1013th played so far
Genre: Sports
Platform: Wii
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
When looking at the remaining sports game, I ended up looking at the various minigame collections as they suited me most. With that, it made sense to me to finish on the Wii sequel, as it feels like these were the types of games that made the Wii as big as it was. Wii Sports did well, and Wii Sports Resort takes it and pushes it further, in part by supporting the Wii MotionPlus..
Sports
As you may have noticed, I don’t consider sports games my favourite games. There’s something fun about the minigame collections like Wii Sports and I enjoy some tennis, but the yearly releases of FIFA, NBA and NHL games leave me cold as I don’t care about the sports and I find them quite difficult to understand – the tutorials aren’t present enough and don’t connect with me. So yeah, while I got some appreciation for pool and golf games, on the whole it felt like the sports games were always obstacles to overcome for the list, rather than something I fell in love with.
Our Thoughts
As we’ve seen in many older and newer games, the minigame collection of sports games work well. The new games haven’t shown up on the list, as the Wii Sports series are the only ones that made it, but games like World Games and Track and Field show that they were an early favourite to use sports that wouldn’t work as a full game. The genre still exists – Mario and Sonic seem to be there for every Olympic year – but the games are pretty similar, with the button smashing gameplay at the core getting a prettier skin and some smaller updates. They don’t do much that’s unique, in part because there isn’t that much more to be done.
The real innovation has come from input, and two innovations there had come with Kinect (and its Playstation equivalent) and VR headsets. I don’t know too much about the latter’s implementation, but having done bits with the Kinect, it’s shown that it didn’t have enough staying power. Perhaps that’s down to the platform as a whole not reaching its potential, but it did feel like it used a lot of minigame type collections. Then there’s obviously the Wii’s motion control, and the subsequent consoles continued to use that as a way to play these things. Ring Fit Adventure is a recent release that seems to use those same control inputs to make an RPG instead.
The latter is, of course, what Wii Sports Resort is build on, and a number of the minigames included are in fact upgrades of those in the previous game. The controls are smooth – while they weren’t an issue in the original game, I was amazed at how they were really smooth considering how I was struggling with them recently. They show off the controller well and use it, but they also expand on the existing games by adding some nice extra modes such as the insane 100 pin bowling – it’s incredibly satisfying while it’s so excessive. Obviously some work better than others, but I really enjoyed cycling, basketball and archery as well, and it feels like the latter especially benefits from the increased accuracy of the MotionPlus.
Final Thoughts
Obviously, Wii Sports Resort is a sequel, and it’s one that makes Wii Sports as an individual game redundant – although that game is far more notable for its cultural resonance rather than its specific play. This really shows the innovation that came in as a result of motion controls, as an improvement over the controls we already knew for decades.