12 Best Wii Launch Games

Call of Duty 3 was a launch title for the PlayStation 3 and Wii in North America, Europe and Australia. It came out on PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii, and it is the only major installment that never came to PC.

The game received positive reviews on release. Looking back, critics have been harsher and say it did not add much after the games before it. Some also noticed that it tried ideas the series would use in later games.

On the Wii it was a strange thing to own in 2006. A World War II shooter from a big series, on a Nintendo console, on day one, was not something anyone expected. If you wanted a serious war game next to all the bowling and bunnies, this was the only one in the box.

Ultimate Alliance came out first on PlayStation 2, Xbox and Xbox 360, on October 24, 2006. Shortly after, it was a launch title for both the PlayStation 3 and the Wii, and Vicarious Visions did the Wii port. On the Wii it has the same graphics as the PS2 and Xbox versions.

You build a team of heroes and fight through the story in a top-down brawler. Critics praised its simple but entertaining gameplay and its impressive selection of Marvel characters. Along the way you can play trivia and collect concept art and simulator discs, which unlock extra comic book missions outside the story.

It is one of the best games here to play with a friend. Two people mashing buttons as Spider-Man and Wolverine is a very easy sell, and it holds up better than most licensed games from that year.

Total Destruction came out in April 2006 for the GameCube and PlayStation 2. The Wii version followed on November 19, 2006 in North America, so it was there on launch day.

Rampage is about as simple as games get. You are a giant monster and the city is full of buildings to punch down. The game has four modes, and the first is a campaign where you take out cities around the world while following a story. Shake the remote and your monster swings.

It was never a critic's game, but it still turns up when players list fun Wii games to pick up. That makes sense. Rampage is a game you can hand to anyone, and it is over before anyone gets bored.

GT Pro Series is a racing game with Japanese cars and tracks in the style of Gran Turismo. It is the one launch game that tries to be a straight driving sim.

Critics found the graphics underwhelming, and the reviews were rough. Players were kinder, and it still has a small group of fans who recommend it.

It is the plainest game on this list and the hardest to find a reason to play now. If you want a Wii racer and have already played everything else, it is cheap and it is a real driving game.

Carbon is the street racer that followed Most Wanted. Upon release, it received positive reviews from critics, though some said it had less of a focus on police chases than the game before it. The big new idea is Canyon events, races on mountain roads styled after Japanese Tōge racing.

When you start Career mode you pick a class of car, and that choice stays for your whole playthrough. It also decides which of the first three districts you start in. The whole story takes place at night.

The Wii version was not the best looking one, and nobody bought a Wii for it. It was still the only big street racer on the launch shelf, and for kids who had played Most Wanted on a friend's Xbox, that was enough.

You tilt the remote to tilt the floor, and a monkey in a ball rolls around the stage. Banana Blitz added something new to the series: for the first time in a Super Monkey Ball game, you can jump, by flicking the controller up while holding B or by pressing A.

GameSpot praised the controls but criticized the single player game for its brevity. The party games are the other half of the disc, and they are the better half with friends.

The levels were built for the Wii Remote. Years later, when the game was remade, Shirosaki said some levels would have been too easy with a stick, because they were designed with the Wii Remote in mind. That is the best reason to play the Wii original.

Atlus released Second Opinion in North America and Japan in 2006 as a launch title, and Nintendo put it out in other regions in 2007. You play Derek Stiles, a doctor who has just finished his residency at Hope Hospital. The story is set in 2018, and Stiles turns out to have the "healing touch", a rare gift that slows down time while he operates.

The remote is your scalpel, your forceps and your syringe. Journalists praised how it used the Wii controls. It began development in early 2006, so the small team made it in less than a year, and production was stressful. It also adds a new story with Naomi Kimishima that the DS game did not have.

Players still recommend it, and it is the launch game most likely to surprise someone who has never heard of it.

Red Steel is a shooter set in the USA and Japan. You play Scott Monroe, who fights members of the Yakuza clans to rescue his fiancée. It has sword duels and gun fights, and you swing the remote as you would swing a sword. When an enemy surrenders, you can shoot him or wave the gun to make him kneel with his hands behind his head, and sparing people earns you respect points.

Ubisoft built it on a modified Unreal Engine 2.5. A stand-alone sequel, Red Steel 2, came out in 2010.

Most players who bring up Red Steel today mean that sequel. The first one is rougher, but it was the game that showed what a sword on a remote could feel like, and it is worth a look for that.

Raving Rabbids came out on the Wii first in 2006, and the other versions came later. It started as Rayman 4, a regular 3D platformer. After Nintendo showed the Wii, Ubisoft worried that a more conventional game could hurt sales, and it started over.

What came out is a pile of minigames starring the Rabbids, screaming bunnies who kidnap Rayman. In bunny hunts you shoot Rabbids with plungers from a first-person view. In warthog races you ride a warthog for three laps. It received generally positive reviews, with praise for its frantic gameplay, its humor and how it used the Wii. The other versions were less well received.

The Rabbids became Ubisoft's mascots after this. This is where they started, and it is still funny.

Excite Truck was one of the Wii launch titles in North America. It is the third main game in the Excite series, after 1984's Excitebike and 2000's Excitebike 64, and the first one without motorbikes. You hold the remote on its side like a steering wheel and tilt it to turn.

Winning is not the goal. You earn stars as you race, and your grade at the end depends on how many you have. You do not have to finish first as long as you get the stars. It was also the first Wii game to let you play your own MP3s from an SD card.

Players still recommend it. One summed it up well: "Looks like shovelware but is actually a really amazing racing game." A sequel, Excitebots: Trick Racing, came out in North America in April 2009.

Twilight Princess was planned for the GameCube for November 2005. Nintendo delayed it to add more content and port it to the Wii, and the Wii version was a launch game in North America in November 2006.

On the Wii you swing the remote to swing the sword and point it to aim the bow and the boomerang. To make Link right-handed for the motion controls, Nintendo flipped the whole map, so the Wii version is a mirror image of the GameCube one. Eiji Aonuma said aiming straight at the screen gave the game a new feel.

Twilight has covered Hyrule and turned its people into spirits, and Link has to bring back the light with the help of Midna. It received critical acclaim for its art direction, combat, level design and story, and it has been called one of the greatest video games ever made.

Wii Sports has five sports: tennis, baseball, bowling, golf and boxing. You play them by moving the remote the way you would swing a racket or roll a ball. The rules are simple, so anyone can play. Your Miis play too, and the ones saved on your Wii show up in the crowd during bowling games.

It came in the box with the console in all territories except Japan and Korea. It was the first sports game included with the launch of a Nintendo system since Mario's Tennis for the Virtual Boy in 1995. As of March 2020, it had sold over 30 million units.

Players name it more than any other Wii launch game. It is the reason a lot of grandparents ever held a game controller, and bowling is still the best party game on the console.