Modern “Classics”

Even though I primarily play older games, I dabble in more modern ones on occasion — especially lately with the Wii.  I posted a while back about how I got a bit of a “classic game” feel out of playing Killer 7 on the GameCube, and I’m getting a similar feeling from a couple of titles on WiiWare now.  If you’re a retro gamer with a Wii, I recommend looking beyond just the Virtual Console selection and explore WiiWare if you haven’t already.  While the service is only a few weeks old, there are several games with retro roots.  The flagship is a Dr. Mario update and there’s even a new entry in the Star Soldier series, but the two I really want to recommend to retro gamers are a couple of puzzle-platformers: LostWinds and Toki Tori.

LostWinds is a wonderful little side scrolling adventure that uses the Wii remote to blow gusts of wind that help your character make jumps, fight enemies, and so on.  There are some interesting puzzles and the whole thing just oozes wonderful atmosphere.  Toki Tori is a little more conventional and reminds me a lot of Lost Vikings and similar ilk.  You’re a small, flightless bird that has to work its way around a side-scrolling maze to collect eggs.  You have powers like bridge building and even short teleportation.  Both games actually make interesting use of the second remote, even though they’re both one-player games.  A second person can join in LostWinds to play around with blowing gusts of wind and in Toki Tori, they can draw paths on the screen and point things out to make recommendations.  It’s very clever, and Toki Tori has been a lot of fun with two people collaborating on the hard puzzles.

Anyway, just a couple quick thoughts, and a recommendation that if you like older games, WiiWare might actually have some newer ones that could appeal to you.