We toil each month to show you which Wii games get played the most by Wii owners. But which games do people buy or rent and then... ignore? We've got some winners (losers) for you here.
We may need to qualify this list with a few asterisks, but based on stats reported on Nintendo's official Wii Nintendo Channel, from data collected from as many as 3.7 million gamers, these are the 25 games that get the least amount of play time, per person who has played them...
Wii Games With The Lowest Per-Player Playing Time*
(as of July 1, 2010)
25. Donkey Kong Barrel Blast - 5 hours, 1 minute
24. The Price is Right - 5 hours
23. Rapala Fishing Frenzy - 4 hours, 57 minutes
22. Cooking Mama World Kitchen - 4 hours, 41 minutes
21. Blast Works: Build Trade Destroy - 4 hours, 40 minutes
20. We Love Golf! - 4 hours, 39 minutes
19. North American Hunting Extravaganza - 4 hours, 37 minutes
18. Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire - 4 hours, 35 minutes
17. Top Spin 3 - 4 hours, 35 minutes
16. Madagascar Kartz - 4 hours, 33 minutes
15. The Biggest Loser - 4 hours, 21 minutes
14. Toy Story Mania - 4 hours, 17 minutes
13. Samba De Amigo - 4 hours, 16 minutes
12. Nitrobike - 4 hours, 12 minutes
11. Wild Earth: African Safari - 4 hours, 12 minutes
10. Big Beach Sports - 4 hours, 9 minutes
9. Disney Think Fast - 4 hours, 2 minutes
8. Jeep Thrills - 3 hours, 59 minutes
7. Hasbro Family Game Night 2 - 3 hours, 49 minutes
6. All Star Cheer Squad – 3 hours, 45 minutes
5. Wonder World Amusement Park - 3 hours, 41 minutes
4. AMF Bowling Pinbusters! - 3 hours, 7 minutes
3. Furu Furu Park - 2 hours, 50 minutes
2. M&M's Kart Racing - 2 hours, 5 minutes
1. Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2009 - 1 hour, 51 minutes
Congratulations, Jillian Michaels, your fitness game may be the least-played game on the Wii. That it is a fitness game is ironic, as is the fact that it spawned a sequel.
But! Some asterisks:
*The above list is compiled from the several-hundred games that have their data tracked on the Nintendo Channel. (Our Wii stats-tracking methodology explained here.) That list does not report data for several notable games, including Resident Evil 4 and Bully, nor for games that have logged fewer than a certain number of hours of play time— 50,000 seems to be the cutoff — across the Channel's userbase. That means that there is a tier of even less popular games that could qualify for this list. For example, M&M's Kart Racing, which charts here as the second least-played game, might actually garner more playing time than The Munchables and Major Minor's Majestic March, which have no data collected on the Nintendo Channel. But we're looking at per-player averages, so a game's absence from the Nintendo Channel data listings doesn't mean it necessarily has a lower average playing time than a game that is listed.
*We check the listings for about 500 Wii games each month, but only look at Wii disc games. While the data is available, we do not track playing time for WiiWare and Virtual Console games.
*This data is collected only from users who have downloaded the Wii's Nintendo Channel and share their data online, which biases it in favor of a more hardcore, online-savvy user-base. That doesn't stop Animal Crossing and Wii Sports from ranking high nor from millions of players sharing their data, but it needs to be noted anyway.
*Some will scoff at the Jillian Michaels number (I think I just did above) and conclude that fitness games on the Wii are either ignored or not used by Nintendo Channel users. Wrong on both counts. Wii Fit, as of July 1, has a Nintendo-tracked per-player playing time of 21 hours, 57 minutes.