By now if you haven’t heard that Okami’s coming to the Wii, you at least know how badly I’ve wanted this to happen. In that light, here we have Okamiday, Volume 8. I will be posting assets and an article every weekend about Okami, the PS2 game that’s widely considered Clover Studios’ swan song, a game whose sales were so weak as to likely be a major factor in the developer’s dissolution.

Okami is, as we saw last week, not the only game to ever have a canine as the protagonist. Okamiday Volume 7 covered Twilight Princess, so we’ll start there and work our way back through three other games with man’s best friend, or something not far from it, as the star. I’m excluding games where you play with dogs rather than as them, such as Nintendogs and Dogz.

2006 | The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Gamecube, Wii)

Series figurehead Link, when venturing into the cloak of darkness that covers the land, finds himself transformed into a wolf and relying on a suspicious shadowy character named Midna for guidance and survival. Eventually, Link breaks free of the curse and Midna will change him back and forth between the forms at will, allowing Link to accomplish things he couldn’t as just one or the other.

2004 | Dog’s Life (PS2)

Dog’s Life is a very clever concept. You play as a pet dog named Jake who witnesses a friend’s kidnapping. Well, dognapping. Theft, I suppose. As is seen in a number of these dog games, you’re able to follow scents around, and in this case, dig up bones. The goal is to rescue your friend. Reviews were generally not as strong as for Okami or Twilight Princess, but at a budget price, the game is still something I’d eventually like to try.

2000 | Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (PC, Mac)

While not a wolf or dog per se, the werewolf form of the Druid class, which was added in Diablo II’s expansion pack, might have been my favorite character to play. The character was impressively detailed for a subform of a class, even for a Blizzard game. He stood upright, but ran on all fours in a very natural way. The form was very strong, though only able to do melee attacks. All in all, a very satisfying way to play the game, and far better than many of the Druid’s other skills.

1988 | Altered Beast (Arcade)

Rise from your grave!

Hop into the wayback machine for Altered Beast, a forced-scrolling brawler that had you pulled from death by Zeus to fight with fists and claw in a number of animal forms, including a wolf form and a more powerful golden wolf form, against waves of enemies. Altered Beast featured short cutscenes showing the metamorphosis and eventually an extremely poor Sega Genesis/Megadrive port that was actually used as a pack-in before the birth of Sonic the Hedgehog.