WeirdWare

I talked about it in yesterday's post, now here it is! An overview of the strangest things you can find in the Wii Shop Channel's Wiiware.

I like to call these jewels of bizarre WeirdWares.

ANT NATION

Price: 700 Wii Points

This game lets you play with ants. Literally. You can do with those ants everything you would do with real ants. You can use a magnifying glass to burn them, for God's sake! And why can you do that? Because after your ant nation has become strong and powerful, you can send your little workers to fight against other types of insects, such as ladybugs and spide- hey, spiders aren't insects! They're arachnids! Anyway, many missions will be available to you when you buy this game. Also, don't worry, that's earth on the screenshot.

AQUASPACE

Price: 600 Wii Points

Transforms your television into an aquarium. Watch the fish go around, click on them to learn information on their species, and you can even send your Mii in there to feed the fish! ...No, not the horror movie way. 8 different aquarium themes, 40 different fish...

Likewise, "My Aquarium" and "My Aquarium 2" serve the same purpose, but cost one dollar less and might give just as much fun.

BONSAI BARBER

Price: 1000 Wii Points

Literally become a plant hairdresser! Or leafdresser. Whatever. The whole point in this game is to please your green clients by giving them just the leaf cut they need. Personally, I doubt this game is worth the price. After all, taking care of plants isn't always a funny task and it's more of a chore. Okay, they try to make it funny here, but only time will tell if they succeed.

COZY FIRE

Price: 500 Wii Points

Who likes those virtual fireplaces? Those who don't have a real one do, anyway. This software lets the player create his own fireplace in six different types of environments, such as campfire, place the logs, scratch the match, and then enjoy some ambiant sound. Nice if you hate smoke and don't have a real fireplace, but otherwise kind of useless. And you can get cheaper virtual fires for less than five bucks, too. Other games on the WiiWare do that, too: You can also buy Fireplacing, for 500 Wii Points as well.

FANTASY SLOTS: ADVENTURE SLOTS AND GAMES

Price: 700 Wii Points

If you like going to casinos, I hope you don't waste all your money on the slot machines. In any case, you can do that here, with virtual money, and all you'll ever pay is seven pretty dollars. Not so bad, huh? Though, it's been done to death, and you can find lots of games like this among the WiiWare titles. Lots of casino games, actually.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS CHRISTMAS / HAPPY HOLIDAYS HALLOWEEN

Price: 500 Wii Points each

Send your greeting cards through your Wii! First create your card, then type in the message, and then send the card thanks to the wireless connection. And... that's it. I can see the use for Christmas, but who sends greeting cards for Halloween?

HOME SWEET HOME

Price: 1000 Wii Points

A decoration game. ...That's it, actually. That's all you do in this game; decorate the many rooms of your house. It's like the Sims if you toss out every social aspect and keep only the house-building aspect. Hurrah. Is it worth paying ten bucks for this? No!

MUSCLE MARCH

Price: 500 Wii Points

Oh no! A steroid powder has been stolen! You have to help a team of muscled idiots in hunting down the robbers. Turns out the robbers go through walls while making poses and your characters must do the same pose. My guess is that it will get old afte a while, and even your memory won't want to train its muscles with this.

MY DOLPHIN

Price: 500 Wii Points

Ever wanted to ride a dolphin? Sorry, you can't. But you can train one with this wonderful game! I can understand that it's funnier than any of those aquarium applications mentioned earlier. But in the end, it feels like a very limited game. I'd be surprised to see what the developers would have added to make this game a great one.

MY LITTLE BABY
Price: 500 Wii Points

I can understand that girls need their own games sometimes. But taking care of a baby is a difficult task in reality, and the feel will be more realistic with a doll than with this. I'm not saying it' has to be a bad game, on the contary it might be better than I make it to be. But when you think about it, such a game must not sell so well.

MY PLANETARIUM

Price: 500 Wii Points

Ever wanted to use that telescope that's rotting in your wardrobe, but the sky is always too boring or the light pollution is atrocious? Ever felt like watching the stars, see constellations, learn about space? Then this game is for you. It lets you watch the cosmos with almost-perfect accuracy with what will happen every night and where the stars will be. While I applaud this very scientific game (Must have taken a long time to do all this work), I don't think many would buy it.

RABBIDS LAB

Price: 500 Wii Points

Create a Raving Rabbid. Turns out the poor thing is "stuck in your Wiimote". Anyway, shake the Wiimote and appaently, he'll love this traumatizing experience. You can apparently customize him, paint over his body, take pictures of him and send those pictures to other Wii owners. Between this and the belch game from Raving Rabbids 2, I'll choose the belch game, though.

SEXY POKER

Price: 500 Wii Points

The most daring game on this list, Sexy Poker suggests something nobody would have thought of on a Nintendo system: Strip poker! You play against pretty ladies and each time you beat them, either at Poker or at Blackjack, they get closer to removing a piece of clothing. Perverts out there, I have bad news for you: The girls will go as far as to remove everything but the undergarments. You won't get to see them entirely naked. Sorry!

SUDOKU CHALLENGE

Price: 500 Wii Points

Yay, sudoku! ...On the Wii. Let me explain: The Wii is usually plugged on a bigger television. Or, to put it another way, a screen much larger than a DS screen. Sudokus work well in DS games, but on the Wii, it's just a waste of space. Why solve puzzles on this big screen when you could solve them on paper on on your handheld console? Same goes for crossword games and word search games; those are better on paper and on smaller screens, that's why it just doesn't seem to work well here.

THE INCREDIBLE MAZE

Price: 500 Wii Points

You know those tilting mazes, in which a metallic ball would roll according to the way you tilted the maze? And you just had to reach the end of the maze? Well, they made a software out of that. Hours of fun guaranteed.

All in all, that's pretty much it. I skipped over a few of the weird games, because I wanted to showcase really tha strangest ones out there. Funny how "strangest" rhymed with "most useless" in this blog post. After all, just because there's a game about something doesn't mean you're going to play for very long with it. Some of those have next to no replay value, others are not good ideas to begin with. However, if you've got money to waste, buy any of those. They will provide you with an hour or two of fun, but it might just stop there.