
Wii Sports is, as the name implies, a Sports Game developed and published by Nintendo for the Wii. Released in 2006, the game was a launch title for the system (bundled with the console outside of Japan) and features five different sports that are played with the console's motion sensitive remote-shaped controller. But you probably knew that already; even if you aren't into video games and (like the media) conflate the game with the Wii console itself, chances are good that you've heard of this game. And if you're above a certain age, chances are good you've probably played it.
While Wii Sports was looked down upon by some for its lack of depth (but for something like this, is a plot really necessary?), the game is famous for its accessibility, boasting an easy-to-understand, pick-up-and-play nature which allows people of all ages who would otherwise never touch a standard video game controller to enjoy the medium; walk into any retirement home, and you'll probably still find a Wii plugged into an older TV with this as the sole game. And the controls truly are very easy to understand; hold down a button or two (if even that), mimic the motions you'd do if you were actually playing the given sport, and ta-da. You're playing a video game. Sure, it's a simplistic sports game that may fail to capture the appeal of more complicated games like The Legend of Zelda or even Super Mario Bros., but it nevertheless was a fun time that served as the Gateway Series for many in the late 2000s into the world of video games, regardless of if they stuck with dedicated gaming devices to "graduate" to more complex controls or moved on to mobile devices to stick with similarly casual experiences.
The game's five sports include:
- Baseball allows you to swing the remote like a bat to swing at the ball, or make a throwing motion of sorts to pitch. Fielding is controlled automatically. This is for one to two players. The Wii U version adds in GamePad controls for pitching and catching fly balls.
- Tennis lets you swing the remote like a racket to hit the ball in a doubles match. You control the swings of your players as they automatically chase the ball. Supports one to four players. Single-player mode has you play either one or both halves of the doubles team; two-player allows competitive or cooperative.
- Bowling lets you bowl by making a throwing motion, even going so far as to simulate the tendency to let the ball slip left or right due to an imperfect or not-quite-straight throw; you can even throw the ball behind you if you let go during the backswing. The slightest twist of your wrist affects ball movement. Supports one to four players, even if you only have one remote.
- Golf lets you hold a button while swinging the remote to swing the club and hit the ball. (If you swing the club without holding the button, you get a practice swing.) Supports one to four players, even with only one remote.
- Boxing uses both the remote and the Nunchuk attachment, which plugs into the remote, to simulate punching with both fists. You can dodge by moving the fists left or right. Can be played with one or two players. The Wii U version replaces the Nunchuk support with either a one-handed or two-handed approach, using two remotes. This is a casualty of the conversion to Wii Motion Plus that Wii Sports Club as a whole received, since the Nunchuk was never upgraded to the standards of Wii Motion Plus.
The game is effectively the first entry in the larger overarching "Wii series"; games that are all named Wii [insert something here] and focused primarily on using the system's Mii avatars to play games in various genres, such as Wii Play, Wii Music, Wii Fit, or Wii Party. And just like all of those games spawned sequels of their own, Wii Sports did the same to become that longest-lasting of any Wii series franchise.
List of subsequent Wii Sports games:
- Wii Sports Resort (2009): Uses the newly introduced Wii Motion Plus accessory for more advanced motion control, with the various sports now being contextualized as taking place at a tropical resort on Wuhu Island, a location that would be seen again in Wii Fit and Pilotwings Resort.
- Wii Sports Club (2013): An Updated Re-release for the Wii U, which added online functionality and refined Wii Motion Plus controls. It originally launched on November 7, 2013 as a downloadable game, then later on in July 25, 2014 as a retail game. The downloadable version offers the ability to buy each sport separately, or rent the whole package for a day at a time.
- Nintendo Switch Sports (2022): Introduces new avatars in the form of the Sportmates, demoting the Miis to extra.
Tropes:
- A.I. Breaker: The AI in boxing simply can't deal with repeated dodging+only using counter attacks. It is possible to get your rating off the scale, then off the TV with this.
- Anti Poop-Socking: The game periodically encourages players to take a break by pausing the game. While most of the games aren't tiring, the boxing game can wear you out if you keep playing without stopping.
- Artistic License ā Sports: In boxing, the game allows individuals of the opposite sex to fight against each other, which is prohibited in combat sports, due to physiological differences between different sexes that affect physical abilities, such as strength.
- Bald Head of Toughness: Matt, the only bald NPC Mii, is on the bottom of the CPU ladder in every sport except boxing, where he is the champion. This is in stark contrast to the NPC Mii Ryan, a long-haired Mii, who is the first opponent in boxing.
- Button Mashing: Waggling the Wii Remote and Nunchuk randomly and as fast and hard as humanly possible in Boxing is more effective than any other strategy.
- Cap:
- There's a mix of this and Overflow Error in the minigame about tennis returns. The on-screen counter will stop at 999 points, but internally this number wraps around to 0 each time it goes over 255. For example, if you returned 1002 balls, the game will write it as 231 points when the minigame is over
. - Baseball runs cap at 99. Even if you score more, it will still display 99. Because of the 5-run mercy rule, you'll never see this unless you purposefully grind the visiting team score with two remotes
or TAS
.
- There's a mix of this and Overflow Error in the minigame about tennis returns. The on-screen counter will stop at 999 points, but internally this number wraps around to 0 each time it goes over 255. For example, if you returned 1002 balls, the game will write it as 231 points when the minigame is over
- Changing of the Guard: A non-protagonist example: Wii Sports Club sees an entirely new cast of CPU Miis replace the ones from the original Wii Sports; these Miis would go on to be the established cast for the system.
- Circling Birdies: Wii Sports Club has the Boxing sport from the original game. One of the differences, though, is the inclusion of a stun system in which after a Mii's HP goes down to a certain point, he/she is stunned and sees stars, leaving him/her unable to punch, though he/she can still dodge.
- Color-Coded Multiplayer: Player 1 is blue, player 2 is red, player 3 is green, and player 4 is yellow.
- Comical Overreacting: In Bowling, if you go to make your throw and then end up dropping the ball back behind you, the entire alley flips out, jumping in a spin and shrieking. This happens even if the ball is just rolling at them at a snail's pace.
- Company Cameo: Nintendo logos are displayed on advertisements and decorations around the various sporting arenas.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The Tennis and Baseball A.I.s, albeit only at higher levels.
- A hard Baseball AI will repeatedly throw the ball at the player's face (Which, in Real Life, would result in the pitcher instantly being thrown out, accidentally or not) without consequences. They can also make it go so far to the right that you can barely even hit it with the tip of your bat. Both of these are a case of Morton's Fork; they are impossible to hit well, but if you don't swing at them, it doesn't count as a ball. The Baseball AI also has Rubber-Band A.I. to extremes. If you get so much as a 2-point lead, they will suddenly turn into a Perfect Play A.I..
- A hard Tennis AI can run much faster than a human player's character does, making it extremely difficult (if not downright tedious) to get past them.
- Cosmetic Award: Achieving PRO status in bowling will give the player a bowling ball with stars painting on it.
- Destroying a Punching Bag: In the Boxing game, one of the training sessions involves seeing how many punching bags you can break off the chain and send soaring to the back wall within the time limit.
- Dynamic Difficulty:
- The AI opponents in baseball combine Dynamic Difficulty with Rubber-Band A.I.. Get enough home runs, and they start to make it harder to do in subsequent games, for instance.
- Golf will switch out the set of possible hole positions for more tricky ones if you are doing too good.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The only golf club options in the original Wii Sports were Driver, Iron, Wedge, and Putter. In the following installments, a 3 Wood club is also available, and there are four different Irons to choose from.
- Easter Egg:
- Bowling has a few. Should you throw your ball too early, the crowd will freak out. If you throw the ball into the wrong lane, they'll laugh.
- Throwing the ball so that it rolls into the gutter while on the metal railing will cause the ball to enter the pinsetting mechanism in the gutter incorrectly, causing it to malfunction, resulting in an distant explosion that just so happens to quake the ground just enough to knock all the pins down.
- Evolving Credits: When Wii Sports Club was initially released on the Wii U eShop in November 2013, Tennis and Bowling were the only sports available, and the trailer
reflects that. The following month, the game was updated to include Golf, and the trailer was rereleased with Golf footage added
. Finally, when the complete set became available in June 2014, the trailer was updated one more time
to showcase Baseball and Boxing, though the footage for those game modes were not as integrated to the trailer in general as Golf was, only appearing during the overview of available sports. - Exergaming: This game and its sequel serve to demonstrate the capabilities of motion controls, ending up the biggest sellers on the system. And they do so by applying motion controls to the concept of practicing sports.
- Fingerless Hands: Despite these, the Miis can still participate in a number of sports that require them to hold things, from tennis to bowling.
- Floating Limbs: The Miis, though it's Zig Zagged in Bowling. The on-screen bowler gains legs... meanwhile, the audience and bowlers in other lanes still don't have legs.
- Gameplay Grading: For the training minigames, the game gives the player a medal depending on how well they did. From worst to best, grading goes from no medal, bronze, silver, gold, or a platinum medal.
- Gender-Equal Ensemble: There are 60 Miis you compete against in the game, and they're evenly divided between males and females. In Boxing, however, only nine female Miis (Yoko, Hayley, Rachel, Sarah, Kathrin, Emma, Anna, Elisa, and Eva) can be encountered. Tennis, meanwhile, only has you compete against 26 male Miis and 29 female Miis, leaving the remaining five (Hiroshi, Shouta, Ren, Chris, and Abby) as just helper Miis that appear should you do bad early on.
- Gonk: A fair few of the CPU Miis are...not exactly lookers, to put it lightly, some of them to downright absurd and comical degrees. Wii Sports Club, which swaps out the old cast of Miis for new ones, has noticeably prettier Miis (or at least not any as ugly as some of the Wii Sports cast).
- Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: In the boxing training room, photographs of Matt are displayed of him with hair, but is depicted as bald, in-game.
- Invisible Anatomy: The Mii characters built on Nintendo's Wii console have arms when created, but in this game they don't have them. They just have floating sphere hands or boxing gloves. Any non-player Miis in the background will also lack legs. Most games that use them in gameplay just reproduce the head on a single style of body anyway, and ignore the user-defined height and weight sliders.
- Luck-Based Mission: Baseball. When the opposing team hits the ball to one of your fielders, there is absolutely nothing you can do regarding whether he fields the ball cleanly or makes an error. And as is the case with real baseball, one poorly timed defensive mistake can change the entire course of a game. Wii Sports Club allows you some control, but only when catching a fly ball.
- Multinational Team: The 60 NPC Miis featured in Wii Sports are designed to evenly represent Japanese, American, and European regions (with the Euro Miis sub-divided to represent Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain). The Miis' nationalities are All There in the Manual, however and not always clear.
- My Rules Are Not Your Rules: As seen in this video
, the computer is capable of throwing a curve so far inside that it hits you in the face, and it counts as a foul ball. The player does not appear to be able to perform this trick. - Nostalgia Level: The golf courses in the original game are all modernized updates of the courses from Golf for the NES. Wii Sports Club includes three sets of holes— the originals, the Wii Sports Resort holes, and a new set.
- Off the Chart: It is possible to get your ranking to over 2000 ("Pro" is 1000 rank, the champion is fought around 1500) at which point it will go off the charts. This is really only possible in tennis if you're good, in boxing by abusing the AI's inability to counter constant dodging+only counter attacking, and theoretically in bowling, as the others are largely luck-based. Keep it up, and you can go off the screen, indicating this isn't purposeful.
- Overflow Error: Your score in the minigame about returning tennis balls wraps around to 0 each time it goes over 255, but only when the game saves your score at the end.
- Platinum Makes Everything Shinier: As stated above, Platinum is the best medal that the player can achieve in the training minigames.
- Production Foreshadowing: The Wii U concept video revealed at E3 2011 demonstrates early versions of the Baseball and Golf games from Wii Sports Club.
- Put on a Bus: The entirety of the Wii-era CPU Miis, who were replaced by a new cast of Miis for the Wii U.
- Retraux: At times, the soundtrack
sounds like synth music from The '80s. This was not lost on people.
- Scoring Points: Justified, mainly because they are based on real sports that are point-based.
- Super Title 64 Advance: The name not only inherits its console's name, but thanks to the success of both products the Wii brand made this game span a Nintendo series on its own.
- Tech-Demo Game: The game is built around the Wii's software to show off its motion controls via sports minigames.
- Training Dummy: Boxing Training has a punching bag mode where you punch as many bags as you can in 1 minute. You can even play Multiplayer Hot-Seat like in all trainings.
- Updated Re-release: Wii Sports Club, which was released on the Wii U.
