Many people have written off their Wii as a dead console. Probably most of the people who haven’t are the ones playing Skyward Sword or the ones still stuck on Wii Sports. At our house, the Wii game that sees the most play is Super Mario Galaxy 2. From the beginning, I’ve played the whole game through with my four-year-old daughter. She controls the player 2 star, and she’s actually a huge help. She can hold monsters still to let me past certain places, shoot star bits out at enemies, and collect 1-Ups and coins that I can’t reach. Having that extra heart during a boss battle makes a big difference. And the bonding is great. Every time we hear the music that goes along with “You got a star!”, we hug or high five. Mario Galaxy 2 is great. A-.

Before I started my father-daughter replay of Twilight Princess, I used the Wii to play through Wind Waker for the first time. Despite the fact that it’s an older game, I really enjoyed it. And while I found the wide-open ocean somewhat monotonous, the stealth bits and context-sensitive combat music were very well done. All-in-all, I may prefer Twilight Princess, but Wind Waker was a stellar game, and it gets an A-.

I really enjoyed the original Zuma. I played a ton of the free online version before buying the Playstation 3 version. When I heard of Zuma’s Revenge, I jumped all over it. I’ve played it a ton, as has my wife. And while she’s much better at the game than am I, we both finished and enjoyed the game. They added a number of really fun mechanics. There are levels in which you slide rather than spin, and levels in which you have the ability to switch between two locations. There are also bosses every ten levels or so. It’s one of my favorite casual titles, and as such gets the same A- that Mario Galaxy 2 and Wind Waker got.