Wii VGChartz Game of the Year Awards 2009
by Daniel Share-Strom, posted on 29 December 2009 / 28,363 Views
It’s been a year of revivals, remakes, and revolutions in game control for the Wii, as it closes the decade with a very respectable lineup for 2009. In the course of one year, we’ve seen such varied titles as MadWorld, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Wii Sports Resort, and New Super Mario Bros. Wii. The VGChartz staff have chosen our picks for the cream of the Wii’s crop this year, and we also got you, the users, to send in your votes. So, did your favourite game win? Read on to find out!
Three award-winning first-person adventures for the price of one, updated with better graphics and superior controls? Yes, please! The Metroid Prime series has been critically acclaimed since its inception, but the first two games (on the Gamecube) were hampered by an oft-confusing control scheme. Their facelift on the Wii, which gives them both pointer controls, fixes this problem and makes these atmospheric games even more intense. For its fantastic value, Metroid Prime Trilogy wins VGChartz’ Best Shooter of 2009 award.
Runner-Up: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Reflex Edition
Reader’s Choice: Metroid Prime Trilogy
“Jack! Jack! He’s a psycho maniac!” Such phrases permeate the in-game commentary of Platinum Games’ MadWorld, and they’re a pretty apt summation of what’s generally going on. Jack likes to spend his days beating guys to a pulp. Whether he’s impaling them with a street sign, tossing them into a live wire, or slicing and dicing them with the chainsaw attached to his arm, this guy’s got attitude to spare. Add in the hilarious commentary and black-and-white Sin City art style, and you can see how MadWorld takes VGC’s Action-Adventure of the Year award.
Runner-Up: Muramasa: The Demon Blade
Reader’s Choice: Metroid Prime Trilogy
Best Fighter: Punch-Out!!
The champion returns! Little Mac re-enters the ring after a fifteen-year hiatus, and that’s probably all that need be said. Canadian developer Next Level Games brought back Nintendo’s classic fighter with a vengeance, with snazzy cel-shaded graphics, new opponents, motion controls, and the series’ first foray into multiplayer. But we all know that the real reason Punch-Out takes VGChartz’ Wii Fighter of the Year award is because of Doc Louis, right? “Join the Nintendo Fun Cl... I mean, join Club Nintendo today, Mac!”
Runner-Up: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up
Reader’s Choice: Punch-Out!!
...and in other news, the sun came up this morning and pie tastes great! At this year’s E3, Nintendo debuted many tasty treats for its serious fans, the first of which was New Super Mario Brothers Wii. First Mario sidescrolling platformer on a console since the SNES? Check. Dozens of levels worth of challenges, collectibles, and new powerups? Check. Four-player simultaneous play? SHWAAAAAT??? New Super Mario Brothers Wii triple-jumps over the flagpole to snag VGChartz’ Wii Platformer of the Year award for 2009.
Runner-Up: Lost Winds 2: Winter of the Melodias
Reader’s Choice: New Super Mario Bros. Wii
Excitebots: Trick Racing took home our Wii Racing Game of the Year award for being the first in the genre (to our knowledge) to combine racing, poker, robots, and super sandwiches. Fast-paced online and local multiplayer matches make this a worthy addition to the venerable Excite franchise.
Runner-Up: - Excitebike: World Rally
Reader’s Choice: Excitebots: Trick Racing
If there are two terms no one ever thought they’d hear in the same sentence about a game, they’d probably be ‘farming’ and ‘RPG’. In this world, you’ll go from chopping wood, gathering food, mixing medicine, and enhancing your farm skills to crawling dungeons, fighting bosses, and levelling up your watering cans. You can make friends with monsters, cultivate land, learn to fish, and make friends with every character in the game. All told, it’s entirely possible to spend over a hundred hours in this world. For its unique blend of two completely different genres, Rune Factory Frontier wins our Wii RPG of the Year award.
Runner-Up: Muramasa: The Demon Blade
Reader’s Choice: Muramasa: The Demon Blade
Best Puzzle Game: Boom Blox Bash Party
The original Boom Blox was a great game – after all, who doesn’t love virtual Jenga? But it was lacking in some key areas (namely the controls and a lack of content). These issues were addressed in the sequel, which adds more single-player challenges, more multiplayer modes, an enhanced level editor, and the ability to share created levels online. Of course, the multiplayer is the main draw here. The sheer fun of pointing at blocks and pulling them around with multiple players watching you, all the while trying to keep a steady hand and a straight face, is enough to earn Boom Blox Bash Party VGChartz’ Wii Puzzle Game of the Year award.
Runner-Up: Marble Saga: Kororinpa
Reader’s Choice: Boom Blox Bash Party
Imagine there’s no hardcore. Around us only games. Nothing to rage and moan for. And no online verbal maims.
That’s what the music game genre is all about – approachable party gameplay that everyone can enjoy, regardless of their gaming experience. The Beatles are quite likely the most beloved band of all time, so who better to base an entire Rock Band entry around? John, Paul, George, and Ringo are all rendered in a masterful stylistic fashion, belting out classics such as “Here Comes the Sun” and “She Loves You Yea Yea Yea”. In addition to over 40 on-disc vintage songs (and reams more available for download), The Beatles: Rock Band also adds the ability to play with up to three microphones, allowing vocal harmonies for the first time in the series. This game wins our Wii Music Game of the Year award for its fantastic songs and approachability, whether you’re of the younger generation experiencing the Beatles for the first time, or a long-time fan looking to get back to where you once belonged.
Runner-Up: Guitar Hero 5
Reader’s Choice: The Beatles: Rock Band
Hey! You got your Sim City in my Pikmin! Honestly, it was hard to decide whether LKS belonged in this category or the Action-Adventure genre. There is just so much going on in this game – city building, character interaction, fighting, questing, resource management, and a very cute story – that it was very hard to nail down. Whatever the genre, though, Little King’s Story is a winner due to the fact that it does all of the aforementioned things in an exemplary manner. The fact that your main character’s a little tyke who orders around entire kingdoms is just another reason why Little King’s Story deserves our Wii Strategy & Simulation Title of the Year award.
Runner-Up: Rune Factory: Frontier
Reader’s Choice: Little King’s Story
The poster child for Nintendo’s new Wii Motion Plus attachment, Wii Sports Resort really does showcase a new dimension of physical reality in gaming. Returning favourites Bowling and Golf join Archery, Basketball, and (for the love of god finally!) an excellent Swordfighting game, among others. My Obi-Wan Kenobi Mii takes the high ground and knocks Sylvester Stallone into the drink, winning Wii Sports Resort our title of Wii Sports Game of the Year.
Runner-Up: Tiger Woods '10
Reader’s Choice: Wii Sports Resort
While it had the unfortunate luck of competing against a new Mario title for the Best Platformer award, Lost Winds 2 gets its chance to shine as our pick for Best WiiWare title of the year. Improving on the stellar wind-based platforming of the previous title, this entry adds the ability to create cyclones, which can siphon water out of pools and clear rocks out of the way, allowing for more crazy puzzles. The biggest addition is the ability to change the seasons, allowing the player to switch between Summer and Winter at will.
Runner-Up: Final Fantasy IV: The After Years
Reader’s Choice: Lost Winds 2: Winter of the Melodias
When you play Muramasa: The Demon Blade, you aren’t playing a video game. You’re stepping into an interactive watercolor painting. Momohime and Kisuke run through exquisitely-detailed vistas, dark and foreboding badlands, and everything in between, fighting with grace and fluidity that almost brings a tear to your eyes. That the engine can handle so many things happening onscreen at once, with tons of enemies at times, is only icing on the cake. For its mixture of style and technical finesse, Muramasa: The Demon Blade wins VGChartz’ Best Wii Graphics of the Year award.
Runner-Up: Silent Hill Shattered Memories
Reader’s Choice: Muramasa: The Demon Blade
In any fighting game, one of the best ways to keep the player pumped is with upbeat, high-quality music. Lucky, then, that Punch-Out!! has this subject right where it wants it. With the game’s many variations on the theme from the classic NES game, and the amazing new fastpaced techno beats, Little Mac delivers a knockout punch to the competition, taking home the championship title of Best Music Score for a Wii game in 2009!
Runner-Up: New Super Mario Bros. Wii
Reader’s Choice: New Super Mario Bros. Wii
Wii Sports Resort is a sign of things to come for gaming, no doubt about it. With the added fidelity of Wii Motion Plus, every golf swing, every basketball throw, and every sword swipe is accurately measured onscreen. In addition to being an incredibly fun multiplayer experience, Wii Sports Resort is helping to bring gaming to new levels of immersion, and for that, it earns VGChartz’ Most Innovative Wii Game of 2009 award.
Runner-Up: Silent Hill Shattered Memories
Reader’s Choice: Wii Sports Resort
Remember when High Voltage Software first showed off their amazing Quantum3 engine, which promised to bring the Wii to a PS3/360 level of graphical fidelity? How about the epic single-player campaign we were promised, with multiplayer that will knock our socks off? Well, the Conduit came out and yeah... those things didn’t happen. The graphics, while great on a technical level, lack anything resembling artistic design. The single-player, while fun, is basically a corridor crawl. There is no local multiplayer or network play, and the online play itself is limited to just twelve players. Now, keep in mind that this award doesn’t mean the game is bad – VGChartz gave it an impressive 8.3/10 – it just wasn’t nearly the game-changer it was hyped up to be. For these reasons, The Conduit earns VGChartz’ dubious honour of the Wii’s Biggest Disappointment of the year.
Runner-Up: - Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop
Reader’s Choice: The Conduit
Seriously, guys – 140,000 sales for Little King’s Story? And we're wondering why third parties are sometimes unsure about making Wii games... We’ve already given this title an award on this list, so nothing further needs to be said about its quality. Whether it’s due to poor marketing, the game’s status as a ‘niche’ title, or the bad economy forcing people to spend their money on ‘sure bets’, it’s a crying shame when an innovative title such as this fails to spark much interest. Unfortunately, Little King’s Story takes our award for Best Wii Game No One Played.
Runner-Up: MadWorld
Reader’s Choice: Little King’s Story
The original Super Mario Galaxy has the honour of being the third-highest-rated game of all time on Gamerankings.com (and, indeed, it's the highest-rated on VGChartz!). With that in mind, expectations are high for Super Mario Galaxy 2, which will mark the first time a Nintendo console has played host to two full 3D Mario adventures. The addition of Yoshi, along with Shigeru Miyamoto’s promises that it will be much more challenging than its predecessor, ensures that (at the very least) Galaxy 2 will be one of the top games to look out for in 2010. Yoshi eats a Star Bit and poops out our Most Anticipated Wii Game award!
Runner-Up: No More Heroes 2
Reader's Choice: The Legend of Zelda Wii (Working Title)
Really, what more need be said about New Super Mario Bros. Wii? Everyone knows sidescrolling Mario. Everyone loves sidescrolling Mario. This is a new entry in the series that brought gaming from the brink of extinction in the 1980s, and some have said this one’s the best of the lot. With imaginative level design, four-player capabilities, and that extra layer of TLC reserved only for a Miyamoto game, New Super Mario Bros. Wii was a shoe-in for VGChartz’ Wii Game of the Year.
Runner-Up: - Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
Reader’s Choice: New Super Mario Bros. Wii
There you have it, folks – the Wii has had a decidedly good year when it comes to software, with many varied genres represented, and we (and you!) have decided on the best of the best. Check back tomorrow for for more awards, as we unveil VGChartz’ PC Game of the Year!
More Game of the Year Awards:
Playstation 3 VGChartz Game of the Year Awards 2009
Nintendo DS VGChartz Game of the Year Awards 2009
Xbox 360 VGChartz Game of the Year Awards 2009
