Future WiiWare Games: Top Ten

10. Squibs Arcade

• Developer: Alten8
• Screenshot gallery

In any thrilling top ten countdown, starting at number ten is a curse. No one cares about number ten, and the impulse to use the word "languishing" is overwhelming. Where else do you get to use words like languishing, than at position X in a Top X list?

Squibs Arcade languishes defiantly, though - if the big names of gaming aren't ready for satirical deconstruction, then they'd better prepare themselves for a gentle, loving slap. Squibs Arcade (500 Wii Points, out next month) boils down nine Triple-A titles into their rudimentary elements, and fits them onto an eighties LCD screen. Gun Cogs marks stark the similarity between Gears of War's "innovative" cover system, and those white blocks on Space Invaders. Lots of Levelling genuinely recreates the sense of bewildered futility that's 25-75 per cent of all MMOs (depending on which one you're playing), and Jack A Motor successfully replicates GTA's themes of running over policemen and, erm, cats.

It's a game you'll want to show everyone, just for the nice in-jokes for everyone who was there the first time around. Scratched-off stickers, lost and swapped battery covers, and the battered, scratched cases. It's also something that'll infuriate you into a fit of explosive hives when family members say, "oh I remember this, this is when games used to be good". Short-term depthless novelty, yes. But be honest - if they physically made these games, you'd probably buy them.

So now, I'm looking forward to a BioShock 2 Pocketeer - sort it out, PRs - although I do feel obliged to point out TIGSource's Bootleg Demakes competition of last year. It's a similar concept, only with 69 games, 8-bit gameplay, and they're all completely free.

9. Crystal Defenders R1

• Developer: Square Enix
• Screenshot gallery

Slumming it at number nine is Square Enix's Crystal Defenders. Not because it's a bad game - more because it's a straight up tower defence game. They might be the first in the Wii paid download tower defence market [they're not actually - Ed], but it only really adds the Final Fantasy bestiary and classes to a Flash game.

In twenty minutes play, I didn't have time to gauge the minutiae of unit balance and professionally assess the difficulty curve. However, it does give me an opportunity to be brief on number eight - just read the reviews for the XBLA version.

8. Robocalypse - Beaver Defense

• Developer: Vogster
• Screenshot gallery

Arbitrarily dropped in at number eight for the purposes of thematic continuity (and making a mockery of the ordinal integrity of this top ten, in the process) is the slightly more interesting tower defence game, Robocalypse - Beaver Defence.

It features, right, this big-brained beaver who's been mutated by radioactive waste, and rejected by the beaver community thanks to his newfound obsession with hoarding weaponry and attacking robots. The storyline is written by Jay Lender, who worked on Spongebob Squarepants, if that makes you any happier.

It scores over Crystal Defenders in a couple of ways - you can issue commands mid-wave to a hero unit, making waves more interactive, and the waves of beaver-controlled robots don't stick to a rigid path. However, with just four towers - two of which weren't available to play in Frankfurt - it was worryingly slim on tactics, and I found myself able to max out my turrets without much sense of fiscal restraint.

Multiplayer is an interesting addition, but it's not aggressive - you don't get to split your time between defending your base and attacking your opponent. Instead, it's a case of play the same waves at the same time, and see who lives longest. More aggressive competition was discussed, says Vogster's Mario Kroll - but turned out to be a logistical nightmare. Or at least, he nodded, when I said, "that must have been a logistical nightmare". I'm told by real journalists that you can completely attribute your words to anyone who nods after you say them within a five-metre radius.

7. Spaceball: Revolution

• Developer: Virtual Toys
• Screenshot gallery

Spaceball: Revolution is at number seven, because you don't get to be "pleasantly surprising" without looking like you might be a bit of a disappointment. Like a lot of the games here, the idea is simple - in fact, I should probably start using a thesaurus to avoid wearing out that phrase, as simple ideas is the driving theme behind WiiWare.

All you have to do is fire a ball down a tube, at a 3x3 grid. Hitting a panel swaps its colour state, hitting the bar between them swaps both over. The point is to match the pattern in the top-left corner. Take too long, and you're forced backwards out of the tube - get pushed back four times in one stage, and you're out. So far, so Arkanoid/Discs of Tron/Falling Out A Space Corridor.

The thing that makes Spaceball enjoyable is the dozens of different ways it makes this difficult. Rotating the playfield, blocks, blades - even easy mode will get your tongue poking itself out of your mouth in an unsophisticated display of concentration. Master mode is strictly for posers - the time limits won't forgive a single mistake.

It also has multipliers, and that means casual hardcore appeal. The higher you bounce off a wall, the higher your multiplier, and chaining shots increases your score. The chasm that hardcore players demand between their scores, and that of their mothers, is intact. Although it's probably not going to inspire much in the way of YouTube bragging.

6. WiiWare FPS Showdown - Overturn: Mecha Wars vs. Water Warfare

• Developers: Studiozan/Gamebridge (Overturn), Hudson (Water Warfare)
• Overturn gallery, Water Warfare gallery

I can't judge Mecha Wars, because I was forced to play it on a balance board, while a woman trained a video camera directly on my body mass index. All I can say is that the board worked surprisingly well as a movement controller, but that doesn't mean it's going to revolutionise the way we play FPS games.

Instead, I'll talk about Water Warfare, the game that's bringing murder to children, via the precious and wonderful gift of analogy. It helped Orwell get around the censors with Animal Farm, and now, legions of protective parents will be instantly disarmed by the primary colours, the replacement of death with "wetness", and health packs with "towels".

Sure, the naming of the weapons could have been a bit more imaginative to preserve the illusion - "Water Machine Gun" is like standing in a plant pot and pretending to be invisible. That said, this eight-person multiplayer FPS (with two players able to share a split screen) is instantly fun. The maps are randomly generated across four themes, and power-ups are from the Mario Kart Universe, including invuln raincoats, rollerskate speed boosts, and banana skins.

You're not bound to those ridiculous Friend codes, and all the classic multiplayer modes are here. Two kinds of Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Checkpoint Race, and Base Defence. For anyone who'd rather delay the epiphany that humans are innately capable of bottomless atrocity, Water Warfare will paint the sky blue for a little bit longer.

5. Swords & Soldiers

• Developer: Ronimo Games
• Screenshot gallery

There's something beautiful about Vikings. As I understand it, they invaded our lands and tickled us all and said, "is that a smile" until we said, "oh OK then, you win". Ronimo Games has a similar idea, ish. Vikings are just looking for the ultimate barbeque sauce, which they think is probably something to do with the massive pepper the evil vegetarian Aztecs are growing. So they initiate a 2D war, which eventually involves another secret aggressor, who end up feeding the pepper to some dog, who turns into a dragon. Tell me about it, yeah? Happened to me twice already today, and I've only just got up.

Swords & Soldiers has already been announced and reported - the basic gameplay of resource-collection, unit production and divine intervention was finished in October - but since then, they've been adding storyline and extra play modes to pad out what might have been a slender experience. Single-player missions and skirmishes, arcade-style challenges, and survival modes all feel like they inflate the game world and help it float, rather than gluing objects to the game world, and popping it. There's another inappropriate balloon analogy later, so keep reading!

Complete 25 achievements, and you'll get a special code, and Ronimo's designer Fabian Akker cheerfully admits they haven't got a clue what that code will do, yet. "We'd like to do something nice, though. Maybe send it to us, and we'll give the first ten we receive something nice." It's that loveable can-do disorganisation that makes Ronimo so adorable, and Swords & Soldiers would have been higher on the list if I hadn't been trounced so casually by Akker. Like I said: my list. I do what I like.

4. ColorZ

• Developer: Exkee
• Screenshot gallery

If Spaceball: Revolution was a pleasant surprise, Colorz was a titillating shock. It doesn't look like much to watch someone else play - it seems absurdly easy. The concept is uncomplicated - control a red guy with the pointy wand, and the green guy with the nunchuk thumb-stick. Guide them into the microbes of the same colour, and they'll pop. Running at a sedate pace, with bold primary colours and chunky graphics, I was hardly watching Ikaruga.

But it's not easy. Controlling two cursors - one with a thumb-stick, one with the sensor bar - is like rubbing your stomach and patting your head. You end up patting both, or just waving your arms around like this guy, which in this context kills you.

There are twenty solo levels, grouped into four sets of five. On the first, you have just one ship, which gives the game a chance to be a straight-up speed run. From two to four, you're playing with two ships, as described above. By the fifth chapter of each level, you're controlling three, albeit two at a time. And to add to the stress, you have to combine ships to destroy microbes of secondary colour, and combine all three ships to break white microbes.

If the single-player is surprisingly relaxing, stressful, and compulsive (with plenty of scope to go back and grind a better score), the multiplayer is fantastic. The tension and pleasure of co-dependant co-op in such a simple environment is completely unexpected. A shared life pool means some recrimination for mistakes, but shared control of the merged vessel is an argument-causing stroke of genius. The ship moves in a mathematical average of your combined efforts - it's like Crowd Control Pong, but with someone to point at, blame, and tell to get out of your house.

3. Bonsai Barber

• Developer: Zoonami
• Screenshot gallery

It's odd, talking to the man who "did" GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark, and being too full of snot, sneezes and headache to be able to say, "oh hey, you're amazing, put your foot in my hands and I'll help you do a backflip". The oddness becomes slightly stifling when he asks you to cut the hair of a gurning carrot.

The premise is straightforward. I point and rotate the controller, and snip around the carrot's bush, all the time looking at his face to see if he's happy. Snip too far, and you can regrow the leaves with the water spray. The game's not out to trap you - you're never without an undo. Paint the hair if you like, take a photo, pop it on an SD card, and bang the gong when you're done.

Martin Hollis means it. In Bonsai Barber, you move into a village and give the twelve fruits and vegetables of a local town haircuts. When I ask if the idea is for you to build a professional and personal relationship with those saucy cherry twins, I'm not sure if I'm joking. But Hollis means it like hell. That's exactly what the idea is.

To help you get closer to them, there's a lot of distinct personalities. With "a lot of text" behind each character, you'll probably find yourself going back to see what they're going to say, as much as cut their hair to get the five star award. To keep it fresh - or to stop you wearing the game out too quickly - the game limits you to five haircuts a day. "It's like when you sit and watch too many episodes of Friends in one go. It stops being funny," explains Hollis. He should have a word with E4.

Bonsai Barber will prove itself over time - but for the moment, I'm not reviewing it, and I'm more than happy to give it the benefit of the doubt, and number three on my logic-free number parade.

2. Lit

• Developer: Wayforward Technologies
• Screenshot gallery

The immediate vibe of Lit's title screen is survival horror. Darkness, and that typewriter font that's synonymous with low ammo. The emphasis is on the atmosphere rather than shock or horror, though. Lit keeps the terror imagined, implying the horrors that lurk in the shadows from the bug-like nasties that crawl from it, and the swirls that reach out for you if you get too close. Mothers of children who've just entered the inevitable "mimicking phase" will be pleased to know that Pyramid Head doesn't run in and whip your skin off.

You take the role of Jake, who has to negotiate his way across a school plunged into darkness, with nothing more than a slingshot, a torch, and an ability to flick switches and press buttons.

Entering the darkness is instant death: you have to create a path of light to the exit. Smashing the blacked-out windows lets a beam of light across the map. Lamps create a small pool of safety. Computer terminals can be remotely accessed and turned on, effectively creating bridges. The ways in which you can lift the darkness are many, but put too much stress on the school's weakened circuitry, and you'll trip the fuse.

With just thirty levels, Lit is short but incredibly tense and sweet. The idea is simple (I've run out of synonyms), but elegantly executed. And if you play it in a dark room, where you're not sat next to loads of journalists saying, "Look, it's Martin Hollis", it might even be atmospheric.

1. Cave Story

• Developer: Nicalis
• Screenshot gallery

Tyrone Rodriguez has worked on big-name games in the past. Not brilliant games, but who hasn't heard of The Fast And The Furious? It's a big name. It's also a game where perfection was never a consideration. The best you could hope for is Vin Diesel popping in to say something meaningless and nihilistic into a dictaphone, before collapsing into a terminal bout of mirthlessness.

Since getting in touch with Cave Story auteur Pixel - aka Daisuke Amaya - and negotiating the move of the revered freeware platformer into the paid WiiWare arena, perfection has suddenly become paramount. When you ask for money for something that's freely available on the internet, people like you and I suddenly feel entitled and obliged to scream and fly around the room like deflating balloons.

There's no time to discuss how incredible Cave Story is here, now - find out for yourself why it feels like a lost NES classic - but there is time to briefly discuss the added value. First - rest assured that the original game is all there, pixel and midi file perfect. However, there're graphical and musical upgrade options - independently toggled - that let you play through with more pixels, extra graphical detail, punchier notation and renovated midi fonts.

Amaya had absolute power of veto at every stage of the design, and according to Rodriguez, the extra resolution has let him get closer to his original intent. Believe it or not, Amaya didn't think Cave Story was perfect.

Other new features (oddly described by Rodriguez as "downloadable content") included a health-capped hard mode, a boss rush mode, and extra levels to play through. No extra story though, Rodriguez insists. The intent isn't to add to the canon, just to add Metal Slug-style slog-through levels. Paying for the extra levels seems like semi-reasonable DLC, but describing if health > 3 { health = 3; } as DLC is a new level of microtransaction. 1 Wii Point for that, right?

However, if this brings Cave Story to a new slew of folk who aren't inclined or able to find it for free, then that can only make the world better. Hell, just buy it to give something back - for "up to 1000" points, it's the longest, most beautiful and craftsmanlike game you'll get for the money.

0. Icarian: Kindred Spirits

• Developer: Over The Top Games
• Screenshot gallery

Due to short time, and mismanagement of that time, I didn't manage to play or talk to the people behind Icarian: Kindred Spirits. So here's the press release. "In ICARIAN: KINDRED SPIRITS, Nyx, an enigmatic winged girl, descends from heaven in search of her missing friend Icarus. Use your hand movements and the Wii Remote to raise Nyx, flap her wings and fly over awesome ancient Greek scenery." If you can find a blander say-nothing press release than that, I'd love to see it.

From my peripheral vision, it had a crisp visual style that you don't expect from the Wii, and as graphics are important, I'm happy to give Kindred Spirits position zero by way of apology.

The end.