Nintendo Land

Nintendo Land launched in 2012 as Wii U's flagship showcase title, with a single core mission: to make it immediately clear what the console's second-screen controller was actually good for. The game takes the form of a virtual amusement park, guided by the chatty flying robot Monita, hiding twelve attractions inspired by classic Nintendo series — from The Legend of Zelda through Metroid and Donkey Kong to Animal Crossing and F-Zero. Each attraction is a standalone minigame with its own rules, its own visual style, and a surprisingly different feel; some are built for a single player, others for a whole couch full of people.

The strongest section is made up of the asymmetric team attractions, where the player holding the GamePad sees something completely different from everyone else watching the TV. In Mario Chase, you flee from a quartet of pursuers and only you have a clear map on your display; in Luigi's Ghost Mansion, you instead control an invisible ghost that the others must expose with flashlight cones and team up to defeat. This information imbalance creates exactly the kind of shouting, laughing, and finger-pointing that a good party night is built on. The solo attractions lean more on motion controls and the touchscreen — bow and arrow, shooting cans, sword-swinging — serving as a miniature catalogue of everything the console can do.

Technically it's a clean, colorful, smoothly running game whose playful, plastic-toy park look still feels charming and timeless today; the music recycles familiar themes from Nintendo classics in lighter arrangements. Reception at the time was largely favorable, with critics praising the inventiveness of the asymmetric modes, though it was also noted that the game needs a group of people around it — and that was exactly what the Wii U often lacked. Today, Nintendo Land reads as the most honest proof that the second-screen concept had real gaming potential; it just lacked the support. For collectors and weekend get-togethers alike, it remains one of the most entertaining games ever released on the console.