Nintendo adds new WiiWare games for the Wii every week without fail. Now the WiiWare service celebrates its first anniversary. Launched a year ago, the service has served as a platform for developers to showcase their creativity and it now boasts of 81 games in its library, offering a range of experiences for all Wii owners.
“The first anniversary of our WiiWare service is a milestone that marks how far the service has come and how much great content is currently available,” Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s Executive VP of Sales & Marketing stated. “We encourage everyone to get their Wii consoles connected to the Internet so they have access to the full range of WiiWare games.”
WiiWare games have been made by over 40 different game development studios, and more than 50 percent of the games in the library were created by small independent studios with not more than five employees. So far, games such as World of Goo from 2D Boy, Strong Bad’s Cool Games For Attractive people from Telltale Game, Tetris Party from Tetris Online and Bit.Trip Beat from Aksys Games have all been extremely popular. The roster of extremely popular games goes on including Mega Man 9 from Capcom, Lit from WayForward Technologies, LostWinds from Frontier, and Dr. Mario Online Rx and Bonsai Barber from Nintendo.
The games expected in the coming years are Icarian Kindred Spirits from Over The Top Games, Super Meat Boy from Team Meat, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years from Square Enix, Cave Story from Nicalis and Bit.Trip Core from Aksys Games. In Cave Story, players find themselves on an island where a race of rabbit-like creatures roam free, and Bit.Trip Core, a follow-up to Bit.Trip Beat, features a similar graphic and rhythm style to the first game, with a totally different retro game mechanic.