Wii Sports was released in North America along with the Nintendo Wii on November 19th, 2006, and with it came a new era of pure, wholesome fun with the Wii to tag along. Not only did the game represent what it meant to be an official Nintendo Wii video game, but it proved to have massive success; achieving the title of the best-selling Wii game with a colossal 82.86 million copies being sold to the public as of September 2018. With five different game modes to choose from (as well as the option to partake in training for each game mode, as well as a unique feature to determine your very own fitness age), you could play Wii Sports for hours on end and continue to enjoy your time with Wii Sports’ limited, yet seemingly endless options for fun.

Within the main menu of Wii Sports, you can choose five different sports to play; tennis, baseball, bowling, golf, and boxing. All of these games have multiplayer options, with the ability to have four players playing at the same time in some sports. The game also monitors your success in-game and thus gives you a skill level that raises or reduces as you play to highlight where you are compared to your A.I competitors. After enough gameplay, you can also reach the PRO level, which is achieved at 1,000 skill points and above in each game mode.

The game also gives its players many options to better themselves at each one of the in-game sports, by offering three repeatable training drills for each of the five sports. These can help you by doing anything from allowing you to have a higher concentration (on the baseball flung towards you, for example) to scrambling to hit a tennis ball back onto a virtual target. Wii Sports also offers its users the ability to test their computer-estimated fitness age, which estimates what age you could be based on balance, speed, and stamina exerted in three randomly given training drills. The age ranges from 20-80, 20 being the best, and allowing its users the fun to see if they’re a 58-year-old with the fitness age of a 23-year-old or vice versa.

Three years later, Wii Sports Resort was released, increasing the number of sports to choose from five to twelve. However, Wii Sports Resorts only kept two of the five original sports in Wii Sports and showed a movement away from their original idea. Wii Sports Resort is also responsible for the end of the fitness age, a feature much appreciated by most of the Wii community. Wii Sports Resort received far less appreciation than the original Wii Sports, only selling 33.09 million copies worldwide as of September 2018 (compared to the 82.86 million copies sold of the original Wii Sports).

Although Wii Sports Resort offers a good attempt at living up to the original Wii Sports with its many new, exciting sports (like basketball, air sports, and frisbee), it simply does not live up to its predecessor for the reason that it sought to satisfy the needs of its players without knowing what they really wanted. One of the reasons why Wii Sports turned out to be so popular is because of its simplicity and easy, user-friendly gameplay (which allowed it to be a great game to use to familiarize yourself with your new Wii). On the other hand, a first-time user of Wii Sports Resort (especially one that hasn’t played the original Wii Sports) is instantly forced into the game and starts with a skydiving mission down to the island that Wii Sports Resort is set on. In turn, this may overwhelm a new user instead of allowing them to ease themselves into their new game and continue at their own pace.

Another critical issue with Wii Sports Resorts was the sports that Nintendo selected to be included in their sequel. Instead of keeping tennis, Nintendo substituted table tennis as their new replacement, which doesn’t make too much sense considering that the original Wii Sports tennis was one of the most enjoyed modes in the game. Also, instead of including baseball, Nintendo decided to add various useless sports indeed gone unnoticed by most players (such as wakeboarding, power cruising, canoeing, and cycling). In a survey conducted with 11th-grade students, more than half of the sports in Wii Sports Resorts weren’t remembered (merely proving the point that the sports in Wii Sports Resorts simply weren’t as memorable as ones in the previous game).

Therefore, Wii Sports Resort does not live up to its previous game, and although both of the games provided a pleasant experience and years of fun, Wii Sports is more memorable and produces more positive memories of good, childhood fun. Wii Sports Resort was a nice attempt at a second game, but sometimes quality is better than quantity.