Before I get to the meat of this article, I’m going to say something startling and unpleasant: Wii Sports turns 20 years old this November. Just take a second to let the weight of time sink in, and then we can move on.
That fact was something I thought about during a recent Nintendo press event, where I got to play Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, an upcoming Switch 2 exclusive that serves as a spiritual successor to Wii Sports and, more specifically, its lesser-known-but-actually-better sequel, Wii Sports Resort. It’s also a sequel to 2022’s rather forgettable Nintendo Switch Sports, but for all intents and purposes, that doesn’t really matter.
While playing Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, I was mostly struck by how well the simple, family-friendly formula of Wii Sports still works two decades later. After about an hour of gameplay, I can’t say if this new motion-controlled party game will elicit anywhere near the level of long-term fondness that the original did back in 2006. Still, it seems like a much more fleshed-out and invigorating experience than the 2022 revival.
Motion controls are still fun in the right hands
Credit: Nintendo
Basically, everyone who was alive in 2006 played Wii Sports at some point, if Nintendo’s sales data is to be believed. It was a genuine phenomenon, and for good reason: Playing it was as simple as picking up a Wii remote and moving it around, with almost no complex button commands required.
The same holds true of Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, only you’re using Switch 2 Joy-Con controllers instead of a Wii remote. While they may be a little less ergonomic than the Wii remote, they benefit from 20 more years of motion-sensor development, making them much more accurate and capable.
Structurally, you pretty much know what to expect here. There are 12 motion-based mini-games to choose from, including skateboarding, cruising on a jet ski, flying a plane around, and old favorites like boxing and bowling. Those, along with table tennis, archery, and thumb wrestling, were the ones I got to sample at the press event, and they all worked exactly as they should.
Boxing and bowling are more or less the same as they were in 2006, though again with more sensitive motion controls. Table tennis is very similar to Wii Sports tennis, albeit on a smaller scale, and it’s worth noting that regular-sized tennis is in here, too. There is honestly not much to say about any of these mini-games other than they were all roughly as fun in 2026 as they were in 2006.
Credit: Nintendo
The new mini-games were the real highlight of the demo. Skateboarding makes clever use of the Switch 2’s oft-ignored mouse controls, as you position the Joy-Con on your leg or a table and pull back to accelerate on the skateboard. Jerk it upward and you’ll do an ollie, and doing that again in mid-air will do a trick. This was all in the context of a split-screen multiplayer mode where another player and I skated around the game’s island setting, jumping off ramps and searching for collectibles within a time limit. It was pretty casual and slight, but a fun diversion nonetheless.
Both the airplane and jet-ski mini-games worked exactly the same in terms of goals and objectives, but with different vehicles. You control the plane by holding a single Joy-Con in your hands like it’s a toy airplane, and you control the jet ski by holding both Joy-Cons horizontally in front of you, as if they were jet ski handlebars. All of this was intuitive and responsive, making better use of the Switch 2’s motion inputs than anything else I’ve played to date. That said, my shoulders got a little tired after a few minutes of the jet-ski game. Maybe that’s on me.
If I have one broader conclusion from all of this, it’s that motion-controlled mayhem can still be a blast in the right circumstances. The key is to design a game entirely around those sorts of inputs, and that’s exactly what Nintendo has done here. If I had kids and a Switch 2, I’d wishlist this joint immediately.
I love Wuhu Island
Credit: Nintendo
Probably the coolest aspect of Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, though, is the reason it has “Resort” in the title. It’s set on Wuhu Island, a setting Nintendo used for a few games in the Wii and 3DS eras before relegating it to a Super Smash Bros. level for most of the last 15 years.
I’ve always been a big fan of Wuhu Island because it adds a sense of place to the proceedings, no matter what game it’s in. In Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, every mini-game takes place somewhere on Wuhu Island. When you fly around in the plane, you might pass over the boxing ring or the table tennis arena. It’s a fully contiguous and explorable 3D space that also happens to be home to a bunch of sporting events. I just think that’s really neat.
Unfortunately, at least by default, the player characters in Nintendo Switch Sports Resort are redesigned Mii characters that don’t have the same iconic appearance as the Miis in older Wii Sports titles. They don’t look bad, but they do look a little more generic, and that’s a bummer. This strikes me as an odd decision, given the popularity of Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream earlier this year. Old-school Miis are on the come-up, and Nintendo shouldn’t back away from that.
I have no idea if Nintendo Switch Sports Resort will hold my attention for more than a couple of hours when it launches on Oct. 22, but I’m also not 12 anymore, and that’s OK. Hopefully, today’s kids can get as much joy from this game as I did from the original back in the day.
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