Ten Best Home Console Anime Games

Written by Kevin Leathers on 15 Jul 2010

We here at UKA are not only anime fans, but also quite avid gamers at heart. We’re always on the look-out for games that mix together our love for anime and games in one big happy bundle of fun. Japan has anime games released on a weekly basis, but only a handful are ever released to the western with even fewer making it to the UK. So, we’ve put together our top ten console games which we think every anime fan should own in their gaming collections.

First off, let's start things off with the home consoles from the current generation. While we could have done a list of the usual suspects like Zelda, Mario, Street Fighter IV and Final Fantasy, we’ve plumped for games that are usually overshadowed and overlooked by the general gaming public. These games are in no particular order, but they are titles we think you should own.

Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love (Wii)

Sakura Wars is a big series in Japan, a hybrid of strategy RPG and visual novel, and the series has been well known for it’s steampunk styled mechs along with a large cast of female pilots. Not exactly original when compared to a lot of anime, but the fantastic artwork and a visual novel interface that goes beyond the usual select-the-right-answer approach is what makes it stand out.

So Long, My Love is quite late on in the series, but is thankfully detached enough from the previous entries in the franchise not to be a problem. We just hoped for a Japanese soundtrack to be included as that Texan girl makes our ears bleed every time she talks.

Check out our review of it here.

Sin & Punishment: Successor of the Skies (Wii)

The award for most god-awful story progression, cut-scene direction, voice actor directing and generally horrible storytelling has to go to Sin & Punishment - It makes about as much sense as covering yourself head to toe in raw meat and jumping into a pool of sharks.

Thankfully the rest of the game is pure gold as Treasure once again prove they are the king of shooters. The original only made it to the UK from the N64 via the Wii’s Virtual Console service, but if you are in need of some serious shooting action then you cannot go wrong here at all. It’ll push your aiming skills to the limit and actually works much better with the Wii Remote / Nunchuk combo than the standard controller. Which is a first.

Check out our review of it here.