How U will play next...
With its innovative GamePad controller, improvements to online
functionality over its predecessor, backwards compatibility with existing Wii
software and peripherals, and relative affordability, the Wii U arrived
in November 2012 with, depending on territory, over 20 titles available
on launch day. The world's first eight generation games console may have lost the sales war against its rivals, Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4, but that doesn't mean the Nintendo Wii U didn't have some quality games available for the system. Are you one of the 13.56 million people who purchased a Wii U? And did you own any of these 10 biggest selling Nintendo Wii U games of all time?
1. Mario Kart 8
The latest (and IMHO one of the greatest) in the Mario Kart franchise would eventually be ported to the Nintendo Switch as a launch title and is currently the biggest selling game on that system. Not bad for a game that originally came out in May 2014, eh? That's just how great Mario Kart 8 is.
Without getting overly hyperbolic, it's no exaggeration to say Mario Kart 8 saved the Wii U. Shortly after the game's launch in the U.K.it was announced that week-on-week Wii U console sales had risen 662% in the country, with the newly released Mario Kart 8 bundles accounting for 82% of the units sold. In its first four days on sale, it became the fastest selling Wii U game ever released, with over 1.2 million copies sold worldwide. Currently, as of March 2020, Mario Kart 8 has sold over 8.45 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling Wii U game and meaning that over 60% of all Wii U owners have a copy of the game. Do you?
(Factor in the Switch sales and Mario Kart 8/Deluxe has sold over 24 million copies!)
2. Super Mario 3D World
Offering great playability both solo and with friends, 2013s Super Mario 3D World won many awards from media outlets, including Game of The Year from Eurogamer, Digital Spy, and MSN UK. 5.84 million copies were sold worldwide, with an eventual spin-off arriving 12 months later in the form of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, based on and expanding upon the game's popular "Captain Toad" puzzle-based levels.
3. New Super Mario Bros. U
A launch title for the Wii U and eventually repackaged with the downloadable content New Super Luigi U. This game was just bested in sales by Super Mario 3D World, coming in at 5.8 million. A very strong figure for an update of the earlier Wii release.
4. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
With up to 8 players battling it out online, an option controller more akin to the GameCube style, and an impressive array of characters and arenas, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (it's rather clunky title) fine tuned the popular franchise and pushed sales up to a very decent 5.37 million copies worldwide.
5. Nintendo Land
Designed to show off just what this new revolutionary tablet controller could do (although, bizarrely, also available in optional packaging with a standard Wii controller) Nintedo Land includes 12 mini-games and functions a little like Wii Sports did. Some of the games are based on popular Nintendo franchises, like Zelda, Metroid, Pikmin, Luigi's Mansion, Animal Crossing and Donkey Kong. I found it's replay value didn't hold up against Wii Sports, Wii Party or any of the Mario Party titles, but Nintendo Land still shifted 5.2 million copies worldwide. So what do I know, eh?
6. Splatoon
Much of the Wii U top ten reads like a greatest hits of classic Nintendo franchises, and in retrospect this title now fits within that category. However, in 2015 Splatoon was something completely new. The game centers around fictional characters known as Inklings - anthropomorphic squid that can transform between humanoid and cephalopod forms, and hide or swim through colored ink sprayed on surfaces using gun, bucket, umbrella, roller, or paintbrush-like weapons.
With several different game modes, including four-on-four online multiplayer, and a single player campaign, Splatoon was like a breath of fresh air (although you can trace elements back to Super Mario Sunshine and, maybe, Dreamcast's Jet Set Radio) and 4.95 million Wii U owners agreed.
7. Super Mario Maker
Available bundled with the console, by itself and in a variety of 'exclusive' packaging options, Super Mario Maker gave you control to design your own Mario levels, play them and share them online with others. Over seven million courses were uploaded to Nintendo's online service for the Wii U, and when it closed they had been played over 600 million times.
Sales weren't quite as strong as that, mind, but coming in at 4.01 million is nothing to be embarrassed about.
8. New Super Luigi U
This much more challenging version of New Super Mario Bros. U (NSMBU), with Luigi taking centre stage, was first released in June 2013 as an expansion pack for NSMBU, purchasable as downloadable content. It was later released as both a separate stand-alone game, and then bundled with physical copies of the base game. Think of it as an official modded creation. One which sold 3.05 million copies worldwide.
9. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD
The remastered version of the 2002 GameCube game The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, this Wii U version adds 1080p resolution, an alternative lighting engine, and gameplay changes. The release marked the ten-year anniversary of the original, and was the first Legend of Zelda game released on the Wii U. this is another title which was available in a bundle with the console, and has total sales of 2.31 million.
10. Mario Party 10
It wouldn't be a Nintendo console if it didn't get its own Mario Party release! Sadly, in the main game there's not a lot of difference to Mario Party 9 here. The Bowser and Amiibo modes offer some alternative (although the latter is quite clunky and frustrating) but Mario Party 10 did have the aura of a franchise long past its peak. 2.23 million copies were still sold, but I suspect none of the owners got as much replay value out of this installment as any of the earlier ones.
And they are the 10 biggest selling games for the Nintendo Wii U. Did you have any of these titles? And which one was your favourite? Let us know in the comments below.
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