Last Wednesday, the day before Christmas Eve, I started coming down with symptoms of shingles. For those who don't know what that is, I can tell you that it's basically adult Chicken Pox, except when you have it as adult it's way more painful.

I've been started on 3000mg a day of an anti-viral medication that gives you a headache, makes you vomit, and sleep 18 hours a day. That's a big part of why I haven't posted the Destructoid Tatsunoko Vs Capcom review yet, or posted anything at all since last week.

Even though I feel like ass, I want to finish this god damn review now, but I'm so groggy that I can barely think. I thought is might help if I warmed up with a quick cblog, so here goes.

This cblog goes out to all the Wii owners out there who are finally irritated enough with the "The Wii has no games" and "I haven't played my Wii in months" comments that end up in becoming a part of just about every post on this site that make even the slighted mention of the Wii console. I'm sure there are a lot of people that really believe the Wii has no good games, but by now you'd think they would have either have A) sold their console or B)have wised up and bought some of the many AAA titles that reside on the Wii.

I think the Wii has a better, more diverse console library than either the 360 or the PS3, especially if you has a Wii that can play Japanese games (meaning anybody with a $20 SanDisk drive and a PC). To say that the Wii has no good games is to announce that you either don't own a Wii or just have crappy taste in games.

So if you just got a Wii this Christmas and don't know what to buy for it, or you just want a list to link to for use in your next retort to a "Wii sucks it has no games mine's collecting dust" comment, this list is for you.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl



The best four player fighting game ever. If you already hate Nintendo, this game will likely do nothing to change your mind, but if you've loved any Nintendo game of the past 20 years, you are guaranteed to find something to like about this game.

Brawl sums up what Nintendo cares about most: videogames. Unlike GTA IV and Gears 2, which clearly wish they were action movies, Brawl is trying to do only one thing, deliver as much Nintendo related videogame content to you as one game possibly can. It is not a game for the self-hating gamers out there that want games to become movies (I'm looking at you, Kiefer Sutherland), but it is perfect for those of us that have been playing games all our lives and want to revel in that life experience for hours on end.

World of Goo



World of Goo is exactly the kind of game the Wii was made to play. Though it makes no use of motion controls, it uses the Wii's unique pointer controller in a way that could not be done on the 360 or the PS3. Even so, that's not what makes this game and the Wii such a perfect fit.

World of Goo could only be succeed on the Wii because it's a game made on a shoestring budget. Though the game looks and plays beautifully, it achieves excellence through creative design, not through use of expensive hardware or hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on development. Many scoff at the Wii because it's a much weaker console than the PS3 or the 360, but that weakness has turned out to be a strength. Wii games like World of Goo are infinitely cheaper to produce than comparable titles on the 360 or PS3, and the Wii audience doesn't tend to write a game off for looking "last gen" the way many 360 and PS3 owners do. Because of those two factors, World of Goo and games like it can not only survive, but flourish on the Wii.

No More Heroes



Another game that could have only succeeded on the Wii, as it's Dreamcast quality graphics would have guaranteed commercial failure among the exclusively 360 and PS3 owning crowds.

No More Heroes is the game that Frederico Fellini would have made if he was a live today and had chosen videogame development over film making. It's incredibly weird, sickly funny, and most definitely not for the mainstream, yet on the Wii, it was still bale to move a little over half a million. If the game had a budget like a PS3/360 game like Assassin's Creed or Resident Evil 5, then there is no way that half a million in sales would have been enough to make back development costs, but since No More Heroes had a Wii game's budget, it did well enough that we'll be seeing a sequel in 2010.

World of Goo and No More Heroes prove that punk rock gaming is a live and well, and the genre could have asked for no better home than the Wii.

Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles



Capcom has tried for years to make a successful on-rails Resident Evil game, but on the PS1 and the PS2, it just wasn't possible. Then the Wii came along and made on-rails shooters live on home consoles in a way that had never been seen since the days of the NES zapper. As a result, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles moved over one million units in it's first year of release, more than any other on-rails shooter since Operation Wolf.

The success of the game didn't go unnoticed. Sega is bringing at least one new House of the Dead game to the Wii in 2009, and it wont be surprising to see many more to follow. It's not hyperbole to say that Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles and the Wii single handled resurrected a genre of game otherwise though to be dead (no pun intended).

Mario Kart Wii



Mario Kart has always been the driving game for people who hate driving games, but now it's also the series for people who love real life driving. Mario Kart Wii and its packed in steering wheel peripheral have proven to be one of the Wii's biggest success stories, selling far more than the Gamecube's Mario Kart: Double Dash did a few years ago, or just about any other game in 2008.

Although the game's motion controls aren't as easy to use for long time gamers, in the eyes of the mainstream, non-gaming populace, they couldn't have been more of a hit. If Rockstar wants to expand it's loyal but limited GTA fanbase to include people like myself who aren't already smitten with the series, they'd be wise to put their next GTA game on the Wii and give it Wii Wheel compatibility. The game could be easily controlled with the the Wii remote while it rests in the wheel, with the control pad and three easily accessible buttons controlling the running and the shooting. When you steal a car, you'd automatically switch to motion controls via the Wii wheel.

OK, tangent over, on to the next game on the list. I'm here to list Wii games, not give Rockstar ideas on how to make they're crappy games slightly less crappy.

Batallion Wars 2



I have no idea why no one played this game, as it is as good of a 3rd person real time strategy/shooter as one could ask for. The online is lag free and easy to jump into, with the only downside being that so few people bought the game that there are rarely people readily online to play with.

That doesn't really matter, because like so many quality Wii games, Battalion Wars 2 doesn't rely on it's online play to keep the game fun. If you like military games you own a Wii, buy this game.

LostWinds



As some of you may know, I was lucky enough to provide backup to Brad Nicholson's excellent review of LittleBigPlanet. I didn't like the game as much as Brad did, to the point where if I were reviewing the game based on it's offline components alone, I would have given it a six out of ten. Not a bad score, but far from the ten out of ten that some other outlets are claiming. The game certainly isn't selling like a ten out of ten, which makes me feel even more justified in my opinion.

Why do I think so little of the game? Well, because the game lacks any sort of provoking or interesting gameplay. Take away the graphics and the music, and you have a platformer that consists of jumping over pits, grabbing onto ropes to swing over pits...and that's pretty much it. No real enemies, power-ups, or variety of obstacles to be found, just run, jump, and swing, all with controls that are inconsistent and unresponsive.

Maybe that wouldn't have bothered me so much if before reviewing the game, I hadn't just finished playing through LostWinds; and amazing game that supplies more raw 2D platforming excellence in it's brief three to four hours playtime than all of LittleBigPlanet's on-disk campaign mode combined.

A good 2D platformer is like a huge puzzle that's constantly evolving, a living obstacle course that requires you to constantly learn new skills (and find ways to utilize your old ones) in order to progress. That's where LostWinds excels, and LittleBigPlanet falls flat. In LostWinds, no more than five minutes goes by before you have to look at your surroundings and really think of what you need to do next, and which of your abilities you'll need to do it. Burning stuff down, levitating boulders, controlling the flow of the rivers, and flying to unseen height are all at your disposal, as well as the standard run and jump gameplay found in nearly every platformer. The controls are great as well.

LostWinds was one of the first Wii Ware games, and it's still one of the best. If LittleBigPlanet deserves a ten in your eyes, then you're bound to want to give LostWinds an eleven.

Tastunoko Vs Capcom



Are you one of the many 2D fighting game fans who are eagerly awaiting the release of Street Fighter IV? Are you currently playing Tastunoko Vs Capcom? In the answer is "no", then you're doing it wrong, and by "it" I mean "your life". In fact, unless you're a huge Dan Hibiki fan like I am, there is really no need to be waiting for SFIV at all, because TvC is better that SFIV in just about every way. For starters, it's got a more original roster, with eighteen characters never before seen in a fighting game, as opposed to SFIV five. More so, this is a roster that spans all of Cacpom's most under-appreciated games; games like Viewtiful Joe, Street Fighter 3, Lost Planet, Rival Schools, Mega Man Legends, Mega Man: Powered Up, and even Onimusha 4.

TvC also marks the first step in the evolution of the Superhero Rave 2D fighting system. Where SFIV is basically just a new Street Fighter Alpha game in 3D, TvC is a real leap forward in evolution of 2D fighting games. Not only does it feature all the all-new "Baroque" combo system, multiple new special and super move techniques the likes of which have never before seen in any fighting game, but it also allows the option to play as characters that stand over two screens in height. It's a completely new fighting game experience, while at the same time staying true to it's Street Fighter roots.

You can't call yourself a fan of Capcom as a company or 2D fighters as a genre and not own Tatsunoko Vs Capcom. To do so would be like calling yourself a pornography fan but refusing to watch any movie rated over PG-13. Tatsunoko Vs Capcom is the real deal, arguably more so than even SFIV.

Trauma Center: New Blood



Like I said before, the Wii offers the most diverse library of games out of all the currently manufactured platforms. The PS3 and the 360 just aren't equipped to give us games like Trauma Center: New Blood, and that's why no real fan of videogames as a medium can do without owning a Wii.

Trauma Center: New Blood is the only game of it's kind: a full fledged, 2 player co-op online surgery simulator. It's also one of the hardest, most interesting games I've played in the past two years. It amazes me when people who call themselves a hardcore gamers show no interest in games like Trauma Center, but are totally content to buy the same kind of sci-fi/fantasy oriented action game over and over again and again. It's like if someone calling themselves a hardcore film fan only watched Adam Sandler movies, or if someone called themselves a huge reader but all they read were Goosebumps.

A real fan of videogames as a medium wants to see videogames of all kinds of genres; comedy, action, horror, and even medical drama. I wish there were another word (other than "geek" or "nerd") for the other kind of hardcore gamer, the kind that isn't interested in a game unless it aims at being nothing more than an interactive action film. Those types of gamers don't even strike me as fans of videogames. Aren't they really just looking for a power fantasy? Once they grow out of wanting to be a space marine or a American gangster, will they even play videogames at all?

Oops, went on another tangent. Sorry folks.

Blast Works



Just as you can't call yourself a 2D fighting game fan and not own Tatsunoko Vs Capcom, you can't call yourself a fan of shmups and not own Blast Works. Not only is it a great stand alone game, and not only does it contain four amazing games by famed shmup designer Kenta Cho, but it is far and away the greatest shmup-maker ever. The amount and quality of Blast Work's user created content is astronomical, thanks in no small part to the incredible in-game level creator. I'd place them just one notch below LittleBigPlanet's user creation tools, but I'd actually place the game's offline content one notch higher.

I hate to bag on LittleBigPlanet so much, as it's online stuff is amazing and more than worth the price, but the fact that the game is so over exposed and overrated makes it the perfect game to use in comparison to many of the Wii's under-appreciated gems.

OK, list time over, but before I go, take a few final words from my shingle-addled brain.

There are many other great games I could add to this list that make the Wii's library the most amazingly diverse. Of the top of my head, I can think of de Blob, Animal Crossing: City Folk, Super Paper Mario, Geometry Wars: Galaxies, Super Mario Galaxy, Fatal Frame IV, Captain Rainbow, and I'm sure if I tried I could think of many more. This is the real reason why the Wii is currently the most successful home console on the planet. It's not because of the motion controls, or the price, or marketing, or Nintendo's first party games. The Gamecube had three out of four of those things going for it, and the console tanked. The PS3 has motion controls, but it's still selling like crap.

No my friends, it's the games that are making the Wii so popular. To say otherwise is to reveal yourself to be a fanboy, a fool, or both.

Sadly, I'm sure for many of you reading this are annoyed as hell right now, just as someone who only eats french fries would be annoyed to read a list of great foods that they aren't eating. That's what the "The Wii has no games" or "My Wii's collecting dust" people are like; a dude who only eats french fries looking at the menu of a nice restaurant, lifting up his head and saying "This place has no food" because he can't find the fried potatoes section.

No jackass, the restaurant has plenty of food, it just doesn't have the one kind of food you're willing to eat. Now go back to McDonalds and leave the rest of us to enjoy the menu.