Wii Sports for Wii: Five Sports, Controls and Reviews

Wii Sports is a 2006 collection of five sports games that Nintendo developed and published to show off the Wii Remote. It shipped with the console in most regions, and Metacritic prints a score of 76 out of 100.

Overview

Tennis, baseball, bowling, golf and boxing make up the package. Wikipedia says the rules were cut down on purpose: in tennis the computer moves the player and the human only swings, and in baseball the game handles fielding and running while the player pitches and bats. There are also training modes and a fitness check that tracks progress.

Players appear as Miis, the avatars made in the console’s Mii Channel, and this was the first Wii game to use them. Producer Katsuya Eguchi has been credited with the project, whose aim, per Wikipedia, was to reach people who had never played games. Super Mario characters were tried at one stage, but testers preferred Miis.

How it plays

The remote is swung like a racket, bat or club, and rolled like a bowling ball. Boxing asks for the Wii Remote and the Nunchuk, one in each hand. Golf and bowling are turn-based, so one Wii Remote can be shared around a room, which is how many groups ended up playing. The game runs in 16:9 widescreen at 60 frames per second, per Wikipedia.

Release and credits

North America got the game on 19 November 2006 alongside the console, Japan followed on 2 December, Australia on 7 December and Europe on 8 December. It was packed in everywhere except Japan and Korea, and a stand-alone release later joined the Nintendo Selects line. Metacritic repeats the North American date and prints an E rating.

Reception

The aggregate is 76 out of 100 on 51 reviews, in the “generally favorable” band. Matt Casamassina of IGN called it a successful showpiece for the new hardware and praised the controls as intuitive, yet judged the visuals generic and the depth thin. GameSpot’s Ryan Davis liked the multiplayer and the fitness test, but found the motion detection erratic at times. GameTrailers said the five games made a nice package, and advised against paying for it separately.

Awards followed anyway. It won three Interactive Achievement Awards and, at the 2007 British Academy Video Games Awards, six of seven nominations. Sales reached 82.90 million by March 2021, a figure that counts bundled copies. Nintendo also replaced wrist straps with thicker ones after players let go of remotes mid-swing, according to Wikipedia.

Can you still play it?

The disc runs on any Wii, and on a Wii U through Wii Mode. Wii Mode on the Wii U needs a Sensor Bar for most software, so keep one connected.

Because it came on disc or bundled with the console, the Wii Shop Channel closure on 30 January 2019 has no bearing on it.