the recent nintendo sports games, a retrospective

(please excuse/notify me if there are spelling errors. my spellchecker stopped working and i havent had the effort time to get a new one.)

wii sports is a game loved by many. i think this is because of its variety, worldbuilding and the large nintendo fanbase. as of 2021, the wii was the best selling home console globally at 103 million, and wii sports sold 83 million- the most bought game of 2007. its exercising focus and family appeal helped it get 3 sequels- wii sports resort for the wii, wii sports club for the wii u, and nintendo switch sports for the switch. obviously.

(forgive this little self indulgent part.) last christmas we bought the switch sports game to play as a family, but unfortunately, no one except me liked to play it. so usually i wait for cousins to come round (usually christmas time) to play, and so i have been playing a lot recently. but after a little too much play time, i started to wonder how much better nintendo switch was than its older siblings?

for context, i have only played wii sports resort and switch sports, not the other two. so.... i won't be talking about them. if i mentions wii sports, i mean the resort edition. ok, onto the actual review!!

firstly, the graphics. for its time, i think the original had good graphics. switch sports resort looks good on the surface, but once you start looking at anything in depth (apart from the character models, those are perfect and imo much nicer/cuter than the miis, however iconic they are) they become grainy and pixelated. i guess this is only reasonable for the console... again, the graphics aren't terrible on either, so there's not much to complain about.

the gameplay has improved with slightly more mechanics and more precise movement (helped by the joy con rumble/vibrate and gyroscope features), but variety has suffered. wii sports resort boasts 13 sports with several modes each, such as the dueling sport offering duel, speed slice and showdown, or air sports having parachuting, dogfighting, and piloting. switch sports originally had 6, 7 since november 2023, with only one mode each*. here, the switch version fails.

*(i may be wrong about this. i think football has more than one mode. however, i think that there are definitely fewer modes per minigame on average than on the wii.)

many have also criticised the atmosphere and world of the switch game, but i think i disagree. while its definitely not as charming as the wii title which had hidden items and subtle background narratives that increased replayability (as well as the previously mentioned different modes), the switch has really beautiful backgrounds to all of its locations. for example, the chambara background has a library-coffee shop that, according to loading screen snippets, has books all about sports and sports history. isn't that cute? even the menu has a really lovely port and a bus or tram system that circuits the buildings, with an iconic logo in the middle. it makes you want to live there!

again, wii sports does also have a nice world, with characters like matt or wuhu island itself that have surpassed their own fandom and became parts of general widespread internet knowledge. both games have fan wikis and subreddits. i feel like nostalgia sometimes clouds the mind, and while i love to remember running and following the cute dogs on the wii, i think we should give switch sports more credit in this aspect.

the online/local play of the games is heavily debated. (supposedly. i don't take part in online arguments lololol) wii sports resort was a local-play game, whereas the switch relies heavily on online multiplayer. for instance, to earn accessories, stamps, titles, clothes and equipment for your character, you can only get them by earning points from online matches. the participation or minimum reward is 30 (i think. im writing this all in one day for some reason) and increased by bonuses such as winning or minigame specific parts, like in volleyball or tennis when the two teams play over the winning grade and one team has to win by a two-point-lead. once the user reaches 100, they recieve a randomly selected item from a category of their choice. (usually 3 categories available, and usually seasonal.) its a nice system, except for the fact that it caps at 1 item per day for those without a nintendo online or family subscription.

each category has 12 items and different categories are introduced each week, which makes the whole process slow and frustrating for those without subscriptions. additionally, there is no way to earn these items without playing online, which goes against the family-centric ideas of wii sports, and nintendo in general. plus, because of the mixed reviews and opinions of the newer games, wait times can be slow. in games with many players like bowling or golf, this isn't a problem. but in games like chambara and the higher ranks, wait times can average 1-2 minutes. not a huge amount of time, but still annoying.

overall, i can see why fans prefer the older games. i think that if switch sports recieved more updates and focused more on local/family play, it would be a great addition to the series, but as of now, it falls short of its predecessors.

info sources: wikipedia, me :9

i hope you liked this one. i worked harder on it than the others, hehe (///￣ ￣///)

be safe and happy holidays,

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ callalillie ˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆