Wii Sports is back! Well, it’s now got a slightly different name, but Nintendo Switch Sports is intent on reviving a gaming icon, bringing back the waggle controls and sports like bowling and tennis which made the Nintendo Wii a sold-out sensation through 2007 and 2008.
The first thing you’ll notice about Nintendo Switch Sports is how good the game now looks. Wii Sports was, even for the time, a little rudimentary, thanks to the relatively low power of the Nintendo Wii hardware and the minimalist Mii avatars that you create and play as. The 15-year gap is telling in how the environments and sporting arenas look, as well as the new characters that you can create and customise.
You can still use a Mii if you like – and I’m sure that many people would rather stick with an avatar they’ve imported or recreated from one console to the next – but the new Sportsmates are really nicely stylised with big eyes, futuristic-looking sportswear, a great array of hairstyles, and some effective animation for the various sporting moves they have to make.
A huge part of Wii Sports’ popularity was in just how utterly accessible it was. Thanks to the wholehearted embrace of motion controls, you could take the actions that you know of swinging a tennis racquet, slicing with a sword, bowling a ball and they were translated straight into the game. Now, the motion tracking of the original Wii Remote was a little basic – later enhanced with the gyroscopic Motion Plus upgrade – but it did the job, and captured the imaginations of the general public.
Nintendo Switch Sports pulls a similar feat with many of its games, as tennis, bowling and chambara return from Wii Sports and the easily forgotten Wii Sports Resort sequel, while also introducing football, volleyball and badminton for the first time – golf will be added in an update later this year.
Just as before, you’ll be reminded that you really should use a wrist strap for your Joy-Con controller – unless you want your overenthusiastic 7-year-old to fling the controller right into the centre of your TV screen – and always get to pick whether you’re left or right handed. Some games use or have the option for paired Joy-Con play, some have four-player support, and all will be playable online.
Perhaps the most iconic of the returning originals is bowling, the simplicity of flinging a ball down a lane into a neat formation of pins, hoping to get a strike and keep your score multiplying. Pick your initial position and angle before holding the shoulder button as you go through the full bowling motion, and you can apply some wicked spin with a twist of the wrist to curl the ball. It’s as compelling as ever, and playing with the spin is excellently intuitive and powerful.
We only got to try out the standard head-to-head bowling mode, but there’s more inventive options to be found in the full game. One mode adds obstacles and changes the layout of the lane to add a puzzle-like challenge, and if you head online, there’s a knockout tournament twist to proceedings as 16 players start and the lowest-scoring players knocked out every few frames.
Tennis is pretty much exactly as you remember it, your avatar running around automatically toward where the ball is heading, the timing of your swing determining the direction where it’s heading, and so on. Doubles play is also a part of the game, whether you have four players, or just two, in which case you have two identical avatars and your swings control them both.
Badminton is an ideal counterpart to this, with a slower and more tactical style of play as the shuttlecock arcs back and forth over the higher net. Again, you’re not in charge of your character’s placement, but have both underhand and overhand shots, the latter lending itself nicely to timing-based power shots, and a cheeky little drop shot that you can use to draw your opponent around the court – it’s heartbreaking to see your avatar dive to return and then be too slow to get up and leave your opponent with an easy finish. I reckon I might enjoy this more than tennis!
Chambara sword fighting is another pleasantly intuitive inclusion. The key thing to learn is how to attack with a swing and block with a perpendicular angle. Get your attacks right and it bashes your opponent back toward the edge of the raised arena – in a nice gameshow twist, defeat sees you thrown from the arena into a pool of water below. It can be really slow-paced and tactical, fights swinging back and forth, but it can just as easily end up in a rapid three-hit knockout. Further options include switching the sword for a charge sword, or for twin-swords that require a pair of Joy-Con.
Stepping into the volleyball court, we start to get to the more abstract or less familiar feeling sports for many. You only need to play with a single Joy-Con, but volleyball really wants you to play with two-handed motions to serve, dig and pass, set, spike, block at the net. As with badminton and tennis, your avatars run around automatically (you have two players on each side), and so it’s really all about the timing and learning the different motions needed to play. You’ll have just a handful more to learn than in tennis or badminton, but for Haikyuu! fans, this will be essential.
And finally we come to football (or soccer if you’re in the US). This is easily the most abstract as it blends together motion controls with a game style that’s much more like Rocket League than real football. Two teams of four face off in a football arena, the ball is huge, and you’re running around with the analogue stick and a stamina-based sprint. The Switch Sports twist is that you flick the controller to kick, and have a simply hilarious two-fisted punch motion to go for a diving header. It’s good fun, and I reckon it’s probably a touch more accessible than Rocket League.
It’s joined by a shootout mode, getting you to use the leg-strap accessory that was first introduced with Ring Fit Adventure and will be bundled with physical copies of this game. Taking turns, the ball is kicked into the box and you time your physical kick to knock it into an open goal. After each successful score, the goal shrinks, before the final ball awards double points. It’s sure to be a neat little diversion, though probably not much more than that given the added fuss of strapping a controller to your leg, and the awkward notion of needing to pass that leg-strap between players or owning two for local multiplayer. That or getting out a roll of duct tape…
Nintendo Switch Sports isn’t really doing much new, but it’s handily reviving the spirit of Wii Sports for a new generation of motion controls. With some Wii Sports classic returning alongside a few new additions, there’s a nice mixture of obvious and accessible, and games with a little more depth and nuance to them. We’re just a couple weeks away from the full launch, and I can’t wait to get back into the knockout bowling mode, and living out my Haikyuu!-inspired gaming dreams.
