The X Button

Launch Day

Just as the original Wii shipped with Wii Sports, the pricier version of the Wii U ships with Nintendo Land. It's a similar collection of mini-games with a charming device to frame it: all the game is an amusement park for player-made Mii icons, and each attraction is based on some Nintendo title. As Miis roam the grounds, they can team up in certain games, compete in others, or take on a solo challenge. The game offers a dozen such rides, ranging from the familiar to the obscure. The sights of Metroid Blast should be familiar, as it finds the player with the Wii U gamepad manning Samus Aran's ship while four other participants use Wii remotes to control Samus-suited Miis and take down the airborne vessel (a sixth player can stand around and whine about “the baby” for that authentic modern Metroid experience). Meanwhile, The Legend of Zelda: Battle Quest lets four players hack away at monsters while a fifth uses the Wii U pad to target them with a bow and arrow. Simpler pursuits await in Mario Chase, where four players, all dressed like Toad, run after the fifth player's Mario-garbed avatar, presumably seeking revenge for all of those times he used Warp Zones and left them trapped in other castles.

Nintendo Land's other multiplayer attractions include Pikmin Adventure, where the Wii U pad commands small Pikmin and the Wii remotes control larger ones. In Luigi's Ghost Mansion, players use flashlights to hunt a spirit controlled by the Wii U Pad. Animal Crossing:Sweet Day puts Wii remote users in control of candy-hunters, with the wielder of the Wii U Pad directing two candy guards. Among the single-player attractions, there's the trolley racing of Donkey Kong's Crash Course, the high-speed F-Zero rush of Captain Falcon's Twister Race, the scavenger hunt of Yoshi's Fruit Cart, a recreation of the NES game Balloon Fight, and a rhythm-game called Octopus Dance. Lastly, Nintendo's little-seen 1986 action game Nazo no Murasame Jo returns as Takamaru's Ninja Castle, in which players use shuriken and samurai swords to keep enemies at bay. If you're tracking such things, this is the closest that Nazo no Mursame Jo has ever come to a Western release.

The cynical surely will point out that New Super Mario Bros. U looks a lot like New Super Mario Bros. Wii. And so it does. But that is never the point of any Mario game. And the storyline is never the point either, because this new Mario has pretty much the same premise as the last: Bowser raids Princess Peach's castle and carries her off, in the process hurling Mario, Luigi, and their Toad allies into a large Super Acorn tree. That is not important, for Mario games all are more about the level design and the new ideas on display. The first such idea goes back to those acorns. They bestow the Flying Squirrel suit, which enables Mario to glide through the air, double-jump, and climb walls. Several new Yoshis also appear: the Bubble Baby spews bubbles that turn enemies into coins, the Balloon Baby inflates grotesquely to carry players through the air, and the Bulb Baby Yoshi clears up dark areas with its bioluminescent powers. Regular Yoshi is also on hand, as are the Fire Flower, Ice Flower, Penguin Suit, and Mini-Mushroom. Oh, and the regular mushroom. But has there ever been a traditional 2-D Mario game without that?

Mario games are also increasingly about multiplayer, and New Super Mario Bros. U allows up to five participants in its side-scrolling levels. Four players control Mario, Luigi, Blue Toad, and Yellow Toad (the latter two of whom desperately need real names) with Wii remotes, with the fifth uses the Wii U pad and observes the others like a meddlesome deity. As the four characters make their way through stages, the Wii U pad wielder taps the touch screen to create blocks and stun enemies. Of course, this helps or torments the other players equally, so it's bound to be the most contentious way to go through the game. And Nintendo said the Wii U pad would prevent arguments.

Tank! Tank! Tank! likely won't be anyone's first choice when it comes to picking out a Wii U game. Yet all of the system's high-profile games emphasize multiplayer, and so new owners may find themselves looking for some other title that's best with four players taking part. That's where Tank! Tank! Tank! will come in. Based on an arcade game from 2009, it drops four tanks (resembling the hero of Tiny Tank not a little) into a cityscape and encourages them to destroy each other. The tanks handle well, battles move quickly, and weapons are plentiful. They include plasma shells, missiles, and machine guns, though it's more fun to play with the laser beam, flamethrower, and a single enormous missile called Colossus. To personalize all of this, players can create pilot portraits by photographing themselves with the Wii U pad's camera. And no, the game doesn't limit you to using someone's face. Make your cat, houseplant, or vintage El Topo poster into a tank pilot if you please.

Mutual destruction isn't the only aim of Tank! Tank! Tank! The game lets players team up against other tank brigades or take part in full-blown boss battles. These encounters throw the tanks into combat against a giant mechanical dragon, spider, or some other city-wrecking menace worthy of fighting Gamera or Godzilla. There's no big rubbery friend-to-all-children to save the day, so your tanks must coordinate their attacks and avoid being devoured by the monster. And if they are devoured, respawning doesn't take very long. There's no online multiplayer mode to be seen, though, and playing it with a squad of computer-controlled opponents or allies doesn't have the same impact. So make sure you have the friends and the Wii remotes before grabbing this.

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed will appear on the PlayStation and Xbox 360 as well, but its debut coincides with the Wii launch quite nicely. A sequel to the surprisingly good Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, the game expands the whole concept of a Mario Kart-ish racer. Characters zip around in little cars (or stranger four-wheeled vehicles), but their rides can transform into flying crafts or boats. The race tracks usually let players switch between all three forms, changing from plane to car to hovercraft while taking in the Sega-throwback scenery. The stages are all based around titles from the company's history, ranging from Super Monkey Ball courses to an After Burner stage that leads through the air, across the seas, and onto the decks of aircraft carriers. And there's also a Panzer Dragoon course where dragons snap at passing motorists. It's the closest Sega will get to a new Panzer Dragoon game. Sigh.

The character lineup for Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed dips into Sega's past decades. Naturally, there's a good chunk of Sonic characters: the hedgehog himself, Tails, Amy, Knuckles, Shadow, and Doctor Robotnik Eggman. The rest of the roster features AiAi and MeeMee from Super Monkey Ball; Beat and Gum from Jet Set Radio; Nights and Reala from NiGHTS; Ulala and Pudding from Space Channel 5; Amigo from Samba De Amigo; Joe Musashi from Shinobi; Gillus Thunderhead from Golden Axe; Vyse from Skies of Arcadia; B.D. Joe from Crazy Taxi; and two guest stars: Ralph from Wreck-It Ralph and Danica Patrick from…uh, real life. Wii U owners can also use their Miis, and Xbox 360 owners their avatars. Yes, Sega didn't get too obscure, and as with Sony All-Stars Battle Royale, one certainly complain about all the neglected characters. Shenmue's forklift-piloting Ryo doesn't show up this time, unless he's hidden well. The game doesn't have any actual Panzer Dragoon racers, either, and I don't see the stars of Burning Rangers, GunValkyrie, Streets of Rage, Wonder Boy/Monster World, Girl's Garden, or the first great Sega game, Pengo.

Is the cover of ZombiU a little too direct? I realize it's a game about the undead running amok in England, but isn't it a bit stereotypical to go with a zombified British Foot Guard, bearskin hat and all? Why not add in some zombies wearing bowlers and playing cricket while having tea and crumpets and discussing last night's East Enders? Anyway, ZombiU is particularly brutal in dropping players into the midst of a zombie outbreak. As the member of a survivalist group called The Ravens of Dee, you're sent out into undead-filled streets in search of survivors and the causes behind this entire catastrophe. It somehow involves secret societies, science gone mad, and the works of 16th-century scholar-alchemist John Dee, who apparently saw all of this coming.

ZombiU doesn't go for the resilient life meter and healing herbs of Resident Evil; one bite from an undead lurcher can technically kill your character, who then turns into a zombie. This makes you start over with another survivor, encountering your previous avatar in grimy, brain-eating form. And with the game's multiplayer feature, others can hunt down your now-undead protagonist and steal your supplies.

The Wii U pad's touch screen plays into the supply angle, and you'll use the touch-screen to monitor your items, weapons, and helpful Virucide. It also comes in handy when you're decoding door locks or scanning the environment for shambling monstrosities. The multiplayer modes use the touch-screen for commanding an army of zombies, while other players control armed survivors. It might not do for the Wii U what Resident Evil did for the PlayStation sixteen years ago, but ZombiU remains the most interesting original game of the Wii U's first wave.

I trust that most of you know this isn't some slapdash take on Adventure Time. It's made by Wayforward, a developer with a penchant for excellent 2-D art and classic tributes. And you'll see both in Hey, Ice King! Why'd You Steal Our Garbage? Based on Pendelton Ward's delightfully strange (and subtly post-apocalyptic) Cartoon Network series, the game follows oddly hatted human kid Finn and his shape-shifting dog Jake through the Land of Ooo. They ostensibly set out to deduce the Ice King's motivations for building a princess out of stolen garbage, but their quest leads them to all sorts of characters from the cartoon. As in most Adventure Time episodes, it's hard to say just where things will end up.

WayForward clearly patterned the gameplay after Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, with a top-viewed overworld that gives away to side-scrolling action whenever Finn and Jake enter towns, caves, dungeons, or any battle. Both of them discover abilities as the game presses on, with most of Jake's maneuvers giving the pair access to new areas. In that regard, it's not too far from A Boy and his Blob (which, coincidentally, WayForward remade a short time ago). Players can also customize their skills to some extent, as power-up stars boost health, attack, and defense. And for the connoisseur of Adventure Time merchandise, the special edition has a bestiary, a sword-shaped stylus, and a Zelda-like map all packed into a steelbook case. Now let's see if Wayforward makes a game based on The Bravest Warriors next year.

Atlus is intent on reissuing every Persona game in portable form, and sometimes it's for good reason. The PSP version of Persona 3, for example, is the best treatment of the game, thanks to a direct battle interface and the option to play as either a male or female protagonist, with appropriately branching storylines. Persona 4 Golden doesn't revise its PlayStation 2 source material quite as thoroughly, but perhaps that's because there wasn't as much to improve. Persona 4 creates the highlight of its franchise as it drops a player-named protagonist (OK, he's called Yu officially) into a rural town that hides both a serial killer roams and a world of extradimensional demons. Break it into constituent pieces and you'll find a randomly generated dungeon hack, a high school full of potential girlfriends for the main character, and a jejune tale of crime-solving, monster-summoning teenagers. Combine them, however, and Persona 4 becomes a relentlessly intriguing hybrid of RPG and social simulator. The mundane side of the social simulator capably plays off the murder mystery, and the characters grow deeper as their psychological issues spawn dungeons in a surreal realm accessed by television sets. There's a twisted, perhaps unintended sense of pop-art magical realism about Persona 4, setting it well apart from the typical RPG.

Persona 4 Golden presents the Playstation 2 version of the game with numerous little enhancements. There's no new heroine for the player to control, though. Instead, Golden adds a supporting character named Marie, who has a bit of a temper and dresses like a Hot Topic discount bin. She's not a playable party member, but she's a new Social Link, along with the police detective Adachi. Golden also adds more animated cutscenes, motorcycle transportation, gardening, bug-catching, a bonus epilogue, and numerous new get-togethers for the game's core cast. Battles now feature tag-team attacks and extra summonable Persona allies, including some Ultimate avatars. The city of Inaba now has more for the player to take in, and there's even a quiz-show mini-game. And for those who already went through Persona 4, you can skip through to the new material fairly quick. Those same fans will also note that Teddie and Chie's original voices were replaced by the actors who took over the roles in the recent Persona 4 Arena. So that's one way that the PlayStation 2 version differs.

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale drew some criticism for mixing Sony characters in a rather blatant imitation of Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. fighting games. Some even compared it to Atari Karts, the Jaguar racer that imitated Mario Kart but couldn't come up with any established Atari icons beyond Bentley Bear. Not that Sony is quite as bankrupt when it comes to decent characters, but there's a bit of desperation in the All-Stars roster. There are obvious choices, of course: Kratos from God of War, Cole from Infamous, SackBoy from LittleBigPlanet, Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal, Nathan Drake from Uncharted, Nariko from Heavenly Sword, Sir Daniel from MediEvil, Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, Fat Princess, Parappa the Rapper, Sly Cooper, Sony mascot Toro, and, as free downloads for a two-week period, Kat from Gravity Rush and Emmet Graves from StarHawk. Yet it's hard to imagine many players demanding Killzone's Colonel Radec or Ape Escape's Spike. All-Stars even gave up and borrowed characters from multiplatform titles: Raiden from Metal Gear Solid, Heihachi from Tekken, Dante from Devil May Cry, and a Big Daddy from Bioshock.

The developers might've dug deeper into the Sony catalog. Perhaps Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are too dignified for a fighter, but what about or Jen from Primal? What about the heroes of LocoRoco, Jeanne d'Arc, Wild Arms, Motor Toon Grand Prix, Arc the Lad, Okage, Gunners Heaven, Jumping Flash, Dark Cloud 2, or even the first PlayStation game, Crime Crackers? And what of Battle Arena Toshinden's Sofia, perhaps the shortest-lived Sony mascot? I suspect she's not doing much nowadays.

Unashamed in taking after Super Smash Bros., PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale drops up to four characters into various stages inspired by Sony titles. These combatants knock each other around the scenery, building up power meters with all of the damage they inflict. Once they've gained enough energy, it can be released in highly destructive super moves. The game can be played across the PS3 and Vita, on top of the usual online features. And for all of my complaints about obscure games going ignored, All-Stars features one amusing relic: the final boss is Polygon Man, the swiftly abandoned original spokes-head for the PlayStation.