25 Best Wii Platformers

Jungle Beat started on the GameCube, where you played it on the DK Bongos, a controller shaped like a pair of bongo drums. It was the debut project of the 65-member Nintendo EAD Tokyo. The Wii got it in 2008 as part of Nintendo's New Play Control! line, with reworked controls and levels. The scoring is built on showing off: the combo count builds up based on how many objects Donkey Kong bounces off without touching the ground.

Critics liked it, though they found it short and easy. The best reason to play it now is history. The same studio went on to make Super Mario Galaxy, which refined concepts first tried here, and you can feel that game warming up in these bouncy, showy levels. It is a short ride, so take it slowly and chase the big combos.

And Yet It Moves began in 2007 as a computer science project at the Vienna University of Technology. The prototype won or was nominated for awards at independent game festivals, so the team made a full game, and it reached WiiWare in August 2010. You run and jump a pencil drawing of a man through a world made of ripped paper. The trick is that you can rotate the world itself. On the Wii you hold the remote sideways and twist it to turn everything around you.

The Wii version is the one to get. It drops the PC game's 90 degree steps and adds three extra levels, and it scored 83 on Metacritic against the PC game's 75. Critics did find it too short. The name is a nod to Galileo, which is about as clever as a platformer title gets.

Dewy's Adventure is a Konami game built alongside Elebits, and it shares that game's level editor, so you can build stages of your own. Dewy is the only one left who can free the world from the villain Don Hedron. In each of the first six worlds you can find 100 Eau in each of four missions, for 2,400 in all. After a mission, a grade rates how fast you were and how many Eau you rescued.

The bosses are the best part. The first one, Gasdron, rides in a wheelless urn that people keep mistaking for a pot, which annoys him a great deal. Later bosses get stranger, including a red caterpillar with a mustache that turns into a moth with fiery wings. It is a cute, small game that a lot of Wii owners walked past on the shelf, and it is worth a second look.

LostWinds grew out of a Frontier "Game of the Week" competition to make a game that used the Wii Remote, and designer Steve Burgess had the idea. You control two characters at once. Toku is a young boy, and Enril is a wind spirit you steer by drawing paths on the screen with the remote. Your job is to guide and protect Toku with the wind, lifting him to places he could never reach on foot.

It did well enough to be ported to iOS, and a sequel, Winter of the Melodias, followed in October 2009. Critics found the areas too similar and the game too easy. Both complaints are fair. It is still a lovely little download, and the first time you lift Toku on a gust you will see why the idea won the office competition.

Ivy the Kiwi? is a Yuji Naka game, and you never control the hero directly. Ivy walks left or right on her own and turns around when something blocks her path. You draw vines to make ramps for her, or pull a vine back and slingshot her across the screen. If that sounds like Kirby: Canvas Curse, it is a fair comparison.

It began as a WiiWare game, but that version was cancelled as Naka kept adding features and ideas, and it grew into a full release. Xseed Games published it in North America. Up to four players can join in to help the first player along. It has a picture-book look, and it is a good pick for a kid or anyone who wants a platformer that does not ask for fast thumbs.

Cave Story is the game one man made. Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya developed it in his free time over five years and released it for Windows on December 20, 2004. After that it slowly gained popularity on the internet, and in 2010 Nicalis worked with Amaya to port it to WiiWare. There is no tutorial level, a concept Amaya dislikes. The first stage gives you two paths, and one stays blocked until you fetch an item from the other.

It received widespread critical acclaim, and it became an influence on indie games and the wider industry. It showed what a single person could do against the manpower of big studios. It plays like a small Metroid with a big heart, and the WiiWare version is a fine way to play it.

Return to Dream Land took a very long time to arrive. It went through an 11-year development cycle, with three versions built and scrapped along the way. A GameCube Kirby with four-player co-op was shown at E3 in 2005, then canceled because it did not meet HAL Laboratory's quality standards. When the Wii game finally came out in North America on October 24, 2011, up to three more players could join in as Meta Knight, King Dedede and Waddle Dee.

Critics praised it as a return to the traditional Kirby style and grumbled about the low difficulty. That is fair, but for a family with four remotes it is close to perfect. It even kept the totem trick from the canceled game, where players stack up and the one at the bottom carries the rest. A Switch remake, Deluxe, followed on February 24, 2023.

Epic Mickey 2 sends Mickey back to the Wasteland, this time with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit as a partner. A second player can take Oswald, and some special abilities only work when the two team up. The game added voice acting and musical numbers, both missing from the first game, and new areas such as Disney Gulch, based on Disneyland's Frontierland. Unlike the Wii-only first game, it also came out on PlayStation 3, Wii U and Xbox 360.

It did not sell. By the end of 2012 it had sold 529,000 copies in the United States, a quarter of what the first game sold. It was also the last game from Junction Point Studios, which closed two months after it came out. If you loved the first one, it is still worth your time, ideally with a friend on the second remote.

Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars is the Wii game in the series, and it is a full 3D platformer, while the DS game, Rise of the Fungi, is a side-scrolling prequel. After a comet passes, its green dust wakes up the mushrooms and plants. You play a three inch high Bolete mushroom in a backyard war, turning household trinkets and trash into weapons and tools. Red Fly Studio, an American team, made both games.

The music is the surprise. Les Claypool of Primus wrote the theme song and several original tracks. Reviews were average, but the game has a look and a sense of humour all its own, and seeing an ordinary garden from three inches up never gets old. Red Fly later made a sequel, Truffle Trouble, which came out on Steam on March 10, 2015.

De Blob 2 brings back Comrade Black and the Inkies, with a new plot to rid the world of colour. Blue Tongue Entertainment made it again, and THQ published it, this time with the TV network Syfy. The villain hides as Papa Blanc, a priest who is Comrade Black in disguise. He tries to rig a vote with a cult and a metal arm in each voting booth that presses Blanc.

Project director Nick Hagger said the team looked at the criticisms of the first game and worked on the variety of tasks. John Guscott came back to score the music. It sold under 75,000 copies in the US in its first month, so plenty of Wii owners missed it. The pair got a second chance when both games came to Windows in 2017 and to Switch in 2018.

Sonic Unleashed on the Wii is a different game from the one PS3 and Xbox 360 owners got. Three versions were made, and the Wii and PS2 version came from Sonic Team and Dimps, with a different engine and fewer of the high-speed daytime levels. Dr. Eggman unleashes an ancient evil that turns Sonic into a vicious Werehog by night, so the game splits into running by day and fighting by night.

The Werehog is the part people argue about. Reviewers praised the sense of speed in the daytime stages and criticized the Werehog, and some compared those night sections to God of War. It still sold 2.45 million units. If you can live with the nights, the days are some of the fastest Sonic you can play on the Wii.

A Boy and His Blob is a re-imagining of the 1989 NES game, and it came out on the Wii in North America on October 13, 2009. The blob has come to Earth from Blobolonia, where an evil Emperor is in charge, and he finds a young boy instead of help. You feed the blob jelly beans to transform him, and unlike the NES game, a wheel shows what each bean does.

You can also hug the blob or scold him. The hug button does nothing for the puzzles, and it is still the button you will press most. It is slow and kind, and the friendship between the two is the whole point. It makes a good pick for a younger player, or for anyone who grew up on the NES original and wondered what it could look like today.

Klonoa is a remake of Namco's 1997 PlayStation game Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, rebuilt with fully 3D graphics and more content. Hideo Yoshizawa, who directed the original, produced it and brought back other people from the first team. It came out in Japan in December 2008 and in North America and Europe in May 2009. Klonoa fires a Wind Bullet from his ring to grab enemies and inflate them. You can throw them, or launch off one in mid-air for an extra jump.

Critics liked it, and some called it one of the best games on the Wii. It still flopped, and Bandai Namco dropped its plans to revive the series. Klonoa did not get another game until the Phantasy Reverie Series, a remaster of the first two, in July 2022.

Lost in Shadow is a Hudson Soft puzzle platformer, and you spend most of it in the background. You control a boy's shadow, which has to climb the shadows of a tall tower full of puzzles and enemies. A sylph helps by moving the light sources in the foreground, which moves the shadows you climb on. Now and then the boy can step into the 3D world and touch the real objects.

In Europe it was called A Shadow's Tale, and it reached North America in January 2011. The team based its mood on the old racing track in Negishi, and you can feel it in every lonely room. Hudson Soft was later absorbed by Konami, which put the game on the Wii U eShop in 2016. Nothing else on the Wii looks or feels like it.

De Blob started as a free Windows game made by eight students at the Utrecht School of the Arts and one from Utrecht University. THQ picked it up and kept the Dutch name. The I.N.K.T. Corporation has drained the colour from Chroma City and locked its people in gray prison suits with a bar code on the back. You steer de Blob through the city and paint it back to life.

The best part is the music. The soundtrack adapts as the level is coloured in, so painting a gray street brings new music in with it. Players still recommend both de Blob games when the talk turns to the Wii. If you never tried it, start here and move on to the sequel.

Shake It! is a 2D Wario Land made by Good-Feel and directed by Madoka Yamauchi. Captain Syrup finds trouble in the Shake Dimension, where the Shake King has claimed the Bottomless Coin Sack, which releases an endless supply of coins when shaken. Wario only cares once he hears about the sack. You hold the remote sideways, like an old NES pad.

The art is the reason to play. Production I.G helped with the character animations and the opening and closing cutscenes, and studio Kusanagi drew the backgrounds. The programmers needed clever tricks to fit those backgrounds and thousands of character frames into the Wii's memory. Composer Tomoya Tomita used Wario Land 4 for inspiration, and Charles Martinet voices Wario. It looks like a cartoon you are playing, and it still looks great.

Rayman Origins was the fourth main Rayman game and the first since Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc in 2003. Rayman, Globox and some Teensy friends snore so loudly that they disturb an old granny from the Land of the Livid Dead, and she sends an evil army across the world in revenge. You free the Electoons to set things right. Behind the art is a clever tool: artists pose a model and edit its outline, and the software takes care of the distortion.

Critics loved its graphical style and level design. It sold slowly at first but did well in the end. Players who know it hold it up next to Nintendo's own 2D games. Its sequel, Rayman Legends, never came to the Wii, so this is the one Wii owners got.

Epic Mickey was directed by Warren Spector, and it sends Mickey into the Wasteland, a world made of Disney's forgotten creations. You change that world with paint and paint thinner. The Wasteland belongs to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a character Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks created, which Disney only got back in 2006, and this was the first time Mickey and Oswald appeared together. Between areas you run through 2D levels based on cartoon shorts such as Steamboat Willie.

Reviews were mixed to positive. Critics liked the look and the story about forgotten characters but disliked the camera. It is widely credited with bringing Oswald back into the public eye, and players still name it as a favourite. If you grew up on Disney, the Wasteland is full of old friends.

Sonic Colors was the game where Sonic Team took a hard look at the complaints about earlier games. They made Sonic the only playable character and worked to balance speed with platforming. The new idea was the Wisps, power-ups that mix up the gameplay without slowing it down. Before it came out, Sega delisted several Sonic games with sub-average Metacritic scores. The DS version is a different game, made by Dimps.

Many critics called it a return to form for the series. The Wii version got a remaster, Sonic Colors: Ultimate, in 2021. Players still recommend it. After a rough run of Sonic games, it was a relief to find one that did what you wanted.

Kirby's Epic Yarn takes place in Patch Land, a world made of fabric, after the sorcerer Yin-Yarn banishes Kirby there with a magic sock. Kirby's body turns into yarn, so he cannot inhale anything, and he gets the power to transform instead. It came from Good-Feel, the team behind Wario Land: Shake It!, and Madoka Yamauchi first pitched the idea of a "world of yarn". It started as Keito no Fluff, starring Prince Fluff, before Kirby took over.

It won Game of the Show from GameSpot at E3 2010, and it was Kirby's first home console platformer since Kirby 64 in 2000. It sold 1.59 million copies by April 2011. You play it for the knitted look and a pace that lets anyone finish it. Its 3DS port was the last game Nintendo released for that console.

Donkey Kong Country Returns was the first Donkey Kong Country without Rare, which by then belonged to Microsoft. The idea started at Retro Studios after it finished Metroid Prime 2: Echoes in 2004, and the game came out in North America in November 2010. A group of evil Tikis has the island's animals raiding Donkey Kong's banana hoard, and he works with Diddy Kong to get it back.

It is hard, and critics were split on the difficulty and the motion controls. It sold over 6.53 million copies anyway. Players love it, and one summed it up: "I don't have any words to describe how much I love this game." There is also a mirror mode that flips the stages and leaves Donkey Kong with one unit of health and no help from Diddy.

Super Paper Mario was the first Mario game on the Wii, and it took the turn-based Paper Mario series somewhere new. Intelligent Systems mixed RPG elements with side-scrolling platforming, and some critics called it a hybrid of the two. Only Mario can flip between 2D and 3D. The rest of the party has tricks of their own: Peach can hover, and Bowser breathes fire to beat enemies. You can swap between them at any time.

Critics praised the dimension flip and the story but complained about how much text there is. It still sold more than 4.23 million copies, the best-selling Paper Mario game. It also shipped with a famous bug: talking to Mimi in chapter 2-2 before picking up a key froze the game. Nintendo of Europe told players about it, and nobody ever talked to Mimi early again.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii was the first Super Mario game with co-op and versus play at the same time since Mario Bros. Up to four people play as Mario, Luigi, Yellow Toad and Blue Toad. New power-ups include the Propeller Mushroom and the Penguin Suit. For beginners there is Super Guide, and you can float in a bubble to skip a hard part.

Four players on one screen is chaos of the best kind, with everyone bouncing off each other's heads. Critics loved the multiplayer, though some wanted more new ideas. It won Best Wii Game at the 2009 Spike Video Game Awards and had sold 30.32 million copies by March 2021, the fourth-best-selling Wii game. Play it with three friends at least once.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 was first planned as an update called Super Mario Galaxy More. The team kept building on it with dozens of new ideas, so it grew into a full sequel and took two and a half years. Mario is back in space chasing Bowser, and this time Yoshi comes along, with new power-ups like the Cloud Flower. Some levels change to the beat of the music, with gravity shifting or platforms appearing on the beat.

Critics often call it one of the greatest video games ever made, and it sold over seven million copies. It is the first game's ideas turned up, and anyone who finished that one should play this next. Both Galaxy games came to Switch as a collection on October 2, 2025.

Super Mario Galaxy came from Nintendo EAD Tokyo, which started on it after Donkey Kong Jungle Beat when Shigeru Miyamoto suggested a large-scale Mario game. Mario jumps across planets with their own gravity to reach Bowser, who has hijacked Princess Peach's castle with her inside. Yoshiaki Koizumi directed it, and the soundtrack by Mahito Yokota and Koji Kondo used a symphony orchestra for the first time in the series. It came out in Japan on 1 November 2007.

It was the first Nintendo game to win the BAFTA for Best Game, and it was the highest-rated game of all time on GameRankings when that site closed in 2019. It sold 12.80 million copies. Players named it more than twice as often as anything else here, and they still call it the best of the bunch. Collect all 120 Power Stars and you get to do it all again as Luigi.