It's hard to argue with a highly moddable emulator box that can boot dozens of classic Nintendo games off an SD card and tell you the weather to boot. There's a reason people still adore the Wii singularly above most other retro consoles, and this section is where I dig into why. Keep in mind that, like a lot of Nintendo consoles, the Wii is platformer-heavy, and I don't tend to care for platformers. That said, it's such a bizarre and varied game library that there really is something for everyone.

[#] Geometry Wars: Galaxies (Vivendi, 2007)

Beyond reproach.

If I gave the DS version a soft recommendation, the Wii version of Geometry Wars: Galaxies is a must-own—with the right controller. A twin-stick shooter from the deepest recesses of space, Geometry Wars revels in mobbing you with hundreds of polygonal enemies as much as it does giving you a steady stream of firepower to clear a path with. If you love Robotron or Smash TV, this will become your new favorite game. Again, provided you own a Classic Controller. If you try to play this game with the Wiimote-and-Nunchuk combo, you'll be spending the entire game with your achy arm pointed at the screen, lacking the fine, twitchy precision necessary to stay alive. If you play it with a Classic Controller, you're cooking with heat.

Galaxies is split into its namesake campaign mode and a perfect port of the traditional Retro Evolved mode, as seen in the Xbox Live Arcade version. The campaign isn't bad. It tries to wrinkle up the formula by sending you to "planets" with different playfield shapes, enemy behaviors, and geoms to collect to massively inflate your score with multipliers. You also get a helper droid which can be set with one of many behaviors to attack, defend, or collect geoms, though I always find that the attack mode is both the most useful and the one that gets upgraded the fastest since it's the default. It's the meat of this disc for sure and would feel empty if it were missing, but it's a little drawn-out and easy. Galaxies isn't where the magic happens.

No, the magic happens in Retro Evolved. No amount of tampering with a good thing changes the amount of strategy, fast reflexes, and technique that goes into stirring the gigantic stew of diamonds, squares, and little X's that bumrush you. The Classic Controller is built for this game, and the graphics, simple as they are, perfectly communicate everything you need to know to survive in razor-sharp focus. It's the push and pull between sticking around one more second to keep spewing into a crowd for points or clearing everything out with a smartbomb to survive another round, or the rush to stop a gravity well exploding, that makes a man feel alive. Breaking the million point barrier is a tall ask. Then you grind to break two. Then three. Oh, it's good.

[#] Kirby's Epic Yarn (Nintendo, 2010)

An adorably refreshing tale of textiles.

With my lifestyle of pussy, pistols, and percocet (not to mention the pooper pounding I just got from New Super Mario Bros. Wii), it's nice to take a break with something fluffy and wholesome instead. Kirby's tasked with banishing a malevolent wizard setting out to literally felt Dream Land, traversing lands of sweets, volcanoes, and outer space in the process—as implied, all built out of hand-stitching and patches of denim and corduroy. It looks great on a big TV, but it's no mere detailing: the pulls, zippers, and sewn on patches factor heavily into the platforming.

Kirby himself gets a yarn makeover as well, but imagine my surprise when I couldn't inhale enemies! Instead, Kirby gets a Simon Belmont whip to yank around enemies and parts of the level, swinging on buttons and even sewing up a teddy bear's wounds in one stage—just as a matter of platforming! Kirby does still shapeshift plenty, and these sections are my favorite, as they let you hose down jets of fire or blow through the desert as a monster truck. Hugely satisfying sections that break up the short-as-they-are stages even more. Each world features a boss, and these get rather inventive as well (Squashini's wheel of attacks come to mind).

Yarn is never particularly difficult to beat, and you can't die, but getting hit makes you spill the collected sequins you get graded on at the end of each stage, which is almost as bad a punishment! There are side attractions where the furniture you find hiding in each stage can be used to decorate apartments, but I didn't pay them much mind. I'm still not head over heels for platformers as a genre, but Kirby's Epic Yarn is one of the most thoughtfully put together and cheerful ones you can find around. It takes the core of a Kirby game and recontextualizes its elements into something incredibly fresh.

[#] Link's Crossbow Training (Nintendo, 2007)

Twink's crossbow training.

Link's Crossbow Training is a shot of arcade fentanyl directly into my spinal fluid. Light gun games came back in a big way thanks to the Wiimote, though a TV remote is a slightly less satisfying sidearm than a proper gun accessory, y'know? To this end, Nintendo released the (silly, but actually quite effective for steadying your shots) Wii Zapper, a plastic shell accommodating the Wiimote and Nunchuk, and Link's is its pretty damn electric pack-in title. Seriously, "quick" and "precise" don't mix in me, but Link's has this phenomenal way of onboarding you to the challenge and encouraging you to go for better.

Effectively a light gun-centric expansion for Twilight Princess, Link's Crossbow Training gives you nine levels, each with three 90-second stages covering its locales and enemies. Stages generally consist of a target practice stage (where you traverse a field of wooden targets aiming for the bulls-eyes as best as you can), a defense stage (where waves of enemies converge on Link), and a free-roaming sentry stage as you clear out a goblin encampment or suchlike. There's other wrinkles in there, including a clay pigeon-style skull shoot and two bosses, but that about sums it up. Medal to advance to the next level, good luck.

Where Link's becomes habit-forming is that accuracy makes big scores. You can spray all you want, and there's no dying in stages, but each successive hit increases your multiplier, incentivizing you to be nastily accurate as your scores go exponential. A good run on a target or sentry stage can net you a platinum medal on a level all by itself. Pair that with some great sound design (bulls-eyes sound like bowling pins), plenty of background objects to shoot for extra points, and a pretty manageable difficulty curve, and Link's overcomes how short and shallow it is with the visceral pursuit of number go up.

[#] New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Nintendo, 2009)

First it's sweet, then it's sour.

I've never found myself on a couch with a drink in one hand and Mario's gloved digits stroking my opposite thigh, but when New Super Mario Bros. on the DS enchanted me enough to go for 100% completion, I was eager to give the sequel on the Wii (see, it's the same name, but they added "Wii" to the end) a shot. The gimmick this time around is the simultaneous four-person co-op where you and three other people aggressively toss each other around stages. I know firsthand it's as chaotic as it sounds, but for this review's run, I went solo. The two are similar enough that anyone who liked the DS one will dig this, but I found it kind of a downgrade, really.

Holding the Wiimote horizontally with both hands to mimic an NES controller is cute, but how come the Classic Controller isn't supported? That sharp Wiimote d-pad really did not make my thumb happy, but I pressed on, enjoying the quick stages, solid platforming, plentiful save points, and new power-ups, including an ice flower for freezing enemies and a propeller suit that can throw you upwards with a jerk of the Wiimote. I think the DS one's powerups were better, and I prefer being able to deploy them during a stage rather than before, but plentiful bonus item houses make it easy to gather a cache of them for a rainy day. So far, so good!

I grew less enthused with Nintendo's inventiveness towards the last few worlds. Stages start to rely on platforming over huge instant death hazards and hiding 90% of the play area in darkness, and any mistake means death or at least being handicapped. That bouncing pipes and Bullet Bills stage in World 7, or the one with the fucking rail platforms over lava geysers in 8, or the final boss, all suck ass. Sure, you can get infinity lives and skip any stage you want with the "Super Guide" function if you die enough times, but these are Band-Aid fixes over core design problems that disrupt the flow of good platforming. Wii is a cute, short Mario game that reminds me why I don't often play Mario games.

[#] Tetris Party Deluxe (Tetris Online, 2010)

More modes! More stacking! Play online! Fuck!

I've played hella versions of Tetris, so let this be of import when I say that Tetris Party Deluxe, on Wii and on DS, absolutely rules. These are my favorite "new-school" versions of Tetris. (If you don't know, The Tetris Company has standardized a lot of the gameplay mechanics of Tetris over the years, from spinning behavior to how the randomizer gives you pieces, hence "new-school" as opposed to NES Tetris or Tetris DX.) I know, it's such a simple game! How could any be good or bad if it's just Tetris? It's the the game options and playability that give Deluxe the edge.

There are a lot of game modes in Deluxe, and a lot of customization in each one. Your traditional Marathon mode can be set to end at 150 lines, which is great because it gives you a finite end to try to best in terms of your score and fastest completion. The CPU battle mode, as you send completed lines back and forth to trip the other player up, is one of my favorite Wii timewasters period. There's a "beginner Tetris" mode with a bigger grid and three block pieces, and while you think this would be pointless, it trips up my seasoned brain enough to be its own challenge. Even the more experimental modes, like Stage Racer or Balance Board Tetris, while they can be hit-and-miss, are nice additions that show an appreciated desire to experiment.

Okay, but how's the block stacking? Excellent. All the block spin maneuvers into tight spots and piece hold mechanics you could want are here. The piece holding in particular is nice with the standardized randomizer, because you can hold an S or Z (or L or J) piece when you don't need it, and then swap it in when you get another piece of the reverse that you don't need in the next few blocks, creating this sort of rhythm that makes it really easy to build ideal Tetris-scumming setups. Not to say this game can't kick your ass at the highest speeds or the highest CPU levels though! There's so many versions of Tetris that it might be hard to call any definitive, but for consoles, Deluxe might be it.