Top Wii Games For Kids

It's hard to go wrong with a Mario game. In this multiplayer racing game kids can have a blast driving around karts and playing as their favorite Super Mario Bros characters.

The fun and crazy bonuses which help you or sabotage your competitors, typical of earlier Mario Kart games, are present here and cause a lot of laughs.

Girls are included by the ability to play as Princess Peach and other unlockable female characters, which gets high marks from this grown-up girl gamer. My daughter loves playing the unlockable baby version of Peach.

Players can customize their karts to explore and display their own style. And with the unlockable characters and a variety of tracks the long-term play value is excellent.

The only negative when considering picking up this game for children is that the tracks are not easy for the youngest gamers to navigate. Until they get a good sense of steering to control their own karts the game will frustrate them when they get stuck. My 3-year-olds tended to get stuck a lot. But by 5-6 they're having a blast with it.

This game is getting harder to find, but it's a fun one full of creative puzzles and adventure. Zack is a little pirate who wants to be the greatest pirate who ever lived. To reach that lofty goal, he will have to outwit, outsmart and out-duel every obstacle that gets in his way. To help him, he has a new enchanted pal, Wiki, who turns into a magical hand bell with the power to transform any object into something practical. (Wiki's a guaranteed hit with my little monkey fan.)

Boom Blox Bash Party builds on what Boom Blox did best and makes it a great family game. Multiplayer gameplay can be co-operative or competitive and the cute graphics and atmosphere make it even more appropriate for kids.

This game has over 400 levels and the ability to create or download more. Level creation is something my daughter, from about age six, has always really enjoyed in games, so she gets a lot more gameplay just out of that feature.

Boom Blox has themed worlds in which the puzzles are set - anything from mysterious planets to pirate coves. Battle giant squids or bash alien spaceships. And they've added new Blox, shapes, and tools, like Cylinders, Paint Blox, the Virus Ball, and the Slingshot. Even the new characters are part of the destruction: throw, grab, and launch characters for fun or as part of your strategy.

Family Hits is a fairly new edition in the Disney Sing It! line that focuses on favorite songs from Disney movies. Classic songs from Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Jungle Book, Winnie the Pooh, and Mary Poppins stand along with contemporary favorites from films like Disney-Pixar's Cars and Toy Story, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, and The Princess and The Frog.

The songs are straight out of the movies, which, unfortunately, includes movie dialogue. Seems like Disney could have done better there.

Features solo, collaborative, and competitive modes, and 30 songs and music videos, for up to 8 players. An encore mode enables players to play back their performances and add fun voice effects.

DDR Disney Grooves features some of the most popular Disney characters, including Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald and Daisy, and 40 classic family-friendly songs and remixes from favorite Disney movies. Players can play several gameplay modes, like Workout Mode, Training Mode and Advanced Mode. Miis can hit the dance floor, wear unlockable Disney costumes, and pose with the classic Disney characters for snapshots.

The songlist includes a mix of music from classic and new Disney films from Aristocats and Mary Poppins to The Lion King and Lilo & Stitch.

This game is definitely geared toward younger gamers, with varying difficulty modes to scale to their abilities, and gentler, kinder announcers and audience than seen in other DDR games.

Just Dance Kids has more than 40 hit pop and hip-hop songs re-recorded by kids, for kids, and offers a variety of modes suitable for players of all ages. Especially for the younger crowd, they've included beloved TV personalities like The Wiggles and Yo Gabba Gabba as well as classic favorites like "Wheels on the Bus". For fitness minded parents, they've included the ability to track how many calories kids burn in this healthy game that never feels like exercise.

Jumpstart Pet Rescue is brought to us by the same Jumpstart many parents know and kids love from the computer games. In this game, targeted for preschoolers, kids navigate through five stories searching for lost pets. Each Discovery world contains a guided story told by one of the familiar JumpStart characters, sending children on a learning adventure through more than 50 learning lessons and 20 activities that teach kids over 75 essential skills they need to succeed. As kids progress through the adventures, they improve their pre-reading skills, memory, creativity, motor skills, listening, and more.

I bought this game for my kids for Christmas, and it met with mixed reaction. My four-year-old plays the Jumpstart multiplayer online game quite a lot, because we have a subscription. The overall look of the world and activities were so similar to what he sees in the online game he was quickly bored with this game and hasn't asked to play it since.

But my then 2 1/2, now 3-year-old usually chooses to spend his online time at other game websites, so the Jumpstart world and the activities in this game were totally new to him, and he loves it.

Big Brain: Academy Wii Degree offers a variety of brain training type exercises and challenges, which can be played as single player or multiplayer. Multiplayer modes allow up to eight players.

One of the more interesting features is the ability for players to exchange student-record books with other players over WiiConnect24 and compete against their save data. Curious how well you'd do against other players outside of a party game setting? You can find out!

With 15 new activities that challenge the brain in single-player Test and Practice modes, Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree lets you test how you measure up and try to improve your abilities in five categories: Identify, Memorize, Analyze, Compute and Visualize.

SimAnimals puts players in the role of themselves, as a disembodied hand floating in the forest. The animals distrust at first, but can be befriended. Likewise, if you interact with them roughly or negatively, they can get to where they dislike you, even attacking your hand on sight. Other players can join in, receiving hands of their own to play simultaneously in the same forest. Even the very youngest gamers can pet, pick up, and play with the animals.

A succession of easy challenges unlocks different areas and new animals, with a little plotline about finding the source of toxins in the water and fixing the problem. The biggest draw of this game is interacting with the animals and nurturing their environment to attract and keep the animals you'd like in your forest.

The challenges often require reading to understand what you're supposed to do, but they're easily ignored, which is what my toddler and preschooler do.

Very sensitive children might not like this game, as it simulates real food chains, and there are predators. The first time my daughter saw one of the predators eat an animal (in a cartoon cloud of dust, nothing was visible but what happened was obvious) she was upset, but it just made her determined to protect her favorite little furred friends and teach the predators to be vegetarian. Which can be done, by the way, at least with the bears.

More about the SimAnimals Wii games here: SimAnimals

Following up on the strengths of Endless Ocean, Blue World offers hundreds of real-life species to be discovered, from seahorses to giant whales. Players with broadband access can connect and dive with one another via Nintendo® Wi-Fi Connection, using the Wii Speak microphone to converse.

Other fun features: If the local fish are agitated or ill, players can view their health status and help them.

At Nine Ball Island, players can become friends with a dolphin and teach it tricks. On a dive, players can even bring along the dolphin, which can be held onto for extra fast swimming.

The game includes an optional storyline with a plot involving a woman named Oceana who investigates the Dragon's Song, which her father was searching for just before his death.

World of Zoo is a favorite here. Kids can get up close, interact with, and take care of zoo animals. These animals can be petted, fed, played with, and "scanned" to be healed if they're sick.

Unlike a popular zoo pc game, you do not build the habitats, but you can upgrade them through gameplay.

Even the very youngest gamers can play with the animals, but for the goals and upgrading the zoo, my recommended age is 6+. The gameplay scales perfectly for a wide range of ages and almost no reading is needed. Players get to choose which zoo animal they start with, so my cat-fanatic was able to choose big cats right off, and her brother could choose his favorite: monkeys. The kids love it when the animals come right up to the "camera" and interact with them.

I have a longer review and FAQ here: World of Zoo

Zoo Hospital puts players in the position of serving as a vet for a zoo. Animals can be viewed and interacted with in their habitats, but the backbone of the game is the series of challenging health problems they will have to treat by successfully completing related mini games. Some of these mini games are not that difficult, others are quite challenging for any gamer. All of the mini games do an excellent job of simulating the treatments they're supposed to represent.

While this game is rated E, I wouldn't buy it for the younger gamers. We have it, and even our oldest gets stuck on the most difficult mini games. I'd say, due to the skill level required, this game is most appropriate for older kids (10+, Teens) and adults.