Player’s Club: Guinness World Records: The Video Game and Wonder World Amusement Park

America’s got more Wiis than diabetes, but many critics and gamers regularly disparage the little white box. Their tremendous skepticism might seem like sour grapes, as if nontraditional gamers are trampling over their hallowed subculture, but it’s not entirely unwarranted. Despite a few great releases early in the year (No More Heroes, Boom Blox, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, Okami), 2008 saw a painful dearth of high-quality traditional video games for the Wii.

There wasn’t much to appease gamers interested in the sort of long-form, story-based experiences that have typified gaming since the original Nintendo Entertainment System. That doesn’t mean the Wii had a light release schedule, though; there was a deluge of Wii titles in 2008, both technically minimized installments of multi-platform hits (Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Lego Batman), and mounds of carelessly produced rush jobs that have helped earn the system its bad reputation.

At first glance, Guinness World Records: The Video Game and Wonder World Amusement Park both look like the latter.