With well over a thousand physical games in the west alone, collecting every Nintendo Wii game ever is going to be easier said than done. With the rarest Wii titles topping out at a few hundred dollars though, you’re not going to need to take out a second mortgage for that one game that completes your collection.
10. Mr. Bean’s Wacky World
Price Range: $100+
A thoroughly miserable Mr. Bean game came very late to the PS2 in 2007 as a budget title, and then was ported to the Nintendo Wii as a release that will now cost you as much as US$100 for a physical copy. Dumped into the world with absolutely no fanfare and the odd bad review in 2009 in Europe and Australia, North America was gifted with Mr. Bean’s Wacky World in 2011. Japan somehow missed out on all the fun.
It’s easy to understand why this game would be so scarce. It doesn’t seem likely that any version of this game has ever received a large printing, as the Wii version in particular came along to virtually no reviews or attention from players. A visually hideous, clunky platformer with tedious puzzle elements, Mr. Bean’s Wacky World is a stark reminder that rarity is not a metric for quality by any stretch of the imagination.
The only people who need to care about the high asking price for Mr. Bean’s Wacky World are those who want to have a complete Wii collection. Everyone else should stay away from this game in any form.
9. Pandora’s Tower
Price Range: $100+
With good graphics, relatively fun gameplay, and some good puzzle elements, Pandora’s Tower is a solid if unremarkable action RPG that may aesthetically and, in its gameplay, remind you a little of Metroid or Castlevania. Taking on the role of the hero Aeron, players will find themselves exploring the fortress known as the Thirteen Towers. Plenty of challenge can be found in this vast dungeon, along with the kind of annoying Wii controller experience you might be imagining right now.
What’s interesting about Pandora’s Tower retailing for more than US$100 in some cases is the fact that the game sold alright, with publishing duties handled by Nintendo themselves in Japan and Europe and Xseed in North America. It doesn’t seem as though anyone printed very many copies in any region, with only a handful of what sold making it to places like eBay.
Pandora’s Tower can appeal to a certain type of action RPG fan, but that appeal is still limited, and the relative scarcity of the game suggests this.
8. Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon
Price Range: $100+
Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon unfortunately received decidedly mixed reviews upon release, although it has its own passionate fanbase. While elements like the graphics and story of a young hero named Seto in a post-apocalyptic world have been praised even by the game’s harshest critics, there are more than a few complaints about the gameplay and controls for this action-heavy game with light RPG elements.
So, what happened? The game sold poorly, with Namco dumping the publishing responsibilities in North America with the much smaller Xseed. From the sound of things, the game didn’t sell great, but that’s okay because neither Namco nor anyone bothered to print a lot of copies. This game clearly had a budget and some ambition behind it, and it’s a shame to see a decent-if-bumpy game fall into obscurity because it’s trapped on a dead console.
It certainly doesn’t help Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon that it remains a Wii-exclusive that requires the use of the Wii’s remote. We’d love to see this game retooled for a second shot at glory, but don’t hold your breath.
7. JU-ON: The Grudge
Price Range: $150
JU-ON: The Grudge promised an intriguing concept for the Nintendo Wii, which had exclusive rights to the game, but the execution of the premise seemingly left a lot to be desired among critics and players alike. Armed with a flashlight and the ability to perform a variety of problematic QTEs, because of course the game controls like shit, you’re left to explore a grab bag of very spooky locations. This includes a factory, because who doesn’t remember the infamous factory scene from The Grudge, as well as some rundown apartments. Point is, the locations themselves aren’t very interesting.
Regardless of that, if you’re on track to own every Wii game ever made, know this is one of the titles that will cost you a little more. The game saw abysmal sales to go with its terrible reviews, and what we have here is another situation where it seems like North American publisher Xseed didn’t make very many copies. Ju-On: The Grudge is a curiosity at best, and it’s highly unlikely you’ll find it to be more than that.
6. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
Price Range: $150+
After so many rare Wii games that also happen to be considered terrible by most, it’s nice to have Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn as a sort of palette cleanser. Contemporary and retrospective reviews alike call Radiant Dawn an excellent title in the Fire Emblem franchise. Then and now the tactical RPG was considered by genre fans to be a highlight on the Nintendo Wii.
So, why is it so rare? You would think a major release from a popular series would be a lot cheaper and easier to come by. Unfortunately, Radiant Dawn was seemingly a victim of poor timing, being released at a time where several other Fire Emblem games were put out. The games had also lost some of their popularity in Japan at this point, with a growing-but-still-niche following in the rest of the world, as evidenced by the fact that the game didn’t sell very well. These are all possible factors to explain why Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is relatively obscure in the current landscape.
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is worth tracking down for physical media collectors of the series, Wii completists, or both. It would be nice to see this and Path of Radiance get a remaster someday.
5. Fritz Chess
Price Range: $150+
Chess on the Wii doesn’t sound super exciting on paper, and apparently, the world completely agrees with us. The extreme obscurity of Fritz Chess might lead you to wonder if the game exists at all. Fritz Chess doesn’t even have a single critical review on Metacritic, giving us the indication that few copies were printed, and even fewer were ever purchased.
It doesn’t even sound like the people who have the game are all that enthused about Fritz Chess either. There’s three different modes of play on offer here, but it all boils down to either playing chess against a bot that calculates how good of a player you are, or playing local multiplayer on the same console. There’s no ninjas ripping each other’s head off, so clearly Mortal Kombat: Deception’s Chess Kombat is the superior chess video game. It’s all pretty underwhelming, with the developers trying to at least make the computer a compelling opponent. Your mileage will definitely vary on that.
The near-universal indifference to Fritz Chess, and this includes the people who manufactured the game, means it’s going to be difficult to get a copy. As for chess itself, you’ve got better options, including the easily obtainable real thing.
4. Rhythm Fever Heaven
Price Range: $150+
Despite selling pretty well as the first Rhythm Fever game released for a mainline Nintendo console, with good reviews from critics and players alike, Rhythm Fever Heaven sits among the rarest Nintendo Wii games of all time. Any success Rhythm Fever Heaven ultimately enjoyed didn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. The game didn’t have a massive printing, and CIB copies don’t make it into circulation too terribly often.
If you’re a fan of rhythm games, this third entry in the series will give you a lot to enjoy. Utilizing precise button taps, many regard Rhythm Fever Heaven as one of the toughest games of its type. The difficulty level is brutal from the word go, and it only gets more taxing from there. But it never stops being the kind of challenge that’s really fun to master. The simplistic visual style of Rhythm Fever Heaven also helps with its appeal, revealing something quite creative and engaging.
3. Veggy World
Price Range: $200+
What sort of game springs to mind with a title like Veggy World? Gritty action adventure in the vein of God of War? Mascot racer? Perhaps some unbearable edutainment garbage?
You may be surprised to find that Veggy World is none of those things and is in fact a shoot-em-up in which players control a strawberry spaceship. You’ll be flying through colorful backgrounds and worlds that are nevertheless pretty unpleasant to look at, battling different sorts of fruit, and yeah, that’s the whole game. Both the publisher and developer for the Wii version of Veggy World made a lot of crap like this. It’s a budget title that loses its charm before you ever actually boot it up.
Is Veggy World good? No one has seemingly even reviewed this game on Metacritic, and very little data on the game seems to exist anywhere. Once again, we have no idea how many copies of this game were produced, but it sure doesn’t seem like it was very many at all.
Allegedly there’s a PS2 version of this game, but we’re not sure we believe that.
2. Atrévete a Soñar
Price Range: $250+
Based on a Mexican telenovela that translates to “Dare to dream,” Atrévete a Soñar was bound to go under the radar and sell few, if any copies. The TV show follows a young girl named Patito, who has adventures with her art-school pals and showdowns against some rival girls. The show was seemingly popular enough to get a tie-in game, but it doesn’t seem like very many were ever made. Released exclusively in Mexico, we have no sales data for the game, nor do we even have any reviews on Metacritic, save for one short user review that didn’t seem to have very much fun.
Singing and dancing are a big part of this show, so it makes sense that Atrévete a Soñar is a game with lots of singing and dancing with your included microphone. It doesn’t sound as though the game is very responsive at either of these activities, and there’s only 20 songs available anyway, but these facts hardly stop the game from becoming a holy grail collector’s item for anyone who wants a complete North American Wii library.
As you’ll often find, most rare Wii games are rare because no one really cared one way or the other. Atrévete a Soñar is an expensive example of this.
1. Club Penguin: Game Day! (Limited Edition)
Price Range: $500+
A rare variant of a rare game creates a situation in which you will almost certainly pay several hundred dollars to have Club Penguin: Game Day in your collection. Based on the extremely popular MMORPG that ran officially until 2017, Club Penguin: Game Day is very much the sort of game that may only appeal to hardcore fans of the IP in question, although you don’t have to know the first thing about this series to play Game Day!
What Club Penguin: Game Day offers, as the title might suggest, is a series of minigames. Think Mario Party but with Club Penguin aesthetics. That seems to be just fine for many Club Penguin fans, but others may not have quite the same experience. As party games for the Wii go, we all know it could be a hell of a lot worse than this.
The limited edition of Club Penguin was rumored to have only been given out to employees. That may explain why the game is so hard to find in this specific form. If you ever come across a chance to get the limited-edition version for less than $500, any aspiring collector will want to snatch that up immediately.
READ NEXT: 10 PSP Hidden Gems You Should Seek Out
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site.
