Nintendo doesn’t often have massive blunders, but the Wii U was certainly a dark time for the company. Riding high off the huge success that the best Wii games brought, the Wii U tried to keep that momentum by building on that branding. That strategy ended up backfiring big-time in the sales department, but not due to a poor lineup of games.
While it wasn’t powerful enough to compete with the best PlayStation 4 games and best Xbox One games that came out around the same time, the Wii U had amazing entries in almost all it’s major franchises, plus some new IP that we think are some of the best games of all time. Sure, most of these Wii U games have been ported over and are now some of the best Switch games, but let’s go back to their origin and see just how great this misunderstood system was.
You can also take a look at our lists of the best GameCube games and best N64 games if you’re feeling particularly nostalgic.
Action
Fighting
Platformer
Role-playing game
Racing
Puzzle
Shooter
Sandbox