If you ask Nintendo about its new-generation home console, Wii, it’ll tell you that its goal with the console is to get mom, dad or anybody in your household – or the world, for that matter – that doesn’t normally play video games to play the console. From the console’s more approachable $250 price tag to its intuitive controller design, the whole concept behind Nintendo’s latest system is introducing more people to video games.

Perhaps that’s why the Big N saw it so important to include Wii Sports in the North American and UK launch packages for free. After all, the title is incredibly simple and explaining the controls for it is about as simple as explaining how you’d play the same sport in real life. In other words, if you know how to play any of the sports in Wii Sports in real life, then you’ll know how to play their Wii Sports counterparts. This goes for mom, dad, your aunt and even your grandma and grandpa. Indeed, Wii Sports is a game that anybody in your family can pick up and play. But while this statement couldn’t be any truer, Wii Sports is a bare-bones and tech-demo-esque game that doesn’t offer much outside of multiplayer party sessions.

The Rundown

• Wii Sports Tennis
  
• Wii Sports Baseball
  
• Wii Sports Golf
  
• Wii Sports Bowling
  
• Wii Sports Boxing
  
• Motion-sensing controls for all sports games included, as seen above
  
• Up to four-player multiplayer
  
• Does not support online play
  
• Comes free with every Wii purchased in North America and Europe

5 Sports for the Price of None
Wii Sports comes packaged with five different sub-games: Tennis, Baseball, Golf, Bowling and Boxing. These are the names of each game, as you will see them on the title’s slick menu when you boot up the game. Wii Sports itself comes free with every Wii package sold in North America and Europe, and that move by Nintendo seems to have been a great one – for a number of reasons (one of which is more negative than positive). We’ll get the bad out of the way first. Wii Sports itself is exceptionally basic. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing for everyone, other sports games – those produced by Electronic Arts, most notably – run circles around Nintendo’s pack-in game when it comes to depth and lasting appeal. If you’re looking for a sports game that will offer lots of things to unlock and a deep single-player experience, you won’t find it in Wii Sports.

That said, it doesn’t really matter, because Wii Sports is all about being a pick-up-and-play game whenever you need one. If you’re looking for a game that’ll be the highlight of your party, this could very well be it (depending on who you’re partying with, that is). Between hardcore gamers and people who have never touched a game controller, you’d be hard pressed to find someone that didn’t smile at least once during their first game of Wii Sports Tennis, for example. Even the most hardcore Wii-doubters will enjoy the fun control scheme Wii Sports offer. And meanwhile, non-gamers will find themselves playing a video game for the very first time. We know -- we’ve seen it firsthand.




As said before, there are five sub-games included in Wii Sports. You can easily access each game from a nicely-designed menu screen, and from there on out, you can choose how many people you want to play with. Each game also features an option screen, where you can choose to change the settings for things like what hand you prefer to use (left or right) and more. Additionally, there are training modes for all sports, which can help improve anyone’s skill at the game. The game's training mode is surprisingly fun and beats playing single-player by yourself, although multiplayer is more fun. There is even a health mode, where your Wii Sports age is determined by how well – or badly – you play, and the game even keeps track of that information so you can brag to your friends about how young and fit you are.

Before we move onto discussing the individual games in Wii Sports, there’s one last general subject to touch on: the fact that Wii Sports is the first of what we hope will be many games to include support for your Mii characters (virtual characters you design on your Wii and are saved to your Wii-mote). What this means is that you can play as your very own Mii in each game in Wii Sports. More importantly, if you’re logged in as your own Mii, all your stats will be saved to it, allowing you to look back at a full list of stats and information whenever you want. Of course, if you don’t want to, you can play Wii Sports as a guest, but no stats will be saved.