Three Nintendo Wii Accessories Owners Loved (And Two They Hated)

The Nintendo Wii, released at the tail end of 2006, was the company's casual-friendly video game console follow-up to the GameCube. While flush with plenty of games that only used the packed-in Wii Remote and nunchuck attachment, some required a completely different style of controller or encouraged some plastic trash wrapped around it. When Nintendo released the Wii with this simplistic motion controller, I don't think anyone anticipated the flood of current landfill that'd invade our homes.

The Wii had a ton of weird attachments and accessories, but it wasn't all bad. In fact, most of the accessories I personally loved often boil down to memories of the game tied to it, but we're also pragmatic here. I might not have enjoyed everything that Nintendo threw at the Wii, but I most certainly found a bundle of accessories that were my ride-or-die between 2006 and 2012.

That's not to say there weren't some heinous devices, either. For those who didn't spend a lot of time in game stores during their peak, sections of them would have what looked like bargain store toys littering the shelves. Instead of being a couple of bucks for a fake tennis set, it'd cost some ludicrous amount of cash and wouldn't provide any benefit, other than alerting everyone around you that you had zero imagination when holding the Wii Remote.

Something the Wii missed with its game-changing controller was having a home base to touch on. A regular controller for those regular video games. Nintendo did release it, with the Classic Controller, but its flat back and squished shoulder buttons weren't ergonomically great. After a couple of years, the Pro version was released, and this is what unlocked a lot of gaming doors for me and others.

"Monster Hunter Tri" was now actually comfortable to play, no longer hamstrung by weird Wii controls or the uncomfortable Classic Controller. The entire library of retro games on the Wii Virtual Console was also suddenly far more playable. This helped cement my love of old games, with "Gunstar Heroes" and "Super Castlevania IV" quickly rising up the ranks of the most time spent on the Wii.

It also didn't matter that the Wii didn't have analogue triggers, unlike the Switch and Switch 2's current controller fare. Why didn't it matter? Mostly because games released for the Wii were either reworked around the hardware constraints or just never released on the platform. Meanwhile, there are plenty of games, like "Star Wars Outlaws," that have some minor issues with driving, as it's just a digital switch instead of a gradual pull.

You know what's really good for a 13-year-old's self-esteem? His video game console telling him he's fat. Plus, I paid the $90 for it as well. The Wii Balance Board highlighted something really spectacular with the Wii: how fast fads moved on, how much plastic was now in my bedroom, and how rarely another game developer would manage to crack the magic of Nintendo's weird hardware.

Outside of Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus, alongside maybe just a couple of games, the board was left to rot in a hole of various exercise games. Rarely did teams take the hardware to make something really interesting, instead opting for "Big Beach Sports 2" or "G1 Jockey 2008." If you guessed standing on the board for balance and jumping with minimal effort, you guessed right.

The Balance Board was the tipping point for the console, for the most part. It did house some of the best games and helped Nintendo revive or kickstart franchises ("Donkey Kong Returns" and "Xenoblade," for example), but the Balance Board was indicative of the next few years. An increasing amount of crap games that never lived up to the potential that the Wii could have reached, all bundled in with a giant hunk of plastic that'll collect dust in a few weeks.

Players on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 got a fully wireless guitar controller in their box. Wii owners got an effortlessly light, comfortable, and sturdy controller adapter that housed the remote. I do think that the "Guitar Hero 3" Les Paul guitar for the Wii is probably the most comfortable one of these controllers has felt — alongside the 360 and PS3 version — especially as the race heated up not a year after with "Rock Band" and its mushy controllers.

"Guitar Hero 3" was mind-altering at the time. Not because it was so good, but the music it infected me with has remained my taste for a good majority of life at this point. All that, and joined by the Wii's guitar controller holster, made for some legendary memories. Ever impressed a girl in high school because you can play "One" by Metallica sort of okay in a video game? At the time, I thought I did.

It wasn't as complete as the others, but picking this up in 2007 allowed me to eventually play the far superior "The Beatles: Rock Band." A truly special moment that video games rarely ever accomplish, in changing the player fundamentally at their core, my core, all through a controller.

The epitome of uselessness, the game "Babysitting Mama" was a spin-off of "Cooking Mama," which had already infested the Wii with a variety of plastic trash. Bundled with the game is a soft toy of a baby, which the Wii Remote is inserted into and used to mimic the movements on screen. It seems cute on its surface, but it was ultimately a microcosm of the problem with the Wii.

See, "Babysitting Mama" isn't a good video game. Some circles might even consider it shovelware, cheaply made software for the console. While the "Mama" series is fairly long-running in 2026, in 2010, this felt like the series had already completely puttered out after just four years of inundating shelves on the DS and Wii. The soft toy baby was quite literally just a way to mask the fact that you'd probably just be hitting one or two buttons, maybe with a bit of a waggle.

There's not much in the way of real sales figures, just legacy numbers from VGChartz, but it appears to have shifted around half a million units. Despite the game being poorly received and the toy being used as a Trojan horse to convince parents to buy it, it's actually demanding a fairly high price on eBay. The doll itself commands anywhere between $20 and $50, while a "New in Box" version is being listed for $100. Good luck to that seller.

Simple, to the point, and yes, it's a piece of plastic, but do you know how many arcade or on-rails shooters came out on this system? It's a shame they never combined them with the Balance Board for a cover system like in "Time Crisis," but the Zapper added just a little bit extra to these games. "House of the Dead: Overkill" and the two "Resident Evil" light gun games just felt far better with both hands around the fake gun.

The Zapper was one of two plastic accessories that the company released for the Wii. Alongside the "Mario Kart" wheel, the main difference between Nintendo's lightgun controller holster and others on the market was that it felt premium. It also came with a game, "Link's Crossbow Training," which was just enough to justify the cost. Swinging it around and nailing that last shot to beat the level is partially why I love light gun games so much.