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Opinion: It's time the Wii got some Nintendo Switch love

6 Wii games we want to see in HD on Switch

Opinion: It's time the Wii got some Nintendo Switch love
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It might be overstating things a bit, but one of the big assets the Switch has had in its first year-and-a-bit of existence has been the Wii U.

Hardly anyone bought Nintendo's last console, but Nintendo has smartly capitalised on that relative anonymity to keep its first party Switch game library looking healthy.

Brilliant games such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze and the forthcoming Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker all started out life on the Wii U, and are now being used to pad out the Switch roster. You can bet that more will follow.

5 more Nintendo Wii U games that need to make the Switch

That said, I reckon it's about time the original Wii got some Switch port love. Okay, so it was a whole lot more successful than the Wii U, meaning more people will have played its Nintendo-published offerings. But it's now been a decade since the console's heyday.

You might argue that Nintendo would need to do a lot more work to bring its low-res Wii games up to scratch than it has with the Wii U. Earlier in the year, however, Nintendo made HD versions of its Wii library playable on Nvidia Shield consoles in China. That's the same Shield console that happens to share a very similar architecture with the Switch.

Even if this was a streaming service offering rather than native ports, the mere existence of officially endorsed HD versions of these games leaves us hopeful.

Either way, Nintendo needs to ease up on the Wii U a second and give its Wii roster some HD love. It could do worse than start with these beauties.

Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2

Super Mario Odyssey might well be the finest 3D Mario game of them all, but Super Mario Galaxy and its sequel sit in a weird pocket dimension all of their own.

In these games, gravity doesn't behave in the consistent ways we've come to expect of Mario games. You thought the moon stage of SMO was a trip? You ain't seen nothing yet. SMO is set across countless tiny planetoids, each with their own distinctive pull (both literally and fuguratively).

A sharpened up HD package of Super Mario Galaxies 1 and 2 is about as high up on a must-have list as it's possible to get for me. Either on their own would be just peachy, mind.

Metroid Prime Trilogy

This one feels like a bit of a cheat, as the Metroid Prime series is rightfully synonymous with the GameCube. The first two games launched on Nintendo's boxy console, after all.

However, the complete series (including the Wii-only third entry) was launched as a package on the Wii in 2009, complete with motion-enhanced controls.

With Metroid Prime 4 announced for the Switch, but likely some way off, it would be a great idea to offer an enhanced round-up of the first three games so that everyone can get up to speed.

Punch-Out

Did you buy yourself a SNES Mini? Isn't Super Punch-Out great? It's perhaps easy to forget that Nintendo made a belated sequel to that game in Punch-Out for the Wii.

And very fine it is too. Punch-Out takes the over-the-should, oversized pugilism of the previous game and enhances it with beautiful 3D graphics.

You might wonder why you'd need such a thing on Switch with the advent of ARMS, but Punch-Out is all about the single player campaign, and its carefully staged fights make it feel more like a puzzler than a beat-'em-up.

Super Paper Mario

Yes, I know. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door on the GameCube is the best Paper Mario game of the lot. But we have to stick to the brief here, and that's Wii games.

Besides, Super Paper Mario is a fine casual RPG in its own right, with the same beautiful papercraft aesthetic and cheeky sense of humour, and a more immediate (though less nuanced) battle system.

It's also better than Paper Mario: Color Splash on the Wii U, for what it's worth.

Wii Sports Resort

The original Wii Sports game pretty much defined the original Wii. For many of the ultra-casual players who bought a Wii, it was the only disc that entered the slot.

Wii Sports Resort was the second Wii Sports game on Wii, and it improved upon the original with an expanded roster of super-intuitive casual sports games. Wii Bowling and Wii Golf, in particular, will never get old.

It's perhaps a little surprising that we haven't seen a new version for the Switch - especially with its more advanced motion-sensitive Joy-Con controllers. With sharpened up versions of golf and tennis, we wouldn't need one.

Xenoblade Chronicles

Xenoblade Chronicles is widely considered to be one of the finest JRPGs of modern times.

Developed by Monolith and launching deep into the Wii's lifespan, it's most notable for its strikingly fresh world. Essentially, your adventure takes place on the back of two huge frozen titans.

Today, it's perhaps more commonly known for a decent but ill-fitting 2015 3DS port, but it really deserves the big-screen treatment. An HD Switch re-release would be awesome - especially as most fans would agree that it's better than the Switch sequel.

Which Nintendo-published Wii games would you like to see reworked for the Switch? Let us know in the comments below.
Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.