Hello, and welcome to The Back Page, a video games podcast. I’m Sammy Roberts, and I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, how is your first week of 2022 been? All good on your side? Yeah, it’s all been fine. I’m kind of feeling, I’m feeling quite wistful. Ah. Because I’ve just read the making of Dazed and Confused, there’s an oral history book that was released last year, a couple of years ago, and reading all this nostalgia for making this film probably combined with us returning to Wii period has brought up some NGamer memories. So I’m feeling quite nostalgic, quite wistful. Yeah, I guess we’ve passed the 15 year mark of you moving to Bath, right, to work on NGamer, is that right? Ah, it would be close to, yeah, it was October 2006, so. Yeah, so we have. Yeah, but I’m not going to compare my experiences making NGamer to the cast of Dazed and Confused making a film which went on to be a cult hit. But some of their, you know, even the people who’ve gone on to like massive things are like, oh, man, that was like the best thing I ever did. And I sort of still sort of feel that way about NGamer. And that’s what that was where the wistfulness was coming from. Fair enough. What an absolute diss to OXM Magazine and and this podcast, frankly, this podcast is also great. I’m only joking. But we’re talking about like, you know, Ben Affleck when he’s like, I was never happier than when I made Dazson Confused. And you think all the cool stuff Ben Affleck’s done since, you know, I don’t think that’s a diss on Good Will Hunting. I think he’s just a bit like up and down with the things that he finds exciting in his life. Like, I don’t know, I imagine he seems to be quite enjoying himself. Just being he’s still a celebrity who’s in tabloid headlines in his like late 40s, getting off with Jennifer Lopez on a boat or whatever. Yeah, there’s that, but it’s just funny that back then, in his very early career, he just kept playing like horrible bullies and things, and was really worried that that’s how people kind of perceived him, which is sort of inspired him to make him this very nice, supportive, best friend in Good Will Hunting. Well, that’s what he says in this book anyway. There’s quite a good anecdote where in the film, I don’t know if you’ve seen Days and Confused, but you get splattered with paint at one point, and the crew all cheer because they all thought he was an asshole. Our equivalent of that was me losing the N64 draft, Matthew, and all our listeners like pointing and laughing at me. It’s exactly the same. Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. I don’t think I have seen that film, actually. It’s one of those films I’ve had on DVD and shrink wrap for about 10 years. Yeah, I was given a copy of it by Martin Kitts on NGamer magazine. So another NGamer connection. He was like, this is one of my favorite films. Check it out. And it became one of my favorite films. That is wistful. Yeah, good stuff. How has your first week been back? Yeah, very good. Thank you. Just sort of prepping stuff for the rest of the year in my day job, which I don’t talk about here, of course. But yeah, lots of exciting stuff going on. Nice. About the year ahead. Yeah, it’s been good. It’s exciting coming back to a different job than what you’re kind of used to. And that’s very much it. Every week, I kind of learn a bunch of new stuff. And onwards and upwards. So it’s all good. It should be a good year. Let’s think. What else have I done this week? I completed Metroid Dread, Matthew. Congrats. Yeah, thank you. It only took me about an hour in the end to beat the final boss, which I thought was not too bad. His second stage seemed like an absolute fucker. And then like everything in Metroid Dread, you figure out exactly how to circumnavigate it. Yeah. Is that the flying one? Yeah, yeah. You’re always flying around and you have to slide under his thing. The only thing that really sucks in that phase is his 360 degree laser cannon thing. Just because I find the Samus double jump thing isn’t always reliable, or at least the timing of it is specific enough that I mess it up sometimes. Otherwise, I didn’t find the boss too unreasonable. I only had to do that third phase twice actually to beat it. So that’s pretty good. Oh, that’s good. I think most people get nuked by the sun if they get nuked by anything when he puts up that big orangey projectile. Yeah, that does suck. And I did call him a bird motherfucker at one point while I was playing it. But I actually didn’t find it too bad. I thought it was, like all the bosses in the game, I thought it was pretty fair and very happy to have it ticked off. So I’m going to go back and play a bunch more Metroid games, Matthew, for an episode we got planned later in the year, which should be good. Maybe we should do that in time for the Metroid Prime 20th anniversary. That might be good. Yeah, it’s good to have. We put out that list of some potential episodes. Well, not potential episodes we have got coming up later in the year. It was nice to see people were kind of pumped for them as well. Yeah, for sure. So if you go to BackpagePod on Twitter, you can see those. Obviously, with this episode, we’re going to pin the poll up. But after that, I’ll re-pin the list of episodes for this year so people can kind of get at a glance any time they want to dip in and see what we’ve got coming up. So yeah, that was exciting, Matthew. Going to that pub full of teenagers and coming up with a plan of podcasts for the year. Oh man, that was not a very comforting experience. They were so loud. They were like the loudest teenagers I’ve ever heard. Yeah, and it’s like you forget that the only people who aren’t like panicky about Covid are people who it won’t kill. And so they don’t give a fuck. Just like going around screaming. Literally screaming Covid in each other’s faces. Yeah. Such old men. Grumbling away at his pub. Yeah, I mean, I had a pint of Diet Coke and you very slowly drank one pint of beer. And I bought a packet of Cristhraft to share at one point. That’s the vibe we have in our 30s. So Matthew, we come to another draft. This is going to be a good year for drafts. We’ve got a bunch of them planned out. Over the next like three months, you got this one. We’ve got a Game Pass competitor draft coming in February, which will be really fun. That will see the return of Big Sammy Holdings and Matthew Castle Productions. And in March, we’ve got the PS Vita draft to mark the console’s 10th anniversary. So lots of cool stuff coming up. Matthew, though, today is the Wii draft. So I was curious how you’re feeling about this one, because I’ve been really excited about it preparing. I am excited. I mean, there’s so much potential for this to go horribly wrong because I have, you know, a strange relationship with the Wii in that, you know, I’m deeply attached to some stuff. Other people aren’t attached. And having covered it so closely, I have just a generally slightly different relationship with that machine. And, you know, I feel like I’ve seen some weirder corners of it and trying to work out where to go with this particular machine, whether to kind of, you know, play the hits or make something a bit more interesting that I feel is maybe more reflective of, of the overall Wii experience. I don’t know, it’s been, it’s been difficult to place it. Yeah, I sort of like, this one’s become a bit more like how I approach the N64 and PS2 drafts rather than the Xbox versus GameCube one, where I don’t think I’ve really done any pandering to people. I think I’ve only picked stuff that I’m interested in, that I care about. Okay, that’s good. Because I thought like maybe we just need a soft reset of the drafting process after the last couple. And so this one as well, because obviously this is your home turf as well. It doesn’t really benefit me to just go around trying to steal all the games I think you’ll pick, just because I won’t have anything interesting to say about them. And it will just be all strategy. So I thought I’d just pick 10 games that I think represent my experience with the Wii. And I think I would like to revisit if I had a Wii Mini, which of course is the point of these drafts, is to create two pretend mini consoles of 10 games each. But accumulatively we’re building up one 20-game mini console. That’s always confusing when I explain it. But people are just voting on the games that they like more than the other. So the Wii, a really interesting console to revisit. So Matthew, let’s go into the Wii itself. We have a little bit of a brief preamble here about the legacy of the Wii and the Wii’s history. Matthew, do you remember how you felt about the Wii before you joined NGamer in 2006? What was the experience of reading about it like after the GameCube had been dominating the last few years for Nintendo? To be honest, I would say it’s unhelpfully a period of time where I was maybe following things less closely. Just because for the first half of 2006 I was trying desperately not to fail my degree. I had my finals coming up in end of April, May and so I’ve never done so much academic work as I did in the first half of that year where maybe the transition was happening. Then after that I went straight into job hunt mode. I feel like in the direct run up, I was keeping an eye on it. I remember when it got renamed Wii, I remember all the hilarious bants about that. But it definitely felt like when I got that job at NGamer I had to do just a shit ton of blitzing Wii stuff just to get up to speed with it, which is why I said it’s an unhelpful answer. Yeah, that was me joining PC Gamer in 2013, so I understand. You’re like Googling, what is a mouse? Well, it’s more that I hadn’t had a powerful PC for seven years, so it was just, oh shit, I better play Gone Home and StarCraft 2. So yeah, that side of things. My memory of Nintendo around this time is this is the classic everyone underestimating Nintendo times of like, people don’t believe that DS is going to be a hit, they think that’s a kind of dumb idea, the two screens. And then the Wii, obviously the name, people kind of making fun of that in a very media of the time kind of way that wasn’t particularly funny or witty. But, you know, I think like, I don’t think I really had either on my radar that much, just because I was so certain that PlayStation is where my head was at the time, and Xbox. So Nintendo wasn’t massively on my radar. The Wii, I kind of like, I thought that the first two years of it just seemed so, so strong. And like, I wasn’t really that bothered by the whole mainstream success side of it that would follow. But, no, I don’t know, I thought the fact that it launched with the Zelda was very strong. Mario came a lot. Mario was the game that got me to pick up a Wii in 2007. Like, I just saw it in like a bundle in HMV in Gunwolf Keys, where Climax Studios is based. Sorry, I just always find that so funny. You love your Gunwolf Keys fact. I just think Gunwolf Keys is just quite funny. Ulrica Johnson has an apartment there. Yeah, it’s a funny old place. Yeah, so I bought it and I was very impressed with it for a little while. And I did also use it to pick up a little GameCube games I hadn’t previously played. So a big part of my Wii experience was playing like Rogue Leader for the first time, you know. Right, right. I definitely remember seeing all the promotional videos that summer before. And this was like before anyone had gone hands on. So they’re selling you like the fantasy or the best idea of what the Wii is. And obviously once you got it, it became quickly quite obvious. It became obvious quite quickly rather like what the remote was actually capable of. You know, it’s a bit like we have that sort of pre-release. It’s like a pre honeymoon period that you get with some new tech. Connect at it as well where you’re like, wow, I can, you know, I need to scan in my cat and then my cat will be in fable or something. You’re like, no, not really. It was the same there. You know, this was where you saw the videos of models playing Red Steel and you were like, holy shit, this is going to be like one to one swordplay. I can’t wait. And obviously the Wii wasn’t that. So there was there was this sort of over excitement maybe about the potential of it. But I still think what actually released was good enough and convincing enough that I didn’t feel like there was a mega backlash to, oh, you oversold it. I can remember the second day of the job, I went to Nintendo. I think their headquarters were actually in Slough at the time. They hadn’t gone to Windsor yet with Mark Green, the editor. And it was just a preview day to play like all the Wii demos they had. Maybe they were like the three demos. I can’t remember. And it was just us two in like a room with about 15 Wii pods. And we just played everything. And in that day, it was like an instant education to kind of what the Wii was, what it was going to be capable of. And I came out like really excited. Obviously, I was mega pumped because it was the second day of like a dream job. But also feeling, oh yeah, like I’m really, really up for covering all this stuff. Even the stuff which was a bit shit, we were still excited by. Yeah, for sure. I think that sort of on its surface, your first few experiences with it, you don’t really think too much about the limitations. You play things like Wii Sports and you understand the simple appeal of the motion control. And that’s perfectly fine. I think it only comes like maybe later on when you’re thinking, what are the really interesting uses of this? And third party developers aren’t really making as much use of it. And then, you know, Wii Motion Plus comes along eventually. And so you do get that one to one kind of control, but then you don’t get that many games that take advantage of it. So it’s tough. But you know, the legacy of the Wii in a large part, I think can be seen in like using the Oculus Quest 2 as I am right now, like playing a really, really good boxing game with these kind of like motion controllers and also like a table tennis game. And like this is actually in VR. You can have these really enhanced version of the experiences the Wii was giving you. But like maybe the Wii needed to come first to get us to that point. Like you can still see the legacy of the console. And it’s not just grounded in like making games that like, you know, members of your family might want to play, which I think is often how it’s kind of like pigeonholed these days. So Matthew, I suppose then like we’ve kept chatting about the Wii a lot over the last few episodes. Part of the reason we want to do the Wii Draft now is because we’ve basically gone out of the Wii era in our best games of the different years episodes. So we’ve been chatting about it a lot. What’s your take on the Wii’s legacy now? Going back particularly for this episode, in quite a granular fashion year by year, there are long stretches of quite bad things and there are issues after issues of NGamer where all the review games are terrible. And I don’t really remember those times because whenever the Wii kind of slumped, the DS always took up the slack. Taken in isolation, I still think it delivered some absolutely amazing games. I think it’s got a lot of like underrated and hidden gems. Like it’s quite a strange machine in that, you know, the 10 out of 10s broke through and everyone kind of played them. But there was definitely like a tier of like weird ass shit that people don’t necessarily like remember or know about. Maybe in the same way actually that when we did the Xbox draft, by the time we got to the end of it, I was like, oh, yeah, I had forgotten all those Xbox things that you’d probably have kept more of an eye on if you’d been covering it firsthand. So I do love this machine. I do love its library, but it’s maybe not quite as mainstream as I remembered it. My sort of take on the Wii sort of legacy is that like, I do think it has, I personally think it has a tiny handful of true classics. But I think that the console’s like hidden strength is that that second tier of 8 out of 10s is like, is massive. There’s loads of them. I think that when I was kind of coming up with games for this draft, there were actually about 30 games I would have considered putting in there, which that’s pretty good. That’s like, you know, not too far off what the PS2, my kind of PS2 picks were. Now, I think the PS2 has a lot more kind of like out and out classics with no caveats than the Wii does. But that kind of like range of 8 out of 10 stuff is really interesting. I think it makes it a really good console to collect for these days because you can go and pick up some of these games like six or seven quid. The Wii hasn’t been hit quite as badly as the GameCube when it comes to or the DS when it comes to kind of collecting games and the prices going up. So it means you can still hoover up loads of interesting stuff for quite cheaply. And obviously, you know, as you run your kind of like black market of used games, Matthew, based on recommendations you make on this podcast, you know, the price of Zak and Wiki can fluctuate depending on what’s going on that week. So, yeah, I think that’s where it’s underrated. Like, I think that it’s kind of still thought of as a casual console, but there is actually like a massive range of stuff. I think that so much, I think, of like the Wii’s reputation would have been changed if they made a HD version of that console. But I think that to a lot of people who are getting shiny, you know, Xbox graphics at the time and playing online, the Wii just plugging into your HDTV and looking blurry as fuck was just a massive obstacle. I just have such clear memories of sitting in the games cage, which was the area of Future Games where we used to share with PSM3 and Games Master and we each had a console set up with all our machines. And, you know, it was always me, Andy Kelly and Rory on Games Master and they’d be playing some like HD wonderment. And we had this huge ass CRT still at the end, which had yoghurt spilled on it. I always remember it had these horrible yoghurty stains. We used to call it everything was played in Yogo Vision. You know, occasionally, I just remember like Tim Clark on official PlayStation coming in, just looking at what I was playing, just shaking his head and then moving out again. But, you know, I was still fond of it. You are right. On HDTVs, it looked like ass, but I still had a CRT at home just for my Wii. I think that was like, that’s just such a massive obstacle to people, to journalists taking it seriously even. I think I said this before, but imagine. I don’t remember many people except for like Ashley Day, Simon Miller taking the Wii seriously. And yeah, so I think that it just didn’t help. That is funny though. Also, I suppose to your point there about Yogo Vision and playing shit games in the games cage, this is a console with a lot of shovelware. That’s definitely true. That’s a massive part of its catalogue. I’d say once you get out of the true classics and this tier of 8 out of 10s, it quickly goes worthless. There’s not a lot of debate outside of those games. We just had the worst version of everything. It’s a bit like PS2 in its dying days. You get the laziest FIFA. You get all the movie tie-ins, but they’re terrible. You get all the wrestling and sports games, but they’re terrible. And they were really, really bad. I mean, I can always remember The Simpsons game on Wii. It was so shit. It was so budget and rough and just crap and unpleasant to play. That stuff used to really weigh you down having to review all that. It’s pretty bleak, some of it. I played The Simpsons game on PS2, actually, and it made me feel sick. Just like to look at. I assume it was just the same game, but without motion controls. So, yeah, I feel you on that. Yeah, it’s true. There’s a lot of, like, toilet on there. But, yeah, I don’t know. I think that when you look back there, you can just create a nice little library of classics and kind of appreciate the Wii a little bit more, you know? One area where I actually think it’s weaker than I remember is as a multiplayer machine. Weirdly, there are a couple of things we played a lot of in The Office. Like, when Smash Bros. Brawl came out, I played loads of that with Rich Stanton. We used to get told off for getting too excited at lunch, which I always thought was deeply unfair because the Pez boys were, like, roaring at The Office basically every lunchtime, every day I was there. But for some reason, it was our Smash Bros. banter that kind of broke through and annoyed the publishers, which was unfair. But, you know, outside of that, maybe it’s because they were trying to push into online a bit. Like, there was definitely less local multiplayer in The Office. Like, we never played Mario Kart in The Office, ever. You know, once it was out, we played it for maybe a week, and then we were like, nah. You know, so many of my memories of GameCube, for example, is the multiplayer element, and there’s nothing about Wii, I think, that makes it, like, less multiplayer-friendly, but for whatever reason, it just didn’t, like, register as much. I found there’s a multiplayer category in this draft, and I was like, kind of yikes, I don’t really like any of these, or I don’t care for them now, I don’t have any happy memories, so that’s quite an un-Nintendo thing to have happened. Yeah, I sort of, I didn’t play a massive amount of multiplayer, like, I don’t, yeah, I don’t think that they’re, I don’t know if it has a reputation for that or not, I suppose that Wii Sports means that it does have a reputation for being a multiplayer console, but yeah. It’s the fact you had to buy a remote and a separate nunchuck, I think that may be the key to it, because if you wanted to play four player anything, you know, there are very few games that were remote only, you know, a remote and a nunchuck, I mean, that’s, I don’t know, that was probably like 60 quid or something, and you’re like, no, no, that’s okay, I just, you know, it’s in the same way that I don’t really know, I don’t see much, or I’m not, I’m definitely not involved in any split screen multiplayer these days, because I just feel like we’re all priced out of the market by how expensive all the controllers are, but… Well, you say that, but I feel like the extension of the intent of Wii multiplayer is seen in the Switch, where you have these two detachable controllers, where you can just put, prop up your Switch on like a surface and play a bit of split screen multiplayer with a friend. Yeah, but then that’s because the controls, you know, every Switch comes with two controllers, which is just such a good pitch for it. I don’t know, I just felt they gouged us a bit on Wii. Yeah, it also didn’t help, of course. We covered this before, but like, they’re just a mountain of peripherals and plastic rubbish. And it didn’t really add any value to the console, apart from the Motion Plus, of course. Any thoughts on that, Matthew? The Motion Plus was key to a couple of like truly great games, but it also, it just came very late, and it felt slightly apologetic, like, okay, this is what this should have always have done. It didn’t like spur like a huge generation of incredible motion games. They didn’t have the culture of updating older games to work with it. Like, today, people are better at going, we’ve released this thing, we’ll go back and like tinker with our back catalogue to make that feel more valuable. But there was none of that back then, and it just, again, just felt very expensive. You know, Wii Sports Resort, absolutely amazing in multiplayer, but for Motion Plus dongles? I mean, yikes, that’s more expensive than the console. That’s insane. Just a very bitty, expensive machine, and it felt that way, even to us, who had basically free access to whatever we wanted as part of the magazine. The person at home is never going to buy this, you know? Yeah, that’s fair. Yeah, very honest assessment there, Matthew. But this isn’t me railing on the Wii. Don’t get me wrong, I really love it, and I really love its games, but there was a lot of stuff around it where you were like, eeeh, yikes. Yeah, yeah, other things I like about the Wii too, like the virtual console at the time seemed really exciting. Just because, even though the library wasn’t that deep, and classic Nintendo took ages to update it with things, but I think building up a library of older games on there was really exciting. That was really cool to do for the first time, playing games like Super Mario RPG, and obviously Sin and Punishment, and stuff that hadn’t shipped to the UK before. There weren’t that many of them, but there were enough to make that enticing, extra with the console. The general attitude of how the machine functioned in terms of the weird music and all the different apps, that stuff really resonated with people. You still to this day get all the riffs on the Wii Shop music, the Miis, and it was very characterful and playful in a way that Nintendo maybe dulled some of that backwards switch, maybe because they went so big on it in Wii U and Miiverse and Miplaza and all that stuff, didn’t entirely… Well, I don’t know. To say it didn’t land is unfair. I think it landed perfectly. It didn’t have the console base to enter the bigger pop culture discussion in the way that I think the Wii did. Now the Switch by comparison is quite stripped back, quite sensible. Yeah, but also the games are really fucking good. Are we living in a peak Nintendo era, Matthew? It feels like it a little bit. Yeah, I think so. But a lot of certain failures had to happen for this. I think the Switch has definitely benefited from basically just also having the Wii U library and things like that. That’s actually another side thing that’s very difficult with this draft is a lot of the Wii’s best games are available either better elsewhere or they just have sequels that absolutely trance them. That makes it quite hard to pick as well. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, in fact, Matthew, with that, I’ve got one more question, then we should get to drafting, I reckon. So do you remember how the NGamer team felt about the Wii when the generation was over? Do you remember what the vibe was about it once it was done and the Wii U came out? When we say the NGamer team, unfortunately by that point most people have been made redundant from the team, which is a bit sad. So the end of the console felt like the end of NGamer a bit, because that’s when it became Nintendo Gamer, which obviously only lasted until… I don’t think Nintendo Gamer even had crossover with the Wii U being out. I think it shut down just before it. When we redesigned Nintendo Gamer, there were still loads of Wii in the mag. It was maybe more predominantly 3DS, but doing things like doing the directory in the back section of the mag, and really basically putting a full stop on these are the definitive games, these are the games we love. It was definitely quite a reflective period because of that, because we were making that magazine and redesigning that magazine. It’s slightly bittersweet. I feel like that mag just lived and died with Wii, which is kind of perfect in a way, but it also means they both share the same fate. They both sort of fade off to nothing. And on that happy note, let’s take a quick break, and Matthew will come back with the Nintendo Wii Draft, yeah? Let’s do it. Welcome back to the podcast. So, the Nintendo Wii Draft, let’s do it. I’ll explain the rules. There are 10 brackets here. Me and Matthew will take it in turns to pick games from these different brackets to build the best line up of games for a hypothetical mini console, mini version of the Wii. So you think you’re kind of like mini SNES and so on. Basically a modern version of the console, a tiny one that you plug into your TV via HDMI so it still looks, it looks all pretty and has a bunch of old games on it. We’re competing to pick the best 10 games. And you at home can vote on this at Back Page Pod on Twitter. Housekeeping note for anyone who’s coming to this podcast afterwards. And a lot of people discover the draft episodes long after the results have happened. I always update the episode description to say who won. So you can listen to the picks and then see who got the public vote in the description, which is handy. So Matthew, should I just go straight into the brackets and we’ll go from there? Yeah, let’s get the brackets out of the way first. Yeah, sure. So 10 brackets. Okay, bracket one, multiplayer. Bracket two, action or RPG. Three, platformer. Four, sports or fighting game. Five, shooter. Six, Wii Motion Plus game. Seven, re-release or WiiWare game. Eight, puzzle or survival horror. Nine, wild card. So something strange or esoteric from the Wii library. And 10 is free picks. So any game you like from the catalog. Matthew, what are your thoughts on these categories? Because I suggested these, but you signed them off straight away. Were you happy with them? Yeah, absolutely. And I did cast an eye over them and think, you know, because not to accuse you of anything, I looked and thinking, am I being diddled out of something here? Is there any kind of nightmare category? I think there are some really interesting ones here. I think the drafts work better when some of the categories are super rich and some of them are quite sparse. Obviously, we have the wriggle room of the free pick, which makes things a little easier. Yeah, I thought these were solid categories. I feel like I’ve got a good couple of potentials for all of them. I think in a couple of them, there are standout winners and then it quickly gets quite bad. I don’t think we’ve ever got a Red Faction situation, which for those who are coming to this podcast new, is when I think Red Faction is the second best first person shooter or PlayStation 2. I don’t foresee that happening. No, Matthew learned his lesson in the next draft when he picked TimeSplitters 2, a game he hates. Yeah, a game I hate. I’m gonna try and get through this without picking anything I hate. Yeah, same. There are some popular games on Wii that I hate. I’m sure we can discuss those when they come up. I had a couple of rule questions. Maybe I should have brought these up earlier, but I figure they’re worth putting here. We’re only drafting stuff as they were released. So we’re not talking about like a fact, if there was a fan translation of a Japanese game, we can’t do a bogus that game with the fan translation, right? A good rule for that might be that you have to use it for free pick. What do you reckon? Because if we do that, then because we didn’t put in a specific category here, we have done a Japan only category before. Because we haven’t done that here, what do you reckon? A, I don’t know if I actually need it, but it was more like how do we stand on American only releases? How about I’ll just let you have them? Okay, that’s nice. Listen, I’m not trying to pull any shenanigans. There’s a couple of things I’m toying with. I haven’t even decided to use them. Yeah. Because I don’t want to kind of give away my hand too early. I mean, I know you’re talking about Fatal Frame there, but… Not the American only one, but the other one. I don’t think we should go too far down the route of like, non-existent fantasy games. Just because Nintendo did do it with Star Fox 2, I don’t think it’s fair to be like, oh, this bullshit. So, I won’t do that. I guess as we go along, if we feel like anything is out of order, we can deal with it. Yeah, I mean… How are you feeling about the genres? Yeah, I actually wouldn’t mind too much if you did do that, because ultimately, the why I like doing these drafts is because I like talking about interesting games. And so, that’s kind of part of the reason we do these, is to bring up interesting games and cool games and personal games that we have a personal attachment to. So, I don’t really mind if you pick Trauma Team, Matthew, or Fatal Frame. That’s fine with me. I think because there’s no chance I would ever pick them. I don’t think it necessarily gives you a massive advantage. You’re too right. I personally think the genres are really good because they’re quite rigid. And I think we needed that after your… Your N64 categories were just like so much crossover between them. There are about six different categories where you could pick rare games. And it was a bit too chaotic, I think. And here, there’s a tiny bit of crossover when you throw in categories like multiplayer or free pick, of course. But otherwise, I think they’re fairly rigid. And like you say, some are really sparse and some are really packed. So it makes for some good contrast. But I will reiterate what I said at the start, Matthew, which is I have just picked games that I give a shit about and that if I got a Wii Mini, I would want to play. So there’s less of me trying to appeal to the crowd here, just because it’s a bit harder to do that with the Wii, just because some of the mega successful games aren’t actually that good. So it’s not really that useful to try and do that. So you have to think a little bit more laterally. And I’ve got a lot of backups of categories as well, because I think we’re gonna have probably about four or five games the same in terms of priorities, but probably the rest will be completely different. So that’s what I’m anticipating. Any thoughts on that? I actually think there will be some spiciness right at the start, because I think there’s a couple of, or there’s some debate and discussion about what is the smartest and the most precious game up front. We all know which one it is. Well, I don’t know, but that’s what I’m interested in. I was trying, I’ve been probably more so than the other drafts, working out different routes through, like if I go first or you go first and what happens, what would I do next? Like I have been thinking it through a little bit because we’re doing a snake draft for this as well, right? Yes, yes. So the first person gets one pick, next person gets two, then the first person gets two and we do two at a time basically till we run out. That means at the start, one person gets to take something off the board, but then the second place gets to pick a couple of interesting things. I think we’re fine once we’re past that, but I just, I almost want to get that out of the way, get that stress out of the way so I can just kind of enjoy myself. Yeah, I’m kind of in the same boat. But to be honest though, I think it’s good because I personally think there are two, two games that really have to come off the board in those first two picks. And I wonder if you think the same two games are the ones that have to come off the board. So yeah, interested to see how this goes. Did a bunch of research for this as well, actually. Played like four games that I hadn’t played before for this one. Yep, got the Wii U out. I feel like it should be a Patreon stretch goal for me to get the Wii U out of my cupboard at this point. Like someone, I should have to get a grand just for plugging it in. The funny thing about going back over some old reviews for this is how much of the internet is dead now. If you go on Metacritic, so many of the reviews link to nothing, because either the sites have gone or like people haven’t done any upkeep on their sites. Like hardly any of the IGN Wii reviews link up to themselves anymore. It’s like a really sort of sad wasteland of content. Yeah, it’s funny as well, because there’s like, I saw at least two reviews from you on CVG, which obviously isn’t around anymore. Yeah. And like, so, and it’s funny seeing you as a source in the reception part of some of these games. Yeah, I know, all my bullshit. I love that. That’s so satisfying. It also tickles me whenever you go back to this era of Nintendo coverage, that there were like fan sites that had like all magazines or even some people who had it in their like URLs, the word revolution, they’d prepped for it so much to be called revolution, that they still called themselves that. Are you gonna pop off about N Revolution again? That was, I mean, that is an example of it. Like it is baffling, because they had months to not be called N Revolution. No, weirdly, I think IGN Wii content has revolution in the URL. Oh, well, okay, yeah, that’s- Like it’s just stuck a hangover from the period that people are going to call it that. And yeah, no shade on N Revolution. Anyone who made a Nintendo magazine, you know, and managed to keep it around for a bit has my respect. It was a tough gig. Oh yeah, I imagine them also like the redirects on all those URLs would be an absolute fucking pain in the ass. So I completely empathize with someone who’s used redirect tools and been driven mad by it previously. I found some reviews from Catherine before I met her. Is that romantic? I mean, I don’t know, but it’s nice. Yeah, she used to do some stuff for Nintendo back in the day. That’s cool. Yeah, good stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, great, Matthew. Shall we kick off? Do you want to do the coin toss? This mini console ships with the Motion Plus as well. Yeah, it ships with multiple controllers as well, so we don’t have any of that faff. We also had a rule where if we want to have one optional peripheral we can, a la the Steel Battalion. What was your one, like a fishing rod or something in the GameCube one? Oh, the drums. That was it. That was it, yeah. Yeah, good times. That was a fun draft. Oh, that’s how little impact that made on the fishing rod. No, no, quite literally. And musical instrument, the bongo drums. Yeah, so we’re 50-50 on draft victory so far. It’s two all, I think. Interesting. This could go either way. I am fully prepared to shit the bed in the name of nostalgia. No, it’s like, it’s home turf for you. I think you’ll be all right. But some great games here, Matthew. Let’s get into it. Do you want to do the coin toss? I will. What do you want to call? Heads. Heads it is. So I get to pick whether I go first or second, right? I’m going to go second. Interesting. In which case, I’m going to kick off… Oh my god. I know exactly what you’re going to do if I do one of these things. No, no, I’m not actually planning a GoldenEye Perfect Dark Medusa this time. I’ve got another plan instead. I’m going to go platformer, and I’m going to kick off with Super Mario Galaxy 2. Yeah, I anticipated that. The logic here is, and you’ll hear me say these words probably a few times, Super Mario Galaxy 1 is available in a better form now. That isn’t to say it isn’t an essential game, and it wouldn’t be a good pick, but I feel like Super Mario Galaxy 2, you can’t play it anywhere else. Okay, you could get the disc and play it on Wii U if you want. As games, they’re so evenly matched in a way, I feel like Super Mario Galaxy 2 is kind of purer in that it just gets to the levels a bit faster. The hub is… there’s less hub nonsense in between, but there we’re talking about a difference of like, you know, 5 to 20 seconds or something. I’d really struggle to put these… to put one above the other. I always kind of take them as a pair in my head, obviously. It’s… they are between them, my favourite games ever made. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is the better end game. Hiding the hidden stars which are hidden outside of the levels a little bit and ask you to do some quite interesting stuff with the power-ups to get them. I much preferred that to just replay this with Luigi, but, you know, I’m obviously… I will never cast shade on Galaxy 1 to big up Galaxy 2, but I have to have this on my machine. Yep, I played this last night. It looks fantastic on Wii U, actually. If you’ve got a Wii U, you can play this digitally. And it’s… I assume that store’s still open. And, like, this is one of those games that looks fantastic output in HD. Just fantastic. I appreciate the fact it doesn’t have the kind of hub thing that you waste a load of time in in Mario Galaxy 1. It also feels like it maybe gets to some, like, of those, you know, so-to-speak Galaxy brain ideas very, very quickly. Whereas, obviously, Mario Galaxy builds up to them a little bit. A bit, a bit more. So it’s kind of like, from the off, it’s kind of like, it’s kind of off the chain. Yeah, like, I think this is the right pick for the first game, Matthew. There is a reason I wanted to go second, which will become apparent in a minute, I think. Yeah, there’s another game, which I think is, just in terms of, like, that genre is quite difficult without it, there is another game that I would really expect you to pick in your next two. Okay, yeah. So let’s see if this is that game. So, my first pick is for category 7 re-release or Wii game. WiiWare game, sorry. And I’m picking Metroid Prime Trilogy. Yeah, I knew you would. Well, interesting. I thought I didn’t know you’d put that under re-release, but I knew that that would be there. Yep. So I think this was, this is like three games at once, basically. And, you know, you obviously get Metroid Prime 3, and there was a Wii game in 2007, but like bundled in with the first two Wii games with motion controls added. Very good motion controls. I think it works particularly well with the Wii controller because Metroid’s never been like a super intense shooter. Like it’s not like Call of Duty precision needed necessarily. So the slightly kind of floaty aiming works quite well. Plus the fact that you kind of have a very, very generous aiming generally in Metroid Prime. Obviously these are first-person translations of the old Metroidvania formula, seeing different bits of the environment coming back later with new powers and seeing how you can get to those bits and unlock new items and sort of secrets. Really well done. The first one is still considered the best. That first one was originally released on GameCube, but here it is in this trilogy set. Matthew, any thoughts? A really smart pick. I almost took this as my first pick, but I just can’t lose out on Mario Galaxy 2, which I assumed you would pick otherwise. Yeah, this is great. Does this technically mean I could take Metroid Prime 3 by itself? I mean, you could do, but it’d be a bit of a waste of pick, wouldn’t it? Yeah, well, yeah, it is still probably the best first person shooter on the console in terms of Wii controls. It has some extra gubbins, three specifically, that one and two don’t have in terms of like door locks that you kind of interact with by pulling and turning and shoving in stuff. It’s a very nice tactile game, but you are right. It’s kind of weedy when you don’t have the other two. Yeah, I really hope they re-release this trilogy in some form, because it feels like it’s just sitting there. Amazing collection as well. You know, it wasn’t all on one disc. It’s not like three games crammed in a box or anything. It’s very much a collection. Yeah, it’s a really, really good pick. Yeah, it’s another good thing about having a Wii U actually is that this is one of the very few Wii games they released digitally on there. And so you download it and you play it on your HDTV and it looks really nice, which that’s like an underrated aspect of why the Wii U is not a complete write-off, I guess. So yes, I think Metroid Prime Trilogy. It also means I have 12 games on my console rather than 10. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s kind of annoying. So that makes my next pick quite tricky, because there’s a bunch of ways I could go with it, because I guess I could just get my platformer off the board. I mean, you might do a GoldenEye Perfect Dark situation. I don’t know. But I think that… I think I’m going to risk that. I mean, you might do it. Who knows? But I’m going to take Category 2, Action or RPG, and I’m going to take The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. Interesting. Yeah, so my thinking here was, yes, there is a new version of this game on Wii U, but it’s not anywhere else. I don’t think it being on Wii U makes it more accessible than having it on a Wii, a Wii Mini. So I think that we’ll take the kind of like throwback to Ocarina-style Zelda game, but with wolf content in it. I’m not actually mega familiar with it. I played it for about six hours. What was like a foundational Wii game, a Wii launch game sold mega numbers on the Wii. I think a lot of people consider this a kind of like cast iron, sort of like Wii Classic. I thought about Skyward Sword, but I can literally play a better version of that on the console next to my bed right now. So I think that Twilight Princess, there’s my logic, Matthew. I absolutely love this game. Amazing Zelda Dungeons. Probably their best 3D Zelda Dungeons. It’s kind of Ocarina Redux a little bit, a little uneven, a little put like some of the overworld stuff is a little drawn out. And the tone of it is quite bleak. It’s sort of hard to totally love Twilight Princess in the way that you can love Wind Waker and the weird little kind of slightly ugly character style and everything. But it is an absolutely amazing game. Playing this at launch in the, I’m sure I’ve told you about the, playing this in the rat house with the projectile shitting rat. Classic Matthew Castle anecdote that. Yeah, so forever, forever kind of intertwined with that. I also just remember the Greener’s review of this because poor Greener had to go and review this in the Wii house and he played it for like four days straight. He had like four days to finish a Zelda, which is, it’s doable. But it’s also, you don’t know if it’s doable from the off. And there is quite a lot of to and fro. There’s quite a bit of padding in the overworld in this game. So I could see the fear sort of kicking in of whether or not he was going to make it to the end. But I remember his review. The art was linked with Epona. And Epona’s nose, this is so specific, ended on the page where the strapline was. And the strapline was straight from the horse’s mouth. Like, this is the Zelda game you’ve been waiting for or something from. And it just really made me laugh that that intertwining of horse’s mouth and the Epona art. That’s really good. That really makes me think of print media times, so you had a bit of time to do stuff. Yeah, yeah. I was so jealous because that was the… He specifically went to do that. I don’t think we knew that he was going to do it. Maybe he went and played it over a weekend or something. He came back and he just played a Zelda that no one else had played. And it was a bit like mind blown. But yeah, that was cool. Can I also briefly litigate something with you here? Which is, I think that when you turn… If you have a Wii U and you turn on the Wind Waker HD, you’re like, wow, this looks amazing. When you have a Wii U and you turn on the Twilight Princess HD remaster they did, you’re kind of like… That’s sort of my reaction to the visual style of it. Like, it wasn’t as handsome. I don’t think it was actually done by Nintendo either, like Wind Waker HD was. No, it’s just a straight, like… You know, everything’s a little too sharp on it, and it brings some of it into too stark a resolution. Yeah, like, if anything, the slight fuzziness of the Wii is to the game’s benefit. That slight haziness, it’s got like a slight kind of Twilight, like, dreaminess to it, which when you take that away, it doesn’t look quite as good. It was very well suited to the generation it was on. Yeah, nonetheless, I think the launch Zelda game that everyone played is a good pick for my mini console, Matthew. So, yeah, I don’t regret putting it here at all. I think it’s a good pick. So, let’s see what you do next, Matthew. Oh, piss, piss, piss. This has to stay in, you know. It’s really, really hard at this point. It is hard because there’s quite a lot of routes to go down. The thing is, there’s stuff which, in my warped head, I’m like, oh, yeah, everyone would want that. But, of course, no one would want that. But we did say we would try and pick honestly this time, right? Yeah, I think we should pick honestly. But if we pick honestly, like, there’s not as much drama over what we put in. Yeah, I suppose me picking Twilight Princess was a bit like, I need to make sure I’ve got a Zelda on there. For sports and fighting game, I’m actually going to take Wii Sports Resort. Wow, yeah, this was going to be one of my next picks, so good choice. I’m taking it because I almost contemplated having also taking Wii Sports. Maybe I won’t. The problem is two of the Wii Sports games are in Wii Sports Resort, and they’re better in Wii Sports Resort because it has the Motion Plus, so that’s bowling and golf are in Wii Sports Resort as well. In a way, I still think Wii Sports Tennis is like the definitive Wii game. It’s the one that everyone can play, like, holding that Wii, you know, the Wii is closest to a tennis racket, it just makes so much sense. It’s probably the most sort of fun moving of all those games. But I think Wii Sports Resort in table tennis actually has a great tennis-esque game that is also technically much more sophisticated. A lot of these games are kind of tech demos for games that never manifested, sadly. A lot of the ideas you see in Wii Sports Resort are lifted wholesale in Skyward Sword. If you’ve played the swordplay game in Wii Sports Resort, it’s very similar to the swordplay in Skyward Sword. The archery is very, very similar to it too. You can just see that they kind of… I mean, the feel of them is one-to-one. I would say that I would not be surprised if the same people or the same code or whatever was used. As standard on things, the games are slightly more padded out than the original Wii Sports game. I think the actual, like, magic of the Motion Plus, like, you know, having spent all these years kind of wrestling with the not amazing one-to-one stuff on Wii, this actually did do it. I think the swordplay is really, really awesome. The way you’ve got the full kind of 360-degree movement of the sword and, like, smacking people on the head and having, like, swordfights with sticks. It’s just like when you were a kid. You used to have imaginary swordfights with the boys across the river with bamboo canes. Good fun. It really took me back to that. Also, I just kind of hate all the other sports games on Wii, so I feel like I kind of have to go with this in a way. Yeah, I think that this is a really good pick. This is, like… I remember when I threw a Frisbee in Wii Sports Resort, I was like, oh, this is actually the magic of the Wii. Like, premise of the Wii that I didn’t feel like I’d found at that point, just because it felt so one-to-one. Like, I remember exactly how it felt to, like, leave my hand, and it was just perfect. I was just, like, blown away by it. And I think that a lot of people… This did sell well, but I think, like, a lot of people who used a Wii probably only played Wii Sports and didn’t play this one, and, like, this was the whole thing kind of perfected. Yeah. Yeah, really, really good. Didn’t a version of this come out on Wii U and then just kind of got ignored? Did that happen? Did I imagine that? No, what they did was they ported some of the original Wii Sports to Wii U. In fact, I think they did all of them. They re-released them as standalone games. Bandai Namco made them. They had a bit of Wii U pad integration, so… Why am I misremembering? Was that just the tech demo? In my head, I can see the Wii U pad on the floor, having, like, the ball, and you’re meant to swing the Motion Plus above it. But they were standalone. The spirit of the thing, that you had to buy them separately… As much as I like Wii Sports, it was also the ultimate pack-in game. Like, I don’t know if I would have necessarily have bought it otherwise, even though it’s sort of essential at the same time. I’m quite conflicted on that. You know, it felt like it had to be there, and the idea of selling those games separately just never really made any sense to me. And they just weren’t quite as… They were just a bit hollow, didn’t have as much shape to them. That’s fair. So what’s your next pick, Matthew? So my next pick… We really do think quite similarly about this. I did think that at this point you might start getting to stuff that you actually like, that’s not just, you know, big stuff, but… Yeah, I mean, listen, I don’t think you’re going to take this, but I want to take it off the board because I really need it and want it. For puzzle survival horror, I’m going to take Zack and Wiki Quest for Barbarus’ Treasure. This is Capcom’s sort of point and click game, and I’ve talked about this before in one of our Games of the Year show. You’re a little pirate, you have this monkey companion who can kind of transform into all these different objects. It’s quite an early Wii game, but also quite a good early attempt to harness what was interesting about the remote in that the remote becomes many different objects, you know, it simulates many different objects in this game, and some of them are motion controlled, some of them it’s more about the unique shape or the buttons of it, and it’s kind of like working out how to manipulate the remote to then manipulate the object in game. That’s one half of it. The other half of it is that it’s just a really ingenious, expensive 3D puzzle game where you have quite strange scenarios that you’re trying to solve. Almost like if you think of each level as like a very advanced Zelda puzzle, it’s kind of that level of kind of cleverness, except every level you’ve got different bits of equipment, different gadgets to use. It has, it just felt very expensive, very expansive. Like it has catcom shape to it in that it has puzzle boss fights. Again, take a swig. It ends with fighting a giant monster in space. Like it really has the escalation and the scale of like a, of Capcom’s kind of arcade offerings, but married to this quite beautiful puzzle game. I really love it. It doesn’t exist anywhere else. I think it’s one of the great underrated Wii games. I would use the Wii Mini to just force this on people because it is about time it got its due. Yep, I’ve not played it at all. I knew you’d pick it. I didn’t expect you to pick it this early, actually. But that’s fine. Yes, good stuff, Matthew. I appreciate that this is kind of like a Capcom spin on that type of game, which makes it a little bit unusual. And I think that people will enjoy rediscovering it on your Wii Mini. I think that would be good. Hopefully. Yeah, I don’t know. I feel like I’ve already biffed this. I don’t think it’s possible to biff it that hard when you’ve got Galaxy 2. I think you talked me into it by going, I’m surprised you haven’t done any personal picks. So I went super personal for a thing you weren’t even going to take. Oh, I’m bad at the draft. It wasn’t even vaguely on my list, to be honest. This will show him. But all I did was lure you into a false sense of security with politeness. God damn it. Well, let’s see what happens. I think a lot of people will look at Galaxy 2 and think, I’ll pick that one, honestly. But who knows, maybe they’ll feel the same way about Metroid Prime Trilogy. I guess we’ll see. I mean, it’s, yeah. Okay. So, oh, it’s tough, this. Okay. Let’s go. I’m going to go free pick and I’m going to take Donkey Kong Country Returns. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So you can get this on 3DS, but you can’t get this on any other modern platforms. This was tough, this category, because I thought about No More Heroes, but I can play that on my Switch now and it looks really nice. So it’s tough to justify it. I also thought about Bully Scholarship Edition for this category, but I think most people probably just play it on 360. Yeah, it is a really good port. Yeah, it is. Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s actually a bit less glitchy than the Xbox one. So that would have been a perfectly good pick. And also a game I would probably definitely play on a Wii, on a mini console if I had one. So let’s go with this. So a modern 2D platformer from Retro Studios, right? That’s right, yeah. Yeah, so like fairly hardcore. I’m not sure Matthew has loads of love for the Donkey Kong series, the Donkey Kong Country series. I like these two new ones. Yeah, they’re good. And so yeah, I kind of really enjoyed this at the time. I thought that the 3DS port was slightly less handsome than the Wii one actually. Definitely. Yeah. And so yeah, I thought about having this for platformer, but I thought I might, I know I have to take Mario Galaxy for platformer. So I thought, get this off the board, because this is like a good, this is like a later classic from the catalogue. And yeah, not losing what to say about it, but a really good 2D platformer on Wii. And like, much, much better than the new Super Mario Bros Wii was. So yeah, what do you think of that pick, Matthew? Yeah, I really like this game. I remember it making me incredibly cross because it’s quite difficult in that there’s a lot of like instant kill, instant fail things. I remember doing a box out in my review of this, like my levels of rage of like my head exploding and stuff, because it was basically comparing levels of this to levels of real world frustration of like, this level is as hard as trying to eat an artisan baguette from Pret and smashing your teeth on the bread or whatever, that kind of bullshit. Very shiny, very polished, kind of like, it’s kind of the antithesis to New Super Mario Bros. in that it’s a sort of cinematic platformer. It’s not about this very limber reactive character, it’s kind of about doing it the right way, but around that it gives them the freedom to build this sort of blockbuster art and storytelling, there are chase sequences and mad things exploding. It’s a very different kind of platformer, but I guess it kind of feels a bit more western in a way, but really beautifully made and definitely made to be played on TV. I found the 3DS version very, very underwhelming. It’s a bit too small for the 3DS. It’s too detailed a world to be on that screen. It loses the stress of the scale of it. I’m actually really surprised they didn’t just port this to Switch in HD. I think it would have done well. They did Tropical Freeze on Switch. That’s a different game, right? Yeah, that’s the sequel. Tropical Freeze is slightly better. It would be a hard pitch. What they should have done is put the two together, really. I always balk to having to pay 50 quid again just for Tropical Freeze. I mean, come on. I do remember this being quite tough as well. I think that this came to mind a little bit because I’ve been playing Metroid Dread. I thought, this is the first example I can really remember of someone going big budget with 2D, I guess. And using the advantages that gives you to enhance the experience. So, yeah, I think that’s good. It’s also something I would definitely play if I had a Wii Mini. A platformer is exactly the kind of thing that you’re more likely to jump into, I think, than maybe some other types of games. But yes, that’s that pick. And so my next pick, this is hard. Epic Mickey, platformer. Fantastic Four Riders and Silver Surfer, and the wild card. I did a New York press trip for that. Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m brilliant. I’ve got a good memory for your anecdotes at this point. I’ve only got ten. I’m going to take Shooter. Actually, am I going to do that? There’s something I don’t want you to do. I’m going to take Shooter, and I’m going to take Ghost Squad. Oh, interesting. Another thing that the Wii is a bit underrated for is the quality of its light gun shooters, and this is the best light gun shooter ever, if you ask me. Oh, fucking Ghost Squad’s amazing. Yeah, it’s so, so good. I did think about having this for multiplayer, actually. But I played this again last night, and it’s so much fun. Just like big, silly, kind of like multiple-path Sega light gun shooter. Perfectly at home on Wii. Visually, it kind of suits the Wii quite well. The interface as well has been really well adapted from the arcade. It doesn’t feel compromised for the Wii. Guns feel really good. Set pieces are really fun. Just slightly different objectives to what you might get in a regular light gun shooter, because there’s a lot of poor quality ones out there. This is a genre you can sort of like shit out a little bit, but this is done with such care. It’s one of my favorite arcade games ever. There’s an arcade machine for it down in Devon, where my parents lived. I’ve definitely put at least 20 quid into over the years. Really, really good game. So glad that it exists on a home console. What a gift. I actually think of anything that we could have used more of these games, because a lot of them are a bit lost to time, I would say. But thank God Sega preserved the best one. This is the best light gun shooter on Wii. So, yes. Thoughts on that pick, Matthew? Yeah, I absolutely love Ghost Squad. It is in my list of wild cards, depending on how the rest of this list has gone. It was definitely in play. Yeah, I love this game. I love how replayable it is. I love how many terrorists it crams in a single room. This is sort of unintentionally one of the funniest games on Wii, in that you go into a room and, like, ten terrorists pop out from under a bed and out of a cupboard and outside of a window and you shoot them. And then you step into the room and, like, a load more terrorists basically come out from the same places. Then you turn around and there’ll be, like, ten terrorists behind you and you turn around and there’s another ten. Honestly, you can kill, I swear, like, you kill fifty people in a single room in this game. And it’s just, it’s got this really daft logic to it. It’s kind of the exact opposite of what Wii is about, like, in games. Not in terms of, like, they play brilliantly on there, but, like, where Wii was aimed and, like, its identity from Nintendo is so not mad. Japanese arcade games. But this was just, this was brilliant. I played this for tens and tens of hours. I absolutely adored it. Yeah. It’s a really good pick. Anyone can play it. It’s totally a game you would play if you had a Wii Mini as well, I think. Yeah. That, that, it’s interesting, actually. This process, there’s some of these games I was looking at and I was thinking, slightly spurred on by my playing habits of the Nintendo online console thing on the Switch, I’m more likely to play something that I think I could probably, like, blast through in a couple of hours than, like, do I really want to play 40 hours of Ocarina of Time on this? Probably not. You know, I don’t know if I… That isn’t something you do want to win, but you might play a win back, say, you know, or you might play Yoshi’s Story or something. It’s… Yeah, I think it’s wise. Putting stuff that you might actually get through on a mini console is kind of a smart thing. Yeah, you can blow through this in 45 minutes, but the next time you play it, it can be different. So, yeah, like… Yeah, I think it’s a good pick in that respect. That’s definitely, like… I would say that that also explains Donkey Kong as well. It’s like platformers are perfect for that dip in, dip out thing. So, yes, those are my two picks, Matthew. So we’re on to your next two picks. Yeah, okay. I don’t think you’re going to take it, but I just want to make sure I get it. For shooter, I’m going to take Sin and Punishment, Successor of the Skies. Ah, that was my wildcard pick. Oh, okay. I would say this is pretty niche. You know, I think if you listen to this podcast, you will probably get on with treasure games, or you probably already get on with treasure games, I would imagine. And this was a game I never really understood, like, how it came to be, given the direction Nintendo was going with Wii. I just, maybe they didn’t perceive it taking off in the way it was going to, but in the early years, they definitely commissioned some, like, fucking bonkers shit that is the exact opposite of, like, Wii Sports and Wii Fit. And so by the time this comes out, you know, the Wii has established itself as this basically mammoth casual machine, and then you get probably, like, one of the most hardcore shooters from one of the most hardcore studios ever, the sequel to Sin and Punishment, which never came out in the West, but saw some renewed popularity when it got brought out on Virtual Console. It’s a scrolling shooter in that you are a character who runs around in the foreground shooting into the background. On Wii, you also get a jetpack so you can kind of fly around, so it kind of almost looks a little bit like Space Harrier or Kid Icarus Uprising if you played that on 3DS, so you’re sort of shooting in. But it’s this sort of rollercoaster ride, the way it kind of whips you through these landscapes, you never see anything for like longer than a couple of minutes and it throws like a new twist in, be that like some weird enemy behaviour which basically changes up the perspective or the shift on the game. So like there’s like an enemy that drops all these blocks, for example, and then you’re having to manoeuvre around these blocks in the foreground while shooting into the background. Or, you know, perspective shifts where it feels more like a horizontal sort of like shoot them up where you’re sort of moving into the screen and then there’s levels which feel a bit more like a 2D side scroller. It’s constantly messing with like camera and perspective and gameplay ideas. It’s also a really compelling high score challenge. Like that’s really the whole reason for being, you know, when you shoot stuff your multiplayer goes up, when you get hit it goes down, you’re trying to escalate things. Because you’ve got that jetpack, it also, your score, it accelerates when you’re on the ground. So it’s got this risk reward thing where it wants you to play kind of on the floor. And, you know, you’re just trying to squeeze every last few points out of the levels. It’s a really, really deep game. Like, it’s a game that an idiot would play and be like, oh, it’s only three hours long. It’s not, you know, it’s potentially hundreds of hours long if you want to master it. Yeah, it’s very strange, very niche, but it won’t exist anywhere else. And this is just this would be a really easy way of everyone discovering it. Yeah, like I think a really good pick. This is one of the games I revisited for this draft. I think that, like, it’s one of the last big treasure games, really. And while I slightly prefer the look of the N64 one, I think, like, maybe it’s just the kind of soft Wii graphics that don’t look, like, super amazing by today’s standards. It’s really, really playable and fun. I think Kid Icarus is a good comparison. This is totally something I would play on a mini console for similar reasons to Ghost Squad, really, where it’s like, I just want to shoot a load of shit and, like, have some cool high scores. And treasure games are eminently replayable. They always have been. So, yes, good pick, Matthew. What is the actual subtitle of this? I had star successor here. Is that not the subtitle? That’s the US version. OK, right, I see. There was a lot of weird naming in the Wii period in terms of very arbitrary picks in some places. So what’s your next pick? Hmm… For Wii Motion Plus, I’m going to take Red Steel 2. Obviously, I have a weird relationship with Red Steel. I say a weird relationship, a sort of tortured relationship. And when they decided to make a sequel, obviously, it kind of renewed all the castle bashing for giving the original 90. Basically, an entirely different game this. This was a Wii Motion Plus showcase where they rightly refocused the game predominantly on swordplay. If anything, it’s probably closer to a first person, like Devil May Cry. It’s sort of how I would describe it, in that you’re doing this sort of melee combat. There’s a lot of stuff about combos, but you also have guns, which you can sort of bring out, shoot people in the knee to hobble them, or you can swipe people up into the air and then air juggle them with the guns. That’s really my arbitrary Devil May Cry connection. The fact that you have a sword and a gun and occasionally you combo the two together, it’s no way near as sophisticated as a Devil May Cry game, or pretty much like any prominent sort of hack and slash action beam up type thing. But importantly, it does exactly what it says on the tin. It isn’t like complete one-to-one controls, but the Motion Plus means the game behaves exactly as you want it to. It’s reliable, which actually in motion games is really what’s most important, I think. And from that reliability can come quite a tight sort of arcade experience. It’s got this sort of cool cell shaded style. It’s kind of a samurai western. I think this came in the period where we knew what motion controls could and couldn’t do. And I just thought this was a really good example of a game that worked even with the limitations of Motion Plus and also the limitations of what the human brain can cope with to make an action experience that just sort of made sense, had a bit of style and hopefully washed away some of the bitter taste left by Red Steel for those that had it. Ha ha ha! Okay, yeah, fair enough. I did actually have this as one of my shortlists for this category. There’s not loads of this category you can pick, which is actually interesting because I think you put me in quite a tough position here with this category. I think there are like three great Motion Plus games. Yeah, and you’ve picked two of them, which is interesting. So yes, I think that that’s a good pick. I actually don’t think this is mega good, honestly, after playing it. I thought it was just all right. But I can see why the use of Wii Motion Plus at the time would have seemed really impressive. I was like impressed by the controls, but I didn’t think the game was like mind blowing, personally. I’m not going to lie. It’s good rather than great. It’s just an 8, if that. But in a machine defined by motion controls, I wanted something which kind of really lent into them and with the good motion control shooter off the table, this will do. Fair enough, Matthew. Good choice. So shall we recap where we’re at currently? So what have you got? Super Mario Galaxy 2 for platformer, Wii Sports Resort for sports or fighting, Sin and Punishment Successor of the Skies for shooter, Red Steel 2 for Wii Motion Plus, and Zack and Wiki Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure for puzzle or survival horror. Cool. So I’ve got The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess for action RPG, I’ve got Ghost Squad for shooter, and I’ve got Metroid Prime Trilogy for re-release or Wiiware game, and Donkey Kong Country Returns for free pick. Okay, so my next two picks for wild card, I’m going to take The Last Story. Is that your one? I wanted it for RPG action. Yeah, this is another one I played last night for the first time. I bought it on eBay last year. Really, really interesting game. So, Hiradobu Sakaguchi’s company, Miss Walker, made this. It is a late-in-the-day Wii game. I think it counts as a wild card because Nintendo didn’t even publish it in America. XC did. This is part of the Operation Rainfall, is that what it’s called? Or something like that, Matthew? So these games got localized in Europe, which has led to a lot of wacky accents coming out of anime characters in this, which is really appealing, actually. And something will start to happen more around this time. It’s actually really interesting, Matthew. I haven’t played Xenoblade Chronicles 2. This is a complete side note. But do they keep the same approach to voice acting in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 that they had in 1? Oh, wow, okay. Because it’s one of those things where if Nintendo of Europe hadn’t decided to localize that first game, would that decision have even happened in the next one? Do you know what I mean? Like, it’s a bit of cause and effect there. It’s a huge part of the charm of this period. They start working with, I think they’re called SIDE, the British voice agency, and it just gives these games such a distinct character. I really like it. Yeah. So in this game, you play a bunch of mercenaries. It’s like an action RPG. So it kind of happens in real time. An interesting thing that this game does is it has a load of different sort of spins on RPG combat. So unless you do things like collapse parts of the environment with spells and sort of do these quick time eventy type things in order to get advantages against different enemies. But otherwise, it’s actually quite against type for a Sakaguchi game. It’s pretty refreshing as an RPG goes. I haven’t finished it off, of course, because I just started playing it. But the how long to beat suggests it’s not that long, Matthew, 20 something hours, which is very reasonable. So I think that as an RPG experience, I thought about Xenoblade, but we know there’s a better version of that on Switch. So that’s like that’s not to discount these games entirely. It does feel weird to leave them out intentionally on that basis, but such as it is. So The Last Story felt like a good pick to me. Yeah, it’s a great pick. Obviously, the reason I met Catherine is the last story. So I’ve taken that from you. You’ve taken that. So that’s that’s good. Thank you for that very emotionally important game. A fact that is known to you. That’s good. So that’s we should have picked an earlier friend if it meant that much to you. It’s quite wounded. Well, I thought there’s no way he’ll take the game, which was the basis of my entire marriage. Oh, yes, I forgot we should have. We should have discussed marriage as one of the rules before this began. Yes, sir, this began. That was one of the things I didn’t consider. And for category 9 wife game, I’m going to pick… Really, yeah, really interesting combat system, like you say. Kind of, it’s got these like, you know, it’s sort of real time and it’s got these interesting real time elements. Like you can do like weird wall runs to like smash down on people and there’s like a cover system. I’m pretty sure that like, like heat and kind of where enemies, who enemies are attacking is super important in this game. There’s some strategy to it. What I really love about this is there’s like no fat on it in terms of, it is this like 20 hour story. It’s quite tight, it’s quite cinematically driven. Every mission and level is quite self-contained, but they’re almost like little stories in themselves, which I guess is kind of true to his more story rich Final Fantasies in that there are a lot of like set pieces in this game. But also he doesn’t really repeat battle encounters, like every fight has got either like a different enemy type, or it uses the environment in a slightly different way. So it feels like it’s constantly showing you new stuff. It’s quite tight, 25 hours or whatever. Quite handsome in its art style as well. Also would look nice in HD, I think this one. Just doesn’t exist anywhere else. A real oddball, a real oddity. Like this for me is almost like a definitive console, mini console game. This is exactly what it’s for, because it’s really good in a very easy to grasp way as well. It feels like it should have been more popular, given the Final Fantasy behind it. I don’t think Nintendo really knew what to do with it. It was like a second wave of weird JRPGs that they accidentally made. A bit late in the generation really as well to get massive momentum. It’s like 2011, 2012 kind of time, right? Yeah, that’s right. So, yeah, it doesn’t… You’re right about the fat thing. It actually just starts in media res. It’s just like you’re there in battle and then it flashes back to how you got there and stuff. And then it basically just takes off from the start. Really kind of like… You’re kind of fighting before you’ve even learned how to fight, which is quite exciting. Cover system thing is kind of interesting and weird. Probably a product of its time more than anything. But yeah, I think this has real value as a novelty. And I bet people have a massive curiosity factor to play this one. So I think a good pick on that basis, Matthew. Yeah, I think great pick. The other one I considered for this category was Muramasa, the Demon Blade, a vanilla-ware game. But I must admit, I have more affection for other vanilla-ware games around this time, like Odin Sphere, than I do for that one. I think there’s a better version on Vita as well, right? Yeah, it’s quite expensive to get hold of, so I think it still would have been a good one. But yeah, Last Story has got obviously the creator of Final Fantasy behind it, and fantastic music, of course. So yes, that’s that one. So what for my next pick should I take? Let’s just get this over with. So I’m going to take my Wii Motion Plus game now, Matthew. I have no choice but to take The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword, a game you like. Yeah, I did really want Wii Sports Resort for this, and I think it’s a good bit of strategy that you took that so early, because that is the definitive Wii Motion Plus game to me, just as someone who wasn’t massively into this Zelda game. I guess I’ve now kind of reversed into having two Zelda games on my mini console. Let’s be honest, more people are going to buy it because it’s got two Zeldas. Yeah, I guess, but this wasn’t the GoldenEye thing where it was strategy. You left me no choice. I would say even with us saying to ourselves that there are a better version of This Exists, I don’t know if voters necessarily think that way. The other thing is, of course, you have to think about them as representing the lifespan of the Wii, and having the Zelda game that came right at the start and the one right at the end makes this quite a good console. I wish I had more affection for it, but quite a divisive Zelda game. But as you’ve said many times in this podcast, Matthew, kind of completed the journey of motion control that Nintendo was on at this time, took it to its peak in terms of responsiveness and use of the game, that sort of thing. As a Zelda game seemed fairly contentious, full of dungeons, though. I thought it looked nice for the time. It looks really nice in HD, this new version. That’s not what you’re getting on this one, of course. No. You’re getting the old one. Just because I’ve been put in this position where I have to pick a Zelda game I don’t know that much about. On the box of your mini-console, it’s going to say, featuring the ugly Skyward Sword. I don’t feel bad about picking it, really. It’s an Edge 10. Yeah, allegedly, yes, an Edge 10. There it is, Wii Motion Plus game. I guess I’ll get that one sorted. There it is. There were other ones that looked at this for this category. There was apparently a very good version of Virtua Tennis, but it felt like a slightly underpowered compared to Wii Sports Resort. If there was a good version of Virtua Tennis, it didn’t really resonate with us, that’s for sure. Yeah, exactly, and you are the Nintendo guy. So, what are your next two picks, Matthew? For Action RPG, I’m actually going to go Super Paper Mario. I think it still counts as an RPG. I think it has enough of Paper Mario’s RPG-ness in it, but it’s definitely a more experimental twist, quite literally, because it’s a 2D platformer, and then you can sort of flip it into 3D when you’re Paper Mario, and sort of see the traditional 2D Mario levels as if they were a 3D space, and use that to sort of solve puzzles, so you can’t get past the tree, you flip into 3D, and the tree’s only still 2D, so you can just walk past it, things like that. I think the love for this is slightly dimmed. It was never like a 10 out of 10, or even a 9 out of 10 stunner. I think the Paper Mario Thousand Year Door zealots were like already in full power, like even back then, so like you were doomed by just not being a repeat of that game. But, it’s still interesting, it’s still well written, there’s too much writing, that’s my big problem with this game. This was the period where everyone kept writing how funny the Mario RPGs were, and it felt like they reacted to that by just going fucking overboard, and having characters talk in like, meme talk endlessly. There’s plenty of good jokes, there’s plenty of good characters, but they go on and on and on, which I probably shouldn’t say, because I’m trying to make the case for this being a good game, but Nintendo’s localisation and writers feel like they got a bit big for their boots around now, and they had to sort of dial it back a bit, which I think they have, but this was very overwritten. But I like the look of it, I like the 2D style of it, you got to play as Peach, Luigi and Bowser as well, lots of good jokes, lots of fun little level concepts. You know, these games, there is a baseline of quality with Paper Mario in that there is just an inherent magic of that 2D art style and its general sort of silliness and the way it kind of plays with tropes. I will not say what I always say, because I know that you will just eyes before it, but it does stuff with enemies that I like. I thought my brain was cycling through them. Is it God in Space? You know what it is. I know what it is, yeah. The psychology of a Goomba. I’m not going to give you the satisfaction. This came at a weird time. It was relatively early on. It was a GameCube game for a long time and then became a Wii game. This was originally meant to be on the tail end of GameCube, a bit like Twilight Princess. It’s a bit of a kind of leftover. I feel like we never really heard much about it. I didn’t really feel like people talked about it a great deal. Maybe they didn’t play it, maybe they just couldn’t be bothered or they didn’t like the look of it. I just don’t think you can go wrong with having Paper Mario on these mini consoles. Is this not considered a lesser Paper Mario compared to the other ones? I know how that gets your back up a little bit with this series. Well, that’s the thing. I think they kind of all are now. Well, that’s the problem. That’s what I’m saying about the Thousand Year Door thing. It overshadows them so much that actually people have lost all perspective. It’s a completely distinct game. It shares, like, no DNA. It isn’t, like I say, it’s an 8 out of 10, for sure. But I feel like in the eyes of the Paper Mario fandom, it’s like there’s Thousand Year Door and then 15 years of dog shit, and that just isn’t true. Right, right, yeah. Fair enough. That’s how I perceive the fan base. I like that we’ve now had two picks in a row from you and me that we’re not entirely convinced by us people picking them. I played it. I liked it. I think it’s good. I think it’s an interesting first-party thing that I think people would like to discover. That’s really why I picked it. I think it’s an underplayed, good first-party game. That is fair. I don’t really hear people talking about this one. And I know people didn’t like the Wii U one, but this one doesn’t have that sort of reputation. Yeah. If you go back, it’s still like an 87 on Metacritic. But it just wasn’t like… I can’t remember if it came just after or before Mario Galaxy. Or maybe it came out in the US and then there was a big… It definitely came out in the US a lot longer before it came out in Europe. I think by the time it came out in Europe, like, no one cared. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it’s completely passed me by this one. I wonder how much it cost to get on eBay. I’m not sure. I’ll look into that. Yes. Was this always the number one pick for this category, Matthew? No, it was going to be The Last Story. Ah, okay. Interesting. You definitely poached it. I contemplated Xenoblade Chronicles, but I just think the Switch version is one of the best ports and remakes that Nintendo’s done. I just think it would be mad suggesting that I want the original. Now, even though Xenoblade Chronicles is a classic Wii game, like it is, in my books, just below Mario Galaxy in terms of how much I like it. Okay, fair enough, Matthew. So what’s your next pick? Oh, God. Some real old shite here. I mean, amazing picks to come. For my free pick, I’m going to take Metroid Other M. Oh, yeah. I wondered if you might take this one. I think it’s a game that’s been, like, meaned out of existence, unfairly so. I think it’s the classic thing where a couple of loud voices made fun of the admittedly shit elements, which is mainly the cut scenes in the story. And if you play it, you won’t have any problems with the action. The action is pretty great. It’s a… oh, I always get Team Ninja and Ninja Theory confused. Team Ninja. Team Ninja. It’s a Team Ninja game. Nowhere near as hard as a Ninja game, obviously. But it does have an absolutely lethal action hook in that it’s got this really good evasive dodge that if you do it at the last minute, you can charge up your blaster to full power. So the whole game is basically based around, like, ducking out at the last minute and smashing people with this bullet. In the same way, and I said this about Metroid Dread in the Game of the Year thing, where, you know, I really liked how it sold you on the feel of Samus. This isn’t quite right in, like, the 3D movement. It’s a 3D game, but it’s all played just on the remote, so you’re controlled with the D-pad, which is unholy. I mean, I do not like controlling people in 3D with a D-pad. I think that’s gross. But the actual action, the core kind of dodge and fire, and the kind of animations when she’s brawling with characters, and they’re almost like sort of quick timey kind of takedown things. It’s a really great Samus. She’s like lethal, but she’s fast. It’s another game that just really, really understands how that character is meant to move. That for me is like good enough to get past the fact that the story is just naff. It isn’t like the most laughable thing of all time. I think the naffness of Other M is really oversold. People remember this in a very particular way. As an actual action game, you know, the thing you actually play is good. I come to games to play them. I can just look past the kind of snarky bullshit around this. I think because of that snarky bullshit, a lot of people didn’t play this. They probably don’t know that it is a really good action game under there. Maybe not like an amazing Metroidvania itself, but what it is is certainly interesting, certainly worth discovering for like 8 to 10 hours or whatever it would take to get through it. So yeah, in my head that kind of makes it a perfect candidate for a Wii Mini. I think it’s a great pick. Not available anywhere else. Definitely one people should rediscover. I think the action is quite underrated in this game. And yes, the story stuff is quite bad, but this would also look fantastic in HD if it was re-released. A real crisp looking, nice looking game. And it’s like it ain’t coming back, you know? No, it’s not. There’s no way they would ever redo this because they just wouldn’t want to have that that’s shellacking all over again. This did seem to put Metroid on ice for such a long time as well. Which, you know, yeah, so it would be like a totally good one in terms of like if there was ever a mini Wii in real life, obviously ours are deeply hypothetical. It would be like such a conversation starter to re-examine this and just talk about it again. So I think it’s a good pick in that respect, Matthew. Thanks. Yeah, it’s cool. I wouldn’t have picked it, but I… Yeah, I… When we get to the end and we go through stuff I didn’t pick, like, so much of it is just… This console is particularly bad for, like, mainline series that weren’t as good as later ones or things that were just ported or much improved later. It took a lot of stuff off the table for me, I felt. Yeah, that’s very fair. So my next two picks, yeah? Okay, let’s get Platformer out of the way. I’ll take Super Mario Galaxy. I left it on the table probably slightly too long there. You could have poached it, Matthew. Oh, that would have been a dick move. I mean, but I did a dick move to you in the N64 draft. But it didn’t work, did it, with the voters? So yes, Super Mario Galaxy, I know this is on Switch, but you can’t buy the Switch version anymore. So yeah, I think this in HD, same difference, really. They didn’t do much to it to bring it to Switch. So have it on this Wii Mini instead and enjoy them waggling the Wiimote to make Mario shoot off from a star and whatnot. This is funny, Matthew. I always find it slightly stressful how inventive these games are. I feel like I’m taking psychic damage from just how much innovation is going on and how much wacky level design is happening. It’s a bit like running down a tubular level and then there’s some fucking 2001 as Space Odyssey shit happening like two minutes later and I’m just like, oh God, I just need to sit down for a bit. I think this is maybe why I enjoy Mario 3D World more because my imagination doesn’t stretch to these limits, seemingly. But yeah, obviously a very good format of Mario game, rife with invention. I do think the Mario Galaxy 2 is a better pick for this because like you say, it’s more elusive. Both of these look lovely on Wii U, of course, in HD. Fantastic. One of the best games of all time. In fact, I think you might have called it that in the 2007 episode, Matthew. So yeah, like I say, I think the fact that that port 2 switch was so lo-fi and so basic, I don’t think there is much in it here. If you bought this Wii Mini, you still want to give it a go. So I don’t think it’s an unsexy pick by any means. No, no, it’s a great pick. You would have absolutely fucked me if you took this because what would I have picked for platformer? Because I already took Donkey Kong for a free pick. You probably would have had to have gone like Kirby’s Epic Yarn, which is so tweet. It’s cute, but it’s also, there’s just nothing to it. Very overrated, I think. Hey Matthew, just save it for the best Kirby games episode, yeah? The episode that you demanded this year. I forgot that I signed myself up for some, well there you go, there’s a little sneak peek of a Kirby take coming your way. No, I don’t really mean to cut you off, but yeah, I agree quite to wee, and also not massively hindered by playing on 3DS either, where it’s available, but yes. Yeah, so there wasn’t much else to pick for this category, so platformer, Super Mario Galaxy, I mean yeah, what a winner, right? That’s got to go. I have to now buy both these mini consoles because they’ve both got a Mario Galaxy that I want. So I’ve got two Zeldas and a Mario, that’s not too bad. That’s why I think you’ve won this one, because I don’t think people will look past that and just go, oh, two Zeldas and a Mario, obviously. I think that a lot of this will come down to what else is in what that other five is. Yeah, we’ll see. Okay, so let’s go puzzle or survival game. And I’ll take Silent Hill Shattered Memories. I knew you wouldn’t pick this, Matthew, because we talked about it on one of the Gamescore episodes, I believe. I played this for the first time last night. I could not get your criticism out of my head that the way this breaks down exploration and enemies chasing after you means that it completely deflates the tension of the exploration sections. That is such a fair criticism of this game. No, no, it’s fine. I will say, the best part of this game, I thought, was the first 30 minutes, because you don’t know that. And then once you do understand what’s going on, it ebbs away. It’s almost like frontloaded, the impact of it. When I came into this, I was like, I thought this was going to be an all-timer, because we went to preview it, and we only got to play the first hour and a half or whatever. And I was like, this is so good. So it has that effect, I think. Yeah, for sure. So why did I pick it? I think this has a really good reputation among Silent Hill fans. It’s an oddball game. It’s kind of a retelling of the story of the first game, but with a lot of differences. Framed by these psychiatrist sequences, where a very well-rounded man, who’s slightly ominous, will ask you a bunch of questions, then inform the sequences that play out, a slightly kind of like a meta take on the original Silent Hill story, designed by Sam Barlow, who went on to make Her Story, and that other game I haven’t played, but want to play. What’s it called? Telling Lies? That was it, wasn’t it? So, yes, those psychiatrist bits are kind of the highlight, I think, just because they feel like they put loads of effort into those, and the effect that they have. And I think that this game definitely has the eerie atmosphere of a good Silent Hill game, not quite as pretty, a bit uglier than Silent Hill 2 and 3 and the like, which are peerless, beautiful games, but still pretty good. But I think this is totally something that people will want in this mini console, because it’s not that easily available. You can’t play it in HD. Yeah, I think this is the right pick for this category. Thoughts, Matthew? I am definitely at the lower end of the scale of how I feel about this, but I know most people talk about this with some kind of hushed or whatever. People really dig this game. I know that of the Western Silent Hills, this is the only one that people really, really rate. I have that problem with it, structurally, but it was a very, very rare case of a studio really trying to make something special feeling for Wii, really leaning to everything that Wii could do, the Wii Remote functionality, no corners cut, felt very prestige. I wanted to love it more, basically. The chase sequences aren’t really bad as well. They’re just not good. The enemies are annoying. There are some good scares in there, but the enemies are just annoying and repetitive. Just like, compared to encountering an enemy in Silent Hill 2 when you get the little radio static, just so, so scary. And in this, it’s just like, oh, another door burst open, and then a motherfucker started waving his arms at me. It’s a bit like that. That must be what it’s like to be a postman. There’s loads of blue bars everywhere, so you feel like you’re in a music video because it’s telling you where to hop over and stuff. That sounds really down on this. I’m not. I think it is good. I think if the exploration and the quote unquote combat, you don’t really fight anything in this, were kind of integrated more, it would be probably an 8 or a 9 out of 10 for a Wii game of the time, but it’s still really interesting for what it does. And yeah, just like a great Silent Hill Curio that people can play on my hypothetical Wii Mini Matthew. So, we’re down to your final pick, is that right? No, I got three. Okay, I’m bad at counting, so why don’t you go ahead. So, for re-release a WiiWare game, this is difficult because WiiWare, let’s be honest, was mostly shit. You know, Nintendo’s first swing at one of these downloadable services, it had this really strict file cap size because of the limited internal memory of the machine, and because of that, it just felt like we were cut off from loads of stuff. So when the indie scene was like exploding on Xbox Arcade and PS3, it felt like we had some very miserable stuff. We were really excited to get Super Meat Boy, which I played on WiiWare and then never came out on WiiWare because I don’t think they could make it work. I would say this category is cursed. I don’t think that’s true. I think there’s a few cool things on WiiWare, first of all. But if you go re-release, there’s loads of good stuff on the Wii you can pick. Is there? Yeah, you’ve got re-releases of GameCube games, the Wii controls. Oh, they were… yeah. None of them were very well done, though. That’s not true. There’s one major one that, if you don’t pick it, I’ll be really surprised. What am I missing here? Oh god, I feel like I’m about to make a horrible mistake. Well, I’ll just put cards on the table. My backup, if you’d have somehow grabbed Metroid Prime first, was a Resident Evil 4 Wii edition. My thinking there was, it’s not really a game that’s improved that much by HD. I’ve played the recent versions, and I kind of think it’s still a bit at home on this generation of consoles. It was good. I reviewed it. I gave it like fricking 94 or something ridiculous. Yeah, you’re right. I just, in my head, I associate that, I still associate it with GameCube. Yeah, I guess so. I think, like, you probably find more people play this Wii version than that GameCube version, just through the success of the console. I feel like I should be honest, though, and go with what I honestly put down for this. You follow your heart, buddy. There were two WiiWare games I did really like, and so I have decided to do a WiiWare game. I’m gonna go with the, I think, quite underrated Hydroventure. Sort of Metroidvania, where you play as a puddle, made by Curve. I think it was called something else in the States. I want to say Fluidity. They also made a version for 3DS that was quite different, a bit more self-contained, didn’t have the big free-flowing levels. But this, I thought, was the one WiiWare game where it was Nintendo published, but like a Western studio made it, and it felt like Nintendo could have made it. I thought Curve did amazing stuff with both this and the 3DS sequel. I’d probably prefer the 3DS sequel a little more. I think they tidied up some of the ideas. But you’re basically shifting this picture book where you’ve got this puddle of water, you tilt the Wii Remote left and right to kind of tilt the book. There’s got to be a Vita or PSP game that’s like this. What was that one with the balls? Loco Roco? It’s maybe got a bit of Loco Roco energy, meets that pixel junk one where you played as the big thing of water. Wasn’t there one where you played as water? Let’s think. There’s Eden. There’s… I can’t remember all of them, actually. I swear there was one where you could put water in lava to make rock and things. I don’t remember that one. But there were loads of them on PS3. This is reminiscent of several other things that are lost to my brain at this moment. But it had a really nice 2D art style. It was the idea of you were set in this picture book. It had puzzles based around the different forms of water. So you had this giant puddle that could contract a little bit to fit through gaps. It could filter through cracks. But you could also become a heavy thing of ice that could slide through and weigh stuff down. You could become a cloud and fly around zapping stuff with lightning. This was the one Nintendo made WiiWare game that I thought felt really prestige, really complete. I think the fact that it was WiiWare meant no one ever played it or heard of it. Even though it’s very highly thought of, very well reviewed. As my single not-a-WiiWare, I’ve decided to put this on the machine. It’s tough because, I mean, I’ve never heard of it, so I can’t comment on it. But it is up against Metroid Prime Trilogy. That’s a tough comparison in that category. It is tough and I know people will look at that and go, cursed. If it’s good, it’s good. I had written it down. I did think about Resident Evil 4, but I thought I still think of it as a GameCube game. I just wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. When I balked at the idea of a re-release, I was thinking of Nintendo did those new play control series, and they were like, genuinely very poor. The Pitman ones were not very good. No love was shown to them, you know? I thought the Pitman ones were fine. What was the, do you not like the controls? They functioned. They weren’t like proper remakes or anything like that. They just, I don’t know. There’s something about them, even just the look of them, the way Nintendo didn’t promote them at all. I think we just got like a box retail. They felt very unimportant in the grand scheme of things. And maybe like Nintendo’s own internal lack of love for like how they treated them rubbed off on us a bit. But we were like, eh. Like they made DK Donkey Kong Jungle Beat without the bongos. And it was just not quite the same. This man has gone big on bongos. It’s like a hook for his mini consoles. And like, I do like that you’ve committed to that as part of your personal brand. I appreciate that. Yeah, fair enough, Matthew. So yeah, I did also contemplate… Square Enix did quite a nice town building game called My Life as a King. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles sort of spin-off thing. Which was an early WiiWare game that was quite expansive and quite sweet. Almost a precursor to some of the modern mobile games like your Fallout shelters and things. I contemplated that. I remember buying that. I don’t think I ever played it, but it was a nice looking game and like seemed kind of nice. Was the Wii just quite big on whimsical king games? That seemed like a thing. Yeah. If you like diminutive monarchs, have I got a machine for you. That should have been a category, shouldn’t it? Diminutive monarchs. The other one I thought about, Matthew, is I believe that the first two Project Zero slash Fatal Frame games were ported to Wii. I wondered if you would consider that. Oh yeah. That might be good, but you know, hey, I have no idea if they’re good or not. I never played them, but they’re certainly expensive. Maybe it was just one. I think it was two that got ported. One was on Wii U and one was on Wii. I can’t remember which was which. Okay, gotcha. Okay, cool. What’s your next pick? It’s a very me pick. For a wild card, I’m going to bestow upon Europe the mightiness that is Trauma Team. Okay, great. Only got released in the US. Basically, they’re the final form of Trauma Center, where the whole Trauma Center surgery arcade game was just one of many disciplines in this game. You also played a psychologist and a forensic scientist. You had an endoscope. You had lots of levels going up people’s guts. I remember in NGamer using the joke, they call it an endoscope because the scope, they stick up your endo, which I thought was brilliant. I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know if those scopes do go up your bum. You weren’t prepared to find out and ruin the joke. Okay, yeah, I’ll look it up, endoscope. It seems to go in your mouth. I don’t know if it goes up your butt. It looks like it would fit up your butt, so let’s just say yes, that’s fine. It looks like it could fit up your butt. Well, that’s as much as I’m prepared to say on the matter. I like that horrific system of estimation. I’ll do some more Googling while you’re talking about it. Yeah, I think that would fit. And yeah, each one was just quite fully thought out, quite fully featured. Each discipline had a character, like a story character to it, and the whole idea was that you sort of played this big campaign jumping between their different disciplines, and only by playing all of them did you get like the full picture of the story, the full picture of the day. I have no idea why they didn’t release this over here. I imagine it’s because there had been loads of localisation to do and it probably hadn’t sold big enough, but the fact that they made three Trauma Centre games on the Wii was kind of wild. I don’t know why they cut it short of this, which is an absolute banger. A total Matthew Hart pick, but I feel the world needs to explore rainbow coloured guts and sew up more lungs and pull bits of branch out of teeth and stuff or whatever it is. All the different fun things you do in these games. A marvellous, a marvellous thing. Yep, this is like in my head, this is just the colon camera game that only Matthew knows about. That’s how it’s like filed in my head. Those are like the tags, the CMS tags in my brain. So yes, good pick. Not one I would have picked. Leveraging your expertise of the Wii library there, Matthew, which is exactly what you should do. Or this is where my nostalgia sinks me. Well, I don’t know. I mean, this is certainly one that I think… Remember, definitely a big hardcore Nintendo listenership to this podcast. So definitely not a bad pick at all. And solves the problem of how do you play this? That’s exactly what these mini consoles should do to some extent. I focused five picks of mine or so on like, grab the big obvious stuff, then another five on stuff that I would really want to like, have resurfaced on this console. So I think you fulfilled the brief there, which I think is better than trying to pander to some invisible crowd, you know what I mean? Yeah, I think so too. All right, so we’ve reached my final pick, right? Mm-hmm. Okay, so my final two picks, rather. So this is quite tough. I’ve got Sports or Fighting Game and Multiplayer left. Yeah. Let’s just go Smash Bros Brawl for Fighting Game. I think that regardless of which version of Smash Bros you’re playing, you’re going to have a good time. And these are like the ultimate pick up and play mini console game. You’ll just have a fight with a mate for a couple of minutes and then kind of move on. This is actually the Steel Remains, the Smash Bros game I’ve played the most. I had to have it when I knew that Snake was in it and Sonic. Sorry about the Sonic thing, Matthew. But that seems so enormously novel to me. And then the fact that they did these kind of codec calls for Snake as well, adding the kind of like Metal Gear level that can get smashed apart by both Ray and Rex, that absolutely ruled. Lots of care paid there. The fact that this also bundled in a bunch of the best Melee maps too, including Big Blue, which as I said before in this podcast, is my favorite of all of the Smash maps. Sorry, Stages. They’re just a fantastic moving F-Zero stage. Really, really good. Packed with content. Yes, you can argue that the Switch one is the ultimate version of this game. I don’t contest that. But, I don’t know, to have neither of these consoles with a Mario Kart or a Smash on it would be weird, I think. Like, Smash has to be here in some capacity. I feel like I had to have one of them. So, this is the one I decided to take, Matthew. And I don’t… Even though I know that the Subspace Emissary mode was, like, not beloved, everything else about it I thought was pretty good. Like, it was actually a Smash game that I felt like I could grasp slightly more than Melee, which was just so fast-paced and I wasn’t great at. This felt a little bit more, a little bit simpler. I think the only reason I didn’t pick it was, a lot of what I love about this game is in the later one, but it has its own feel, it has its own vibe, you will have a good time with it. It has that amazing music collection, though, again, a lot of that music is in Ultimate. That’s the problem with all Smash now is, like, Ultimate has just got everything in it, and you have to kind of put that aside a bit. Yeah, I mean, I played loads of this against Rich Stanton, got told off a lot. Loved that I added Kid Icarus. I played as Pit a lot. We had a… I want to say we had a Japanese import copy of this way before we had a UK version, and Pit’s different. The sound, he’s either… I can’t remember if he’s higher or lower in the UK one, but I remember when it came out, it really threw us because we were used to one version of Pit, and then we had this other version. That’s my one not very good brawl anecdote. But yeah, of course, Smash Brothers. Pokemon Trainer as well. I fucking love that character. Did they replace Pokemon Trainer with just Charizard in the Wii U one? Maybe I’m wrong about that, but I’m pretty sure Pokemon Trainer was tweaked for the Wii U one. A lot of them sort of blur into a mass for me now, unfortunately. So yeah, this one I remember just vividly because I did play through all of Subspace Emissary and I did play a bunch of the multiplayer. So yeah, I’m a fan. I also think that, again, whenever I see people play these mini consoles, they always… If I see people with the mini SNES, they’ll play Mario Kart first, they just will. Even though they know that that’s not the best Mario Kart, they can be playing. So I think that this belongs in a mini console for that reason. Last pick then, multiplayer. Let’s just take Wii Sports. So thought about the Beatles Rock Band for this, actually. Yeah, it’s not particularly Nintendo, really. It’s kind of like very multi-format, and I played on Xbox. But I thought, not actually a bad pick in terms of like a game that you can’t really get now. But I also thought that because you have to have the plastic controller with it, I would find that deeply unappealing to have one of those in my house in 2022. So that’s why I kind of discounted it, Matthew. So let’s go with Wii Sports. Like a lesser pick than Wii Sports Resort for sure. But to a lot of people, the nostalgia of a mini console will be about playing this game that everyone played. And like, you know, having a game of bowling and tennis and all the rest of it. Fun multiplayer times. I think that like in terms of pick up and play, multiplayer turn on your mini console. The psychology here works. There wasn’t like a load of other good options for this category, though, to be honest. Again, I just really didn’t like the Mario Kart on this. I found it very unappealing. And would have been a bit of a weak source pick. So I guess I’ll pick like what is to most people the representative game of this console. And like I say, I would have preferred to have Wii Sports Resort, which I accept is a better pick. But I think for a multiplayer Wii experience, this has a place for sure. Any thoughts? It’s the definitive Wii game. Like even with my justification of thinking about the crossover games, I still almost picked it alongside Wii Sports Resort. I just think Wii Tennis is essential. You hear no complaints from me. Fair enough. That’s me done, Matthew. So what’s your final pick? It’s multiplayer. This is such a pain. I’m not picking Mario Kart because I don’t like Mario Kart Wii. I was surprised you didn’t pick Wii Sports Resort for this category. But then, you know, that other category is tough too, so… That’s the thing. I just don’t like a lot of the sports games. So the thing is, there’s loads of stuff it would be selling out if I picked. That would feel like easier wins. So like Excite Truck, which I hate. Mario Striker’s Charge, which I hate. The Mario sports games on this console were not good. I contemplated earlier and I thought, wouldn’t it be such a dick move to try and take past Galaxy as a co-op experience? That would have been very, very funny. But it would have been a dick move. I think it would have been allowed by the rules. Have we been too polite in this draft, Matthew? I don’t think so. I think you’ve just quietly let me hang myself, which is great. I don’t think I did, actually. I think I was quite… I tried not to be super aggressive at the start, like I have been in previous ones. I think it’s a little bit like Metroid, two Zeldas, a Mario Galaxy, Smash Bros. I’m not sure I played quite the blinder I thought I would. So now I’ve got to end it with a… Listen, I’ve got to be true to myself. I’ve got to pick a multiplayer game that we played on NGamer and we really loved. It is underrated. It’s a bit of an odd one. I’m actually going to go Boombox Splash Party. Oh, yeah, of course. I don’t really know these games very well, but they were acclaimed, right? Yeah, they were. This was EA’s partnership with Spielberg. He was working on a narrative thing and a party game. We got the party game, the narrative thing never happened. We got two of these. There was Boomblox, which was… And this one, which was basically everything that’s good about Boomblox, kind of writ large. The short version is it’s a big reworking of Jenga. It’s a lot of, like, physics, interacting with the physics of these towers, trying to pull out blocks so that point blocks smash. There’s loads of variations on this. There’s heaps and heaps of games. It sort of has, as a multiplayer suite, a bit of Monkey Ball energy in that it has this simple core mechanic, which is, you know, it’s basically Jenga. And then it riffs on it in lots of different ways. So there are ones where it’s just about smashing stuff. There’s ones where it’s more of a shooting gallery. There’s things where you’re trying to set up chain reactions. There’s things, you know, different rulesets, different criteria for scoring that changes up the core of it. I just I really liked how polished this was. This was like EA always went quite big on Wii. I don’t think they got it right a lot of the time, but they never really sort of skimped on their Wii originals. Like, I didn’t care for like any of the My Sims games, but they were quite handsomely made. They just weren’t targeted at me. But this was very, very polished, very fully featured. It had an awesome like level building suite and, you know, basically an endless stream of downloadable levels. Once you were done with the hundreds that they included in it. I’ve written down in my notes, it’s the Forza Horizon of Jenga games. It just so fully explores the idea in single player, multiplayer, user created. This is really big and rich, very easy to play. It’s all just like pointer controlled. You’re just pointing and then sort of flicking the remote to kind of pull things out. But this big satisfying chunky style could have been a Nintendo game. Some of the characters and framing are a little tacky and sort of westernized. But you know, the core playfulness of tumbling blocks feels very Nintendo-esque to me. We really loved it on the mag. We liked the first one, but this one just completely blew out of the water in terms of what it did. Not like a massive mega hit, but I think it’s something everyone will enjoy playing. Yep, I think a good pick in that respect. A good discovery pick. I was thinking about picking this for the puzzle category, one of the boombox games. I didn’t have the experience of them, but I did watch a bit of it on YouTube and thought that looks pretty cool, actually. The Forza Horizon of Jenga games is like the most Matthew Castle kind of statement. That is such an upsell. No, I think it’s a good pick. Yeah, for sure. You’ve got several good multiplayer experiences on your console. You’ve guaranteed that between this and Wii Sports Resort. Very good, Matthew. I don’t think I red-factioned it. I don’t think so, no, which is good. Because this is your home turf, as we know. Yeah, so we’ve done it, Matthew. That was the draft. It was slightly longer than normal, but I think it was really, really good. There’s some really fucking good games in there. Shall we recap and then we’ll talk about some of the games we missed? Okay, so for category one multiplayer, I picked Wii Sports. I picked Boom Blox Bash Party. For category two action RPG, I picked The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. I’ve got Super Paper Mario. For category three platformer, I’ve got Super Mario Galaxy. I’ve got Super Mario Galaxy 2. For category four sports or fighting game, I have Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I’ve got Wii Sports Resort. For category five shooter, I have Ghost Squad. I’ve got Sin and Punishment Successor of the Skies. Category six Wii Motion Plus game, I have The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword. I’ve got Red Steel 2. For category seven re-release or WiiWare game, I have Metroid Prime Trilogy. Hold on to your hat, I got Hydro Venture. That’s got the whiff of Red Faction about it. Though it is good. I’m saying nothing. For category eight puzzle or survival horror, I have Silent Hill Shattered Memories. I’ve got Zack and Wiki, The Criss from Bavaris’ Treasure. Category nine wild card, I have The Last Story. I’ve got Trauma Team. Category ten free pick, I have Donkey Kong Country Returns. I’ve got Metroid Other M. How are you feeling about those two lists, Matthew? I’m feeling good. I think that’s an honest list to me. There’s nothing I’m embarrassed about. I should have maybe thrown in a couple of bigger Nintendo hitters, but I feel like we both justified our choices. Yeah, in an ideal world, I think I would have probably… I would have had Mario Galaxy 2, and I would have had Wii Sports Resort, and I wouldn’t have had Skyward Sword. But otherwise, my list is what I wanted. Yeah, I wanted The Last Story in there, and I wanted Metroid Prime Trilogy. Do you want Ghost Squad? It was definitely in my wild cards, but I think I liked Trauma Team a little bit more. Fair enough. Were there any games that you missed out, Matthew, that you kind of wanted a name check here? Yeah, just kind of. So I feel like it’s going slightly more into weirdo territory. I did think about Pandora’s Tower. Yep. Which is the Gambarian action RPG where you’re climbing towers to get monster meat to feed your… I can’t remember if she’s your girlfriend or sister. I think girlfriend. She’s turning you into a monster, and you basically have to feed her meat from these towers. Super odd. Only fine, I think. Not a very complicated action game, but it’s got a bit of a weirdo quality to it, which is worth a discovery. I’d definitely play it if it was on a mini-console, because I’d be like, oh yeah, that’s an odd one. Disaster Day of Crisis, which is one of those soft, incredibly cheesy action disaster survival game. An even sillier version of… What’s the PlayStation series? Yeah, yeah. It’s really dumb. It’s written like a big, cheesy American action film, and there’s literally a point where you’re chased by a firestorm, and then there’s a second fiery tornado, and someone says, oh great, now there are two firestorms, which made me and Alex Dale laugh a lot, because we were at the Wii house reviewing this, he was reviewing that, I was reviewing Wii music next to him, so he had to play this really dumb action game to a soundtrack of me honking through like my grandfather’s cock. Very good. And we had a huge bowl of sweets, I was so like off my face on refreshes that day. There’s nothing more on brand for you than you reviewing Wii music while off your tits on sweets in the Wii house. It maybe explains a lot about Wii music in me. That’s like you at the end of the noughties summed up I think. Yeah, very good. I really like The Rune Factory, aren’t we? Rune Factory Frontier. It’s probably my favourite of the Rune Factory Harvest Moon games that I’ve played. There’s The Diving Game, Endless Ocean 2. Super serene, not got a lot of thrust to it, but it plays some really nice music that made me feel a little soppy when I was playing it. I really like that. I thought about Rhythm Heaven, Rhythm Paradise. I thought you picked that for multiplayer. The only problem with that is, bar maybe two of the games, that whole game is in the 3DS anthology. And I just, I don’t know. I think it would have been good. I’m surprised you didn’t take that for multiplayer. Yeah, maybe I should have done that. It means a lot to me, because obviously it was like the cover I did on Nintendo Gamer, where I was like, my dream magazine cover and the execution was brilliant, I thought, and Milk did such a good job with it. It’s a meaningful game to me. Not quite up there with the game that led to me meeting my wife, but close. I looked at Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn, but I played this back in the day, and it was like more Fire Emblem. It just doesn’t have anything particularly special about it. I think that, you know, this is the game that basically makes it go away a bit, and then it kind of comes back on 3DS. Oh no, there was the DS one, actually. When I played it, I was like, it feels like something else needs to happen here with this. Yeah, I think I thought about this too, but like, I don’t know, I guess I know nothing about it. It’s too expensive to get hold of. I just thought I’m not going to try and bluff it, so forget it. Yeah, I mean, that would be one reason to include it, because like Fire Emblem now is such a big deal again, and like putting this one that’s quite hard to find on there, there might be some logic in it, but I just, you know, I have played it and I didn’t really have two happy memories of it. It’s still Fire Emblem, it still has that baseline of it is a good Fire Emblem, but it didn’t like come alive for me. The last two I sort of circled very briefly was Mad World. Oh yeah, of course, yeah. Was that multiplayer? Maybe I could have gone with that for multiplayer, I don’t know. And Punch Out, which Punch Out is like an oddity, because I don’t think they’ll ever make another one. And it was quite handsomely made, but it’s also like, it’s basically just a very glamorous NES game. And at the time, it was quite hard to justify, because you felt like you played through it, and you were like, well, that’s two hours of that, and now what happens? Not a lot. It wasn’t like, it was quite a hard sell, it felt. But maybe that would have made it a good contender. But I don’t know. I don’t think I loved it quite enough to warrant including it over some of the others. So a couple of mine, I mentioned Muramasa, I mentioned No More Heroes, like No More Heroes. If I was making a list that was purely me, and maybe less tactical, it probably would have been Free Pick instead of Donkey Kong Country Returns. But I think that… I think I just… I’m very No More Heroes-ed out after having it on Switch as well. So I don’t think I… I just thought Donkey Kong probably would be something I’d prefer to play on there, just because I didn’t like that 3DS version, like you said. So, yep, there’s that. Oh, I thought about the game Let’s Catch for the WiiWare category. And I thought about putting Metro Prime Trilogy somewhere else, because there’s those two usually Naka games that were on Wii that were pretty good. And I liked Wii Catch as a slightly unusual… Sorry, yeah, Let’s Catch as a slightly unusual kind of Wii game. I contemplated Let’s Tap for multiplayer, because I do love it, but it’s also maybe just too niche. Yeah, not loads else aside, to be honest, I’ve pretty much got the games I wanted. I think Other M was a good pick, because I would definitely want to play that if I had a Wii Mini. But I am really happy with my list, actually. I think it’s a good list. Shall we recap them once more? Yeah, I think they’re both really strong. I wouldn’t like to be a listener having to pick between those two. Shall we recap them once more, Matthew, to see us out? So for multiplayer, I’ve got Wii Sports. I’ve got Boom Block Spash Party. For action RPG, I’ve got The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. I’ve got Super Paper Mario. Just Super Paper, not The Super Paper Mario. It’s just Super Paper Mario. For Category 3 Platformer, I’ve got Super Mario Galaxy. I’ve got Super Mario Galaxy 2. For sports or fighting game, I’ve got Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I’ve got Wii Sports Resort. Category 5 Shooter, I’ve got Ghost Squad. I’ve got Sin and Punishment, Successor of the Skies. Wii Motion Plus game, Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword. I’ve got Red Steel 2. Re-release a WiiWare game, I’ve got Metroid Prime Trilogy. And I’ve got Hydroventure. Category 8 Puzzle or Survival Horror, I’ve got Silent Hill Shattered Memories. I’ve got Zack and Wiki, The Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure. I realize I’ve said that name different every time I’ve said it. Just move on. Category 9, Wild Card, I’ve got The Last Story. I’ve got Trauma Team. And Category 10, Free Pick, I’ve got Donkey Kong Country Returns. I’ve got Metroid at the end. That was a really good draft, Matthew. I enjoyed that. Great draft. Loved it. Loved revisiting those games. Loved revisiting that era. Great stuff. So, Back Page pod on Twitter, pinned tweet. I’ll put it up as soon as I wake up on Friday morning. You can go vote for whether me or Matthew wins this draft. And as I say, our next draft is coming in February. That will be the Game Pass competitor draft. We build our own versions of Game Pass from different categories and you vote on that. So, it’s going to be fun. Matthew, where can people find you on social media? MrBattle underscore pesto. I’m Samuel W. Roberts. If you’d like to email the podcast, it’s backpagegames at gmail.com. And we’ll be back next week with our mailbag, our third mailbag, Matthew. Yes. See you later, bye bye. Bye!