11 Best Wii Compilations

Dragon's Lair Trilogy holds Dragon's Lair, Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp and Space Ace, the laserdisc games famous for animation by former Disney animator Don Bluth. You play Dirk the Daring, a knight on a quest to save Princess Daphne. You don't so much play them as react to them: each scene waits for the right direction or button press, and anything else gets you one of the many death scenes.

A perfect run of the 1983 arcade game takes no more than 12 minutes, so the fun is in learning every scene by heart. Time Warp shows the problem. It only reached arcades in 1991, and by then its limited interactivity already felt outdated. The first two games are still considered gaming classics, and they come back on each new console, often with Space Ace alongside. Players who bring the disc up enjoy it as an oddity worth having.

The Orochi Saga was the first King of Fighters collection, with five complete games, King of Fighters '94 through '98. The series began in 1994 as a dream match of characters from SNK's other arcade games, and every game here began on SNK's Neo Geo arcade hardware.

A new game followed every year until The King of Fighters 2003, so this disc holds the first five years of that run. It ends on King of Fighters '98, a dream match outside the story that brings back almost every fighter from the earlier games. The one fighter left out is Eiji Kisaragi. That makes it a tidy way to see how the series found its feet. Players still recommend it.

Namco Museum Remix holds nine original Namco arcade games and five remix games made for this compilation, laid out as attractions in an amusement park full of Miis. The strangest is Galaga Remix, where you have to protect Pac-Man as he rolls through space as well as yourself. You reach the original arcade games by walking into the Carnival Arcade building.

The arcade games are ports rather than emulation, and Megamix came along with everything here plus nine more arcade games, which leaves Remix little reason to exist. Critics missed classics like Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man and were not won over by the obscure picks that took their place. Take it as a curiosity first and a museum second.

Megamix is Namco Museum Remix with the gaps filled in: nine more arcade games, Pac-Man and Galaga among them, plus a sixth remix game based on Grobda. It came out only in North America. Everything from the 2007 disc carries over, so it replaces Remix instead of sitting beside it. It also adds a level select for the old arcade games, except Cutie Q.

Ms. Pac-Man still isn't on it. Reviewers criticized it for not including a wider variety of Namco games, and its reviews ran from mixed to average, a step up from the generally unfavorable ones Remix got. It is still the fuller of the two discs. Players still put it on their Wii lists.

SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 packs sixteen Neo Geo games, from Metal Slug and Shock Troopers to the golf of Neo Turf Masters, and every one of them is modified to work with a medal system that rewards you for playing.

The Wii version arrived three months after the PS2 and PSP ones. Most of the games have multiplayer modes, and load times are short. A sequel went to Japan only, and it collects games from before the Neo Geo home console. IGN liked the price, roughly two dollars a game, and the four control schemes that all work well. GameSpot was harsher and thought only Last Resort and Metal Slug were worth getting. Players still recommend it.

Ultimate Shooting Collection puts three Milestone shooters on one disc, Karous, Radio Allergy and Chaos Field, and it was the first time Karous and Radio Allergy came out in English. Radio Allergy follows a schoolgirl who is allergic to radio waves. Radio Allergy brings bullet hell in a cel-shaded style. It has an arcade mode of five stages and a score attack mode.

Karous shares its weapon system with Radio Allergy. Karous started in Japanese arcades in 2006, and it has the odder claim to fame: its Dreamcast port was the last officially licensed Dreamcast game. Radio Allergy had been out in Japan since 2005, so this disc finally gave English players a way in. Players still recommend the collection.

The Arcade Hits Pack brings home two Sega light-gun games built for the Model 2 and Model 3 arcade boards. In both, android terrorists have attacked an American state, and you fight back from a gunship. In Gunblade NY that means hanging out of the door with a machine gun that never runs out of ammo, aimed with the Wii Remote. Its eight levels split into an easy and a hard campaign, and most end with a boss fight against a large robot.

A second player can join in at any time. You can shoot down the rockets the enemies fire at you, but three hits put you out of action. Players call it great, dumb arcade fun, and subtlety was never on the menu.

Metal Slug Anthology holds seven games, Metal Slug through Metal Slug 6 with Metal Slug X in the middle. The emulation of the Neo Geo games is near perfect, with no slowdown you wouldn't find on the Neo Geo original. Co-op is on, so you can bring a friend, and the extras include concept art and the music from all six numbered games.

The controls are the weak spot. The game doesn't support the Classic Controller, and the best Wii Remote setup makes you jerk the controller with a twisting motion to throw grenades, so dig out a GameCube pad. The games themselves are left alone, with nothing in them changed. Players still put it on their Wii lists.

Kirby's Dream Collection celebrated the series' 20th anniversary with six Kirby platformers from 1992 to 2000, from the Game Boy's Kirby's Dream Land to Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. The disc adds new challenge stages and three episodes of the anime, and the box adds a soundtrack CD and a booklet of Kirby history. All six games are set up for the Wii Remote held sideways.

Nintendo marked the launch by breaking a Guinness World Record for the most people blowing a chewing gum bubble at once. Critics called it a better anniversary compilation than the Wii release of Super Mario All-Stars. It came out in Japan and North America, but not in Europe. Players still list it among the Wii games worth owning.

The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return ports Sega's zombie shooters from their Dreamcast and Xbox versions, with the bonus content of each, and works with the Wii Zapper. The House of the Dead III also gets a new unlockable Extreme mode with faster enemy attacks. The second game adds a boss mode, where you fight any boss you have beaten on its own.

The third game has a time attack mode where health is replaced by a clock. The port of the second game is the flawless one, and the third has some technical issues. IGN praised the pointer controls, and Nintendo Power found the lack of extras disappointing. Players recommend it as a light-gun game for two.

Metroid Prime: Trilogy holds Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and the two GameCube games were updated with Corruption's Wii Remote and Nunchuk controls and its credits system. They also load faster and run in widescreen, though the visor display gets stretched sideways when they do. Playing earns credits that unlock things like artwork and music.

Players say the pointer controls are the best way to play all three, which is a big thing to say about games that started on a GameCube pad. Critics praised the new controls and the value for money. Nintendo stopped selling it in North America and Australia in January 2010, and Japan never got it. Japan got the updated Prime and Echoes as separate releases instead.