80| Wii Sports

Released: November 19th, 2006

Avaliable on: Wii

Likely the most hated game in all of gaming history, Wii Sports to many represented a scary turn the industry made during mid-2000s. Due to Nintendo getting trounced with the Gamecube, they knew they had to try something different with their next platform. It was obvious that the core gaming audience was no longer interested in most of Nintendo's offerings. While Nintendo tried to win them back with the Gamecube with games like Eternal Darkness as well as exclusive titles in the Resident Evil and Metal Gear franchises, at the end of the day it wasn't enough. As a result Nintendo decided to go after a very different market, adults, specifically adult women. Initially people thought Nintendo was crazy for trying to capture such a demographic. Then the sales numbers for December came in and the Wii was the best selling console. This initially was met with a warm response due to the fact that it didn't trounce the other consoles as well as people being ecstatic that Sony's death grip on the console market was no longer a reality. However, something began to happen. The Wii was very successful...too successful. It was successful to the extent that it began to outsell the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 combined. On top of that many traditionally core publishers such as EA and Ubisoft began to put their laurels behind more casual game development. Frightened by this, gamers began panicking as they feared a future where Halo and Grand Theft Auto would lose priority to Carnival Games and Just Dance.

This fear proved to be unwarranted. Eventually the Wii's casual audience moved on to far cheaper mobile games. Ironically the fear of the Wii hasn't died out, the animosity has just moved toward the mobile platform. Looking at the era today is like looking at a snapshot in time. It bring back a lot of memories both good and bad. It also leads us to be a lot more objective of certain games of that era as we are no longer in the thick of it. So how good is Wii Sports exactly? It is after all the game that started off this whole thing, or at least in the console space. Truth be told, Wii Sports is actually a very good game. It was just very misunderstood at the time. Sure it isn't the deepest game out there, but it is definitely very fun to play. And that's what made the game so successful, it is fun to play. There is a certain tingly feeling you get when you barely manage a squeeze of a win after playing your friend in Wii tennis. What also made the game so successful is accessibility. Anyone can pick up and play the game, even your parents. The controller is just a remote control where you have to make the same motions you do as in actually playing the sport. It's so simple and intuitive that I have yet to run into anyone who doesn't know how to use the controls within the first minute or so. This results in a lot of potential players as well as potential consumers for the Wii console.

The game offers a variety of different games to choose from. This includes golf, bowling, boxing, tennis, and baseball. All of these games are implemented reasonably enough, except perhaps for boxing, but I found bowling and tennis to be the best. One can also not mention Wii Sports without Miis. Miis were cute little cartoony avatars players created on their Wii console in which certain games would incorporate them as playable characters. Wii Sports was the most well known game to do this. Players would control their Mii as they played one of the five sports available in the game. So not only could you trounce your friend in your favorite sport on the Wii, but you can also physically see it as well.

As I said before, I feel that Wii Sports, as well as that entire era of games, was very misunderstood. Miyamoto said it best in what Nintendo was trying to achieve. He talked about how games use to be enjoyed by all demographics with titles such as Space Invaders and Pong. However, after the Atari era, and much to Nintendo's credit, games began to become a little more complicated with more buttons, multiple character actions, input memorization, map screens, attributes, etc. While this certainly isn't a bad thing and satisfied the teenage boy in the family, but it left the mother and father alienated toward games. They didn't want to memorize combos or engage in resource management, they just simply wanted to play. And that's what Wii Sports is, it isn't a sports simulation or an adrenaline based arcade titles, it is simply a game that you play. Nintendo didn't want to cannibalize core games, they wanted to expand the market by opening the gates to more casual players. And they succeeded.