First Party Games
Without a doubt, the best aspect of the Wii U has been the incredible library of games that Nintendo has given us. The system might have started out a little slow with only Nintendoland and New Super Mario Bros. U, but Nintendo singlehandedly kept their system afloat.
The last three years have seen countless great titles; Kirby, Pikmin 3, Pokken Tournament, Hyrule Warriors, Super Mario 3D World, Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Captain Toad Treasure Tracker and more. Two classic Zelda games, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, returned to the console with updates and an HD polish. We even saw brand new entries in the Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. series, both of which were received incredibly well. Mario Kart 8 especially has sold over 7 million copies worldwide, meaning literally over half of the people that own a Wii U own Mario Kart 8. Nintendo also implemented full-fledged DLC offerings for the first time.
Mario Kart 8 got multiple packs that added on a healthy amount of tracks and characters. Hyrule Warriors received a ton of new characters, weapons and adventure maps. Super Smash Bros. also surprised everyone by adding on incredibly iconic video games characters with Ryu, Cloud Strife and Bayonetta. The typical Nintendo polish shone through brightly even with DLC.
The Wii U also saw the introduction of an original Nintendo IP that ended up being a smash hit. Splatoon was a fresh take on multiplayer shooters, giving us another set of quirky memorable Nintendo characters. The game still has a dedicated player base, and received constant updates the entire year after its release. The company had created another iconic series for themselves.
First party games have always been the main draw with a Nintendo console, but the Wii U really highlighted that fact with one great title after another. Add on everything from Virtual Console and backwards compatibility with Wii games, and you have a huge library. It says a lot for Nintendo that they were able to keep their console going with practically just their own titles.
