But maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves here, after all, not everyone would have played this weird Zelda-like-meets-Metroidvania all those years ago. LostWinds sees you play as Toku, a boy who comes into contact with the elemental wind spirit, Enrila, before embarking on a journey to destroy an evil force known as Balasar. For now, so Zelda, right? But where this game really (wind) appealed to its WiWare audience was its innovative control scheme that allowed you to move Toku with a Nunchuck and use the remote to control the wind. Give game like the wind.
With a swing of the Wii-Mote, you can send a burst of air shooting across the screen, lifting Toku into the sky or pushing any nearby enemies into the pits below. It’s a relatively simple concept, but one that once you get the hang of it (after you’ve spent a few minutes throwing a poor kid on the floor with some rogue electricity) leads to some very fun weather-based platforming.
Making your way through difficult jumps introduces you to unique unlockable abilities (Splistream, Vortex, Jumbrella Cape) that all help you reach areas that were previously only out of reach. Metroidvanias are two pennies on the Switch eShop these days, but seeing this build take full advantage of the Wii’s motion controls was a stroke of genius post-launch.
Unfortunately, unlike many of the Metroidvanias we see today, LostWinds was a very short game, lasting only windy three hours to complete. The puzzles were engaging, and the pleasant soundtrack and visuals made you want to linger longer in the land of Mistralis, but this was more of a flurry of wonder than a lingering storm in terms of length.
Controlling the Toku with precise movements of the remote created an experience you’d imagine was made for touch control. The game was released on iOS in 2011, but was plagued with bugs from the start that caused the game to crash and was later removed from the App Store. The subsequent closure of the Wii Shopping Channel now means that the only way to play the game is via Steam
Frontier Developments made a sequel, LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias in 2009, and in 2013 we heard rumors of a third game as the developer said he was still very interested in the series, but ultimately nothing more would come.
What we’re left with is a tight Metroidvania WiiWare launch title with Zelda influences all over the place and a creative control scheme that would benefit from touchscreen support — that’s positively begging to be ported to the Switch, right? Yes, there are a number of factors against realizing this little wish (porting is expensive, and the removal of iOS in 2011 might just show that implementing touch controls is no walk in the park), but the game seems to be a dream Port all the way — at least for our money.
Did LostWinds have a flaw? Of course it was, but it was a prime example of building a game around the whims of a home console. Even if we never see a Switch port, it’s a lesson many other games would do well to learn from.
