforms:
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate
Tekken Tag Tournament 2
Zombi U
Retail exclusive standalone New Super Luigi U is worth having for the cool box alone.
I’d kinda sit here and say Hyrule Warriors since I really like that game but the fact that the 3DS and Switch versions come with so much more content out of the box whereas the Wii U one has a LOT of dlc you’d need to get for a complete experience makes it hard to recommend that.
Also I think it’s worth having the Wii U version of Zelda: Breath of the Wild since it’s neat it was released on the platform at all, even if it’s the same as the Switch version.
Good download games would be:
Dr Luigi
Fast Racing Neo
Pushmo World
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My son had a few friends over last night because everyone’s heading back to college soon. After playing a bunch of Smash Ultimate, they played… Wii U!
It made me so happy to see these games again and the system in action with its signature controller getting maximum use.
Nintendo Land is seriously overlooked as one of the greatest social videogames ever made. They played Mario Chase, Luigi’s Ghost Mansion, and the grandaddy of them all… Animal Crossing: Sweet Day. If you’ve never had someone screaming at you to “SPIT 'EM OUT! SPIT 'EM OUT!”, well, I do feel sorry for you not having that excellent experience. They also did some co-op in Pikmin Adventure after that. I just sat back and marveled at how amazing that game is. It captures NINTENDO in so many amazing ways and is lovely to look at and play. They were having a ball.
I suggested to my son to pull out Game & Wario too and they started with FRUIT. If you don’t recall how it works, all these dudes are walking around some location where there are fruits scattered about. The job of the other players (who don’t even use a controller!) is to try to pick out the guy who’s using the gamepad to guide a thief around to steal three fruits! If you can figure out who the thief is, you pick him out of a lineup at the end and you win! If the thief is not identified, the thief wins. It’s got some funny looking dudes and on one map you can even turn out the lights in a museum to make it harder on the people trying to catch the thief. They had a friggin’ blast with that.
I went to bed around that time, but I had pulled out Rayman Legends to remind him to play some Kung Foot, which is effing fantastic with four or more. I know he also intended to play a round of Islands in Game & Wario, which is what we like to call, “Throwing Fronks”. 
I love the Switch and I loved the Wii, but for my money, it never got better for multiplayer fun than the Wii U. Wii Party U is loaded with fun minigames too that you simply won’t find anywhere else. I was so happy to see these games getting played again. They deserve more love than they ever received.
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Yes, agreed. We played all of those so much at gaming nights for such a long time. We need to revisit Wii U.
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A bit late, but holy shit! This is insane 
DK Crash Course is so much harder than it looks.
Also, Nintendo Land is a gem that received way too much unwarranted hate (like anything Wii U basically). So sad that it never got any DLC at all 
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Now I want to play DK Crash Course again!
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Connected my Wii U to a 720p projector last night and messed around with it for a while. It looked great! I’m going to build a screen on the weekend, and set it up outside on my deck while having some friends over for drinks. Gotta take advantage of the last few weeks of Canadian summer!
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What kind of projector do you use? I’m thinking about getting one for my backyard for late summer and fall. One of my main questions is what is the threshold for lumens in order to have a bright enough screen for a good experience?
Good question: I just bought one dirt cheap, and my primary concerns were lumens and the native resolution. I ended up going with the LG Minibeam (PH130B) which I picked up on eBay for $75 CAD, and I am thrilled with it so far! It’s small and simple, and it has a native resolution of 720p, and is 130 lumens. My backyard is very dark, so it’s perfect for my use case. It’s not the brightest, but I would still recommend it if you can find it for under $200.
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Sketch alone justifies having a Wii U around. Our Wii U still sees regular use thanks to this collection of games, especially Sketch.
I got stumped by this one and had to think on my feet!
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Updated the OP to reflect port of Tokyo Mirage Sessions on Switch.
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I think I’m going to have to pick up Game & Wario after reading some of the comments here. Sounds like a riot in local multiplayer. That it’s retained its value (at least here in Europe) clearly means it’s highly regarded to a degree which is also a positive sign.
I dug out some of my Wii U library last night and spent time playing each game. While I don’t own many Wii U titles I had a lot of fun revisiting the games I did try.
New Super Mario Bros U’s challenge mode is golden, and ZombiU feels alien in the sense that Ubisoft simply doesn’t design games this tightly any more. Xenoblade X and Pikmin 3 still have breathtaking worlds. Tropical Freeze is just a joy to play and Splatoon 1 is still bags of fun, and for my money, more fun than the sequel.
What surprised me was how crisp all the games looked on my old Sony Bravia at 720p. Sure, it’s a 20” panel which is small by modern standards, but from the distance I was sitting I couldn’t make out individual pixels in every game except Sonic Transformed.
This is how all games sound be played. At their native resolution.
So I’ve been thinking about the Wii U’s launch window lately and it brought back a lot of strangely nostalgic memories, probably because of how much the market has changed since late 2012.
It led me to remember a couple of interesting features about the system itself:
- https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/182294/persuasive_games_wii_cant_go_on_.php, which argues that the Wii U has soul because of how Nintendo was mature enough to admit it didn’t know what the future would be with a system that wasn’t much of a product of design-by-committee.
- https://youtu.be/0OzoB4lHBK8 An old Jim Sterling video where he argues the Wii U launch was simply more exciting than PS4 and Xbox One because it captured what console launches used to be, new systems that inspired wonder with so many new things to uncover and take in.
Both features nail it, really, and while Nintendo has replicated that sense of wonder in the past with systems that were far more successful and appealing to the mass market, that the Wii U was not appealing to the mass market makes it just as interesting, mainly because one oft-talked about portion of the sense of wonder it did inspire was still the result of applying craftsmanship to the mundane that you just don’t see in today’s software.
Take the Wii system transfer animation for example:
Today with the Switch Nintendo has rightly reprioritised to a focus on convenience, which means a lot of the Wii U’s uniqueness had to have been seen as over-engineered given it largely went underappreciated in the first place. The Switch home menu, for instance, is the complete opposite of Wii U’s Warawara Plaza. It is designed to be as light as possible with tiny fast loading assets, and a RAM-sippingly low resolution.
But it does mean we now live in a world where it’s even harder to justify doing wholly bespoke things for new game platforms. Even now I am amazed something like Miiverse even existed at all when you consider the benefits of just allowing users to post to Twitter or Facebook instead with the PS4’s more cynical Share button. That’s free marketing for every game right there.
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Looks like Wonderful 101 is coming off the exclusive list. Glad more people get to experience this gem, but bummed the Wii U has one less piece of unique history.
It does seem unlikely that any of these versions will have the Gamepad stuff that’s in the original, so that will always be the definitive way to play it IMO.