For a while I've said this is my favourite Mario but I think I need to explore the series more fully and reconsider this one. Regardless, a joyful and relentlessly inventive buffet of level design hooks that balance more conventional 3D Mario design levels with others depending on Galaxy's physics and structure.

this was The 3D Mario Game for me, as I didn't own an NES/SNES and though I'd played SM64 and a bit of Sunshine I did not own either (ended up buying SM64 on Wii Virtual Console). anyway, cannot stress how much I still love the weirdness of Galaxy's physics and planetoids, linear and simplistic though they may be. It still feels like a game from the future and is a breezy experience to complete with a good amount of enjoyment in 100%ing

As discussed in my N64 ranking, this is the Mario Kart I spent the most time with and thus my favourite. Personal feelings aside, I think it has an excellent roster of tracks, added some necessary customizability, and the motion controls were as tight as I've experienced for a racing game on the console

The first Metroid game I ever played, responsible for me becoming better at Wii FPS games than any other platform/control scheme for FPS games. Less demanding than basically every Metroid game except Zero Mission (can't speak to Other M), but wields its more linear and spectacle-focused design well.

The shape of things to come: the Dojo's influence on hype and fans' sense of entitlement to information, the inclusion of third party characters influencing the style of all subsequent crossovers, the Subspace Emissary's influence on shared media universes. Unfortunately almost all bad things in the long run, but still a pretty fun game to play after school with friends

the high-water mark for weird kitchen sink applications of the wii remote

see my review, also this was unknowingly my first introduction to one of my favourite artists (Caribou)

some really great ideas (Wii Motion Plus, puzzle-like sword combat that punishes spamming, all of Lanayru Desert and its dungeons, Zelda being on a parallel journey to yours, etc) embedded in a bloated and unconfident work overall, constantly stepping on its own toes

in contrast to Skyward Sword, the series entry that ventures little and gains nothing that wasn't already there. I will never understand why people claim this has the best dungeon design; great aesthetics sure, but bland and samey puzzles and you're largely on rails. Can't deny its solid pacing and polish though.

kind of a smeary mess to look at but man was it fun to have an "adult" (to my sensibilities at the time) racing game with solid motion controls and depth in its races and chases

kind of outdid Skyward Sword by better utilizing the basic motion controls and not reaching for 1:1 swordplay, some fun force powers, but otherwise pretty middling and does nothing interesting with the Star Wars license.

surprisingly good FPS controls considering how early it came out, not bad graphically, interesting environments but the core gameplay just doesn't hook in a way that made it fun to revisit

literally what can you say, this was in many ways a tech demo but holy lord what a fun tech demo

never did finish this, a solid puzzle game, would probably be more fun to me if I had the desire to be an engineer that four of my five immediate family members do

obviously janky, underbaked, problematic, and pretty variable in level design quality. But when it leans into its arcade light gun gameplay (which I think was originally the intent, though I can't find where I read/heard that) and the atmosphere/environments hit, it's surprisingly good

rock band 1 felt like it tried for some kind of cohesion in its song list, such that it would be exactly what people of a certain taste/demographic wanted with enough four-quadrant hits to appeal to a mass market. guitar hero world tour on the other hand has a song list that will have any given person go "holy shit this rules" for like five songs tops then hate a good chunk of the rest of them. that little mini game where you could free drum with the wii and nunchuk was cool

I was so on board with the idea of open world HP and I was such a fucking idiot. This one is better but man it's a let down from what I hoped for because you're ultimately still Harry and as such have no narrative freedom the way open worlds tend to

more like WarioWare than a sports game, which is okay

less variety of actions/verbs than winter games but glad it avoided the dream events

notably worse than HBP

this is the point where the "oh my god I'm moving like [character x] irl and then it happens in the game!" conceit/appeal of the wii begins to fray, a statement which shows just how much respect/patience I have for the wii compared to most people because they would tell you this game is ass

way too much metal/american hard rock for my taste, and to add insult to injury it's not even the master for "she bangs the drum"

you're goddamn right I had a wii zapper, I was not cool

compared to the minigame/WarioWare style of Mario & Sonic Olympics or the less complex actions of Wii Sports and Tiger Woods, this is a mess and clear instance where motion only frustrated gameplay

fun to play with other people in the way that watching a terrible movie is

these dogfights are dogSHIT doom shotgun sound effect

seeing as we're down near the bottom of this list I will confess that I was seriously ill as a pre-teen/early teen, overlapping primarily with the time my family had a wii. I played it a lot when I was stuck in bed missing school for a week or lonely because I wasn't doing much for extra-curriculars and thus friendships thinned out. A few times my dad would think to cheer me up by renting a game from blockbuster. This was one of them and it was such a sweet gesture from a man who was a lot more scared than he ever let on and found it hard to connect with a son who was more introverted, shy, and less active than he was as a kid. Too bad this game is less fun than the time I shat my pants walking home from school because a convenience store wouldn't let me use their bathroom.

I think it's a testament to the wii's cultural dominance that around this time you'd start seeing Shoppers Drug Mart selling games near checkout, leading to the only instance of a grandparent buying me and my siblings a video game. she should not have.