WII – 21 games
- Avatar: The Last Airbender
- Call of Duty 3
- Cars
- Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2
- Excite Truck
- The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy
- GT Pro Series
- Happy Feet
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
- Madden NFL 07
- Marvel Ultimate Alliance
- Monster 4×4: World Circuit
- Need for Speed: Carbon
- Rampage: Total Destruction
- Rayman Raving Rabbids
- Red Steel
- SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab
- Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz
- Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam
- Trauma Center: Second Opinion
- Wii Sports (bundled with the Wii console)
The Wii launched motion controls to the masses in 2006, and the unique feature had a lot to prove in a short amount of time. The new method of control clearly lent itself to casual gaming experiences, but many were not sold on its ability to appease the mainstream market. The game that ultimately proved the Wii’s potential more than any other was The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess; swinging the remote to make Link swing his sword was a simple yet effective use of the Wii remote.
The other massive release was Wii Sports. The system pack-in took the world by storm, offering a handful of minigames that taught newcomers how to love motion controls. The rest of the launch lineup was decidedly lackluster. Red Steel looked cool at the time but ended up being a boring and unresponsive shooter, especially when you were asked to draw your sword. Excite Truck, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, and Call of Duty 3 helped pad out the system’s initial library, but other than Zelda, no truly impressive titles were released until months later.
With the Wii, Nintendo had the difficult job of illustrating the wide array of playstyles and genres that could work on the new console. It banked on Zelda as a killer app, and everything else served as additional experiences. It wasn’t a bad lineup by any means, it just wasn’t particularly remarkable.
