25 Best Wii Multiplayer Games

Mario Power Tennis is the third game in the Mario Tennis series, and it started on the GameCube. The Wii got it in 2009 as part of the New Play Control! line, which moved the swing onto the Wii Remote. The rest is the GameCube game, with Mario characters on themed courts and Power Shots that usually save or win the point. There is also an Item Battle mode, where you throw Mario items at each other to get an edge, and it was the first game where Wiggler was playable.

The Wii version got a mixed reaction. Critics liked the graphics and the multiplayer and did not like the motion controls, which could be inaccurate. That trade is fine with four friends on a couch. Nobody plays doubles against their cousins for the precision.

Mario Sports Mix puts four sports on one disc: volleyball, hockey, dodgeball and basketball. It plays in the style of Mario Hoops 3 on 3, and it was the first time dodgeball showed up in a Mario sports game. Up to four people can play an exhibition match. Each sport also has a party game built from its rules, like Bob-omb Dodge for dodgeball and Feed Petey for basketball.

Critics liked the presentation and the variety and wished it had more depth. One review also had issues with the unlockable characters, who are all from Square Enix games. It still sold 1.98 million copies. Depth was never the point. These are four quick games you can explain to anyone in the time it takes to hand them a remote.

Kirby's Return to Dream Land is the Kirby game that took eleven years to make. Work started on the GameCube after Kirby 64, and a four-player version was shown at E3 in 2005 before HAL Laboratory canceled it for not meeting its standards. The Wii game finally came out in North America on October 24, 2011. An alien spaceship crashes on Pop Star, and Kirby has to find its scattered parts.

At any time, up to three more players can join as Meta Knight, King Dedede and Waddle Dee. Players can also stack up in a totem carried by whoever is on the bottom. Reviews called it a return to form and said it was too easy. Easy is a feature when your little brother has the second remote.

Boom Blox Bash Party is the sequel to Boom Blox, and it keeps the same idea. You use the Wii Remote to send things flying at towers of blocks and knock them over. There is also a Jenga style of play, where you pull blocks out one at a time without bringing the whole thing down. The blocks have their own rules, and the explosive ones detonate on contact.

The developers said the shooting mode was their least favorite part of the first game, so the sequel puts less weight on it. What is left is the good part. It plays best with a few people taking turns, because watching someone else pull the wrong block is half the fun.

Mario Super Sluggers is the sequel to Mario Superstar Baseball on the GameCube, and it reached North America on August 25, 2008. Exhibition mode is the one for friends. You choose how many innings to play and whether the captains get their star swings and pitches. Toy Field is the odd one. Fielders attack each other to steal the ball, and the batter can throw items at them.

Nintendo of America was the majority owner of the Seattle Mariners back then, and the game was promoted at a Mariners game against the Yankees. The first 20,000 fans got Mario Super Sluggers foam mitts. Reviews liked the big cast and the multiplayer but not the controls or the missing online play. On a couch, only one of those matters.

Wii Play: Motion is the sequel to Wii Play, and like the first one it came in a box with a remote, this time a Wii Remote Plus. All twelve minigames need the Wii MotionPlus. Nintendo handed most of them to other studios, including Prope, Vanpool and Skip Ltd., so no two feel alike. In Cone Zone you balance an ice cream cone while the scoops pile up. In Wind Runner a Mii on inline skates is pushed along by holding an umbrella into the wind.

Reviews were mixed, though it was generally considered better than the original. It is a grab bag. You will play some of these once and forget them, and you will play Cone Zone until somebody wins an argument about whose cone was really the tallest.

Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games brings Mario, Sonic and 18 more characters from both series to venues based on the real 2012 Summer Olympics. The characters are sorted into four types: all-around, speed, power and skill. Nintendo published it in Japan and South Korea, and Sega published it everywhere else. It is also the only Wii game that came in a yellow case.

Critics were mixed, and many found the events underwhelming. One reviewer called the missing Wii MotionPlus support a missed opportunity. It sold well anyway, and the series went on to the Sochi 2014 Winter Games on the Wii U. With four players and a short attention span, it does its job.

Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga takes the first two Lego Star Wars games and puts them on one disc, so the first six Star Wars films are all here. Traveller's Tales made it, and it came out in North America on November 6, 2007. A second player can drop in at any moment, which makes it a great game to share with a kid. Between levels you hang around the Cantina, and Free Play lets you go back into levels with other characters.

It also added new tricks. Prequel characters can now dodge blaster fire, and Chewbacca rips off arms, which is funnier in Lego than it sounds. Force Lightning and Force Choke were added too. Players still name it as one of the Wii games to own.

Mario Strikers Charged is the sequel to Super Mario Strikers on the GameCube, and it is soccer with most of the rules taken out. You can tackle other players with a minimal penalty, use Mario items and play around stage hazards. Only the team captain can do the Mega Strike, a shot worth anywhere from three to six goals. The captain also gets a Super Ability, and some captains, like Mario and Luigi, grow to immense size.

Critics praised the multiplayer and the new online play and were harder on the single-player side. Online had one nice touch. Lose a match and you still got a point for finishing, but rage quit and you lost ten.

Go Vacation drops you on Kawawii Island, which has four resorts and more than 50 activities between them. The team ran surveys in the United States, Europe and Japan to decide which sports and activities to include, so the range is wide, from ice fishing to bungee jumping. In bungee jumping the trick is to brake as close to the ground as you dare. Between events you can explore the island on rollerblades or ride around it on an ATV.

Critics praised the multiplayer and the creativity and were harder on the controls and some of the minigames. It got a Nintendo Switch port in 2018, so somebody kept playing it. Of everything on this list it is the closest thing to a real holiday, minus the sunburn.

Rayman Raving Rabbids was supposed to be Rayman 4. Phoenix Interactive started it as a regular follow-up, but once Nintendo showed the Wii, people at Ubisoft worried that another conventional 3D platformer would hurt sales, and development was restarted. What came out for the Wii in 2006 is a pile of minigames full of screaming rabbits. In the bunny hunts you shoot Rabbids with plungers from a first-person view. In the warthog races you ride a warthog for three laps with a few boosts to spend.

Critics praised its frantic gameplay and its humor, and it won Family Game of the Year at the D.I.C.E. awards. Rayman is the name on the box. The Rabbids are the reason anyone remembers it.

This is not the Nintendo 64 game. GoldenEye 007 on the Wii is the 2010 remake by Eurocom, with Daniel Craig as Bond and a new story written by Bruce Feirstein, the screenwriter for the original movie. The reason it is on this list is split-screen: 4 players in the same room, on the same screen, the way GoldenEye was always played.

There are 40 characters to pick from, including classic villains like Oddjob and Jaws, and 17 special game modifiers to mix into a match. Paintball and Melee Only sound like house rules from 1997. Online play went up to eight players. The original sold over eight million copies on the Nintendo 64, so plenty of people buying this one knew exactly what they wanted.

Mario Party 9 changed the series' oldest habit. Instead of everyone wandering a board alone, all four players ride across each stage together in one vehicle and take turns as captain, rolling the dice for the group. Each stage now ends in a boss battle, where you team up against someone like Bowser or King Boo while still fighting for your own score. There are 80 new minigames.

It was the first Mario Party not made by Hudson Soft, which Konami dissolved the day before the game came out in Europe. It was also the last Mario game released on the Wii. Critics called it an improvement on its predecessor, though IGN still went after the luck. Every Mario Party review complains about the luck, and every Mario Party player rolls a one anyway.

Monster Hunter Tri was planned as a PlayStation 3 game until Capcom canceled that version because of high development costs and made it for the Wii instead. It came out in North America on April 20, 2010, and one bundle came with a black Wii and a Classic Controller Pro. You hunt huge monsters across a world that now has underwater areas, and the Switch Axe was new, a weapon that changes between axe and sword.

Online, up to four hunters could go out together, but the North American and European servers shut down on April 30, 2013. What is left on the Wii is local play: two players on a single TV for select quests, or one hunter with Cha-Cha, a computer partner who helps track and trap. The enhanced port, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, reached North America on the 3DS in March 2013.

The first Just Dance had a simple pitch. Creative director Gregoire Spillmann argued that dance games had players pressing buttons with their feet instead of dancing, so here you hold the Wii Remote and copy the dancer on screen. Critics took it apart for the simple gameplay and poor motion detection. One review closed by telling readers not to buy it, rent it or even consider playing it, in case Ubisoft got the idea to make a Just Dance 2.

Readers did not listen. Just Dance sold over 4.3 million copies and started a series that had passed 90 million units by November 2024, Ubisoft's second-largest franchise. Even the critics admitted it got better as a multiplayer party game, and that is exactly how people played it.

WarioWare: Smooth Moves throws microgames at you in rapid succession, and before each one it tells you how to hold the Wii Remote. Director Goro Abe came up with the idea when the Wii Remote was first shown to him. The team believed that holding the controller only one way limited the fun, so they kept adding new positions. Intelligent Systems co-developed it with Nintendo, and it was the fourth best-selling game in the United States in January 2007.

Once you finish the single-player stages, a multiplayer mode opens where one Wii Remote is passed around between up to 12 players. Nobody needs a second controller, and that is the beauty of it. The best part is watching someone else work out the pose in two seconds while the whole room shouts at them.

Mario Party 8 was the first Mario Party on the Wii, made by Hudson Soft like the ones before it. It came out in North America on May 29, 2007. Many of its minigames use the Wii Remote: you point and shoot, shake, twist and turn it. Others have you hold it sideways and use only the buttons. On the Koopa's Tycoon Town board you invest coins in hotels, Monopoly style, and each hotel only pays its Stars to whoever has invested the most.

In the United Kingdom the game was delayed and then recalled on the day it came out. Critics liked the motion controls and knocked the outdated visuals and the single-player mode. It sold more than eight million copies anyway, and at a lot of birthday parties it was the only game that mattered.

Boom Blox was made with Steven Spielberg, which is still one of the stranger sentences in Wii history. It is an action puzzle game about towers of blocks. You use the Wii Remote to throw things at them or pull them out, and they collapse the way real blocks would, depending on how and at what angle you hit them. There are 300 levels across five worlds. In Gem Kingdom you help a group of sheep dressed like knights guard their gems, and in Boots 'n' Bandits a beaver named Boots mines for gold.

It plays best as a turn-taking game, with a crowd around one tower. Knocking things over is the oldest game there is, and this one was made with a lot of care. Players still recommend it.

Wii Play collects nine small games built from prototypes Nintendo showed at E3 2006, made by Nintendo EAD at the same time as Wii Sports. Critics called it repetitive. It sold 28.02 million copies anyway, the fifth best-selling game on the Wii, and a big reason was in the box: it came with an extra Wii Remote.

The game in it that people remember is the tank game. Two players drive toy tanks through missions together, and if one of you loses your tank, you come back as long as your partner clears the mission. Only the first 20 missions work in two-player, which is still plenty for a long evening. A lot of people bought Wii Play for the remote and kept it for the tanks.

Wii Party has 80 minigames spread over 13 modes. In the main board game, the first player to reach the top of the island wins. The House Party games are the clever ones, because they move the game off the screen and into the room. In one, players take turns hiding Wii Remotes, each remote makes an animal sound, and only one of them makes the sound shown on the TV. Time Bomb and Word Bomb use only one Wii Remote no matter how many people play.

It was the first game in the Wii series that Shigeru Miyamoto did not produce, and critics gave it mixed reviews. It sold 9.35 million copies all the same. A sequel, Wii Party U, followed on the Wii U in 2013.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the third Smash Bros. and the first not developed mainly by HAL Laboratory. Masahiro Sakurai came back to direct at Satoru Iwata's request, at Sora Ltd. It reached North America on March 9, 2008. The goal is the same as always: knock your opponents off the screen. New this time were Final Smashes, a Stage Builder for making your own arenas, and, for the first time, third-party characters, with a Shadow Moses Island stage inspired by Metal Gear Solid.

There is a whole side-scrolling adventure mode too, The Subspace Emissary, with its own cutscenes. The music came from 38 well-known game composers working together. It has sold over thirteen million copies, which makes it the eighth best-selling Wii game.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii was the first Super Mario game with simultaneous cooperative multiplayer. Up to four people play the same level as Mario, Luigi, Yellow Toad and Blue Toad, and there are competitive modes too. It came out in November 2009 with two new power-ups, the Propeller Mushroom and the Penguin Suit. For newer players there is Super Guide, and anyone can climb into a floating bubble to skip a hard part of a level.

In practice the bubble is where you go after your brother bounces off your head into a pit. Critics praised the multiplayer, and it won Best Wii Game at the 2009 Spike Video Game Awards, among other honors. It sold 30.32 million copies, the fourth best-selling Wii game as of March 2021.

Wii Sports Resort was the first game to require Wii MotionPlus, and the attachment came bundled with it. The base remote only read straight-arm movement, so this was a real step up. There are twelve sports on Wuhu Island. Bowling and golf came back from Wii Sports, table tennis moved over from Wii Play, and the rest are new. In Air Sports you can fly around the whole island and look at it. A kendama minigame was cut because it did not fit the resort theme.

It sold 33.14 million copies, the third best-selling game on the Wii. Ask players what to get for a Wii and Resort comes up almost every time. Later Wii consoles came with it in the box alongside Wii Sports.

Wii Sports came out in North America with the Wii on November 19, 2006, and it came in the box everywhere except Japan and Korea. That made it the first sports game packed in with a new Nintendo system since Mario's Tennis on the Virtual Boy, which is a sentence the Virtual Boy did not deserve. It has five sports: tennis, baseball, bowling, golf and boxing. The rules are simplified, and you play by moving the remote the way you would swing a racket or roll a ball. Your Miis even show up in the crowd at the bowling alley.

It won the Game Critics Award for Best Sports Game at E3, and it has sold over 30 million copies. Nintendo remade it in HD as Wii Sports Club for the Wii U, and Nintendo Switch Sports followed in 2022.

Mario Kart Wii is the sixth main Mario Kart, released worldwide in April 2008. It raised the number of racers from 8 to 12 and added bikes to the series, and most copies came with a Wii Wheel. You race 24 Mario characters on 32 tracks. Critics loved the online mode and complained about the item balancing and the rubberband AI, and so does anyone who has lost on the last lap.

It sold over 37 million copies, second in the series only to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Fans are still adding to it: CTGP Revolution, a ROM hack, brings extra courses and 24-player races. Players recommend it more than any other Wii multiplayer game, and one player put it best: "Mario Kart Wii is the mustest of the must-haves."