Wii Sports ( Wii スポーツ , Wii Supōtsu ? ) is a sports game developed and produced by Nintendo as a launch title for the Wii video game console. It was first released in North America along with the Wii on November 19, 2006, and was released in Japan, Australia, and Europe the following month. The game is included as a pack-in game with the Wii console in all territories except Japan, making it the first game included with the launch of a Nintendo system since Mario's Tennis for the Virtual Boy in 1995. Wii Sports is part of the Touch! Generations brand.
The game is a collection of five sports simulations, designed to demonstrate the motion-sensing capabilities of the Wii Remote to new players. The five sports included are tennis, baseball, bowling, golf, and boxing. Players use the Wii Remote to mimic actions performed in real life sports, such as swinging a tennis racket. The rules for each game are simplified to make them more accessible to new players. The game also features training and fitness modes that monitor player progress in the sports.
Overall, Wii Sports has been well received by critics and received awards from the gaming press and entertainment community. It is the best-selling video game of all time, having outsold the previous best-seller, Super Mario Bros. , in 2009. As of October 2009, 50.54 million copies sold worldwide. Wii Sports has been featured on television in Wii commercials, news reports, and other programming. The game has become a popular means for social gatherings and competitions among players of varying ages. It was followed by a sequel, Wii Sports Resort , in 2009.
Gameplay
Wii Sports consists of five separate sports games—tennis, baseball, bowling, golf, and boxing—accessed from the main menu. The games use the motion sensor capabilities of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk attachment to control the actions of the on-screen character. The player moves the remote in a similar manner to how the separate games are played in real life; for example, holding and swinging the Wii Remote like a golf club, baseball bat or bowling ball. Some aspects of the gameplay are computer controlled. In tennis, player movement is controlled by the Wii, while the swinging of the racket is controlled by the player. Baseball consists of batting and pitching, with all of the fielding handled by the Wii.
Each game features a standard play mode, training mode, and multiple player options. The standard play mode mimics each game's respective method of play: tennis, a doubles match; baseball, a simple game of pitching and batting; bowling, a ten-pin, ten-frame game; golf, playing on a 3-hole or 9-hole golf course; and boxing, a three-round boxing match. Training mode is a single player option that allows a player to practice certain aspects of the sports and rewards them with medals. Every game has a single-player or two-player mode, and some games allow up to four players via various methods. Bowling and golf allow for multiple players taking turns with a single Wii Remote, while tennis requires each player to have their own. The multiplayer mode for Wii Sports usually has the players competing against each other in the normal manner of the specific sports; the one exception is tennis which allows for two players to play together or against each other.
The in-game characters are taken from the Wii's Mii Channel, which allows the user to create a Mii (a customized avatar) that can be imported into games that support the feature. Wii Sports is the first Wii title to use this feature. Miis saved on the Wii will appear in the crowd during bowling games and as members of human-controlled teams in baseball. The non-player characters in the game were also created using the Mii Channel toolset. Miis created on one Wii can be transferred onto the internal memory of a Wii Remote for use on another Wii with different save data.
Player progress
After a game, a player is awarded or penalized skill points based on performance, though some games do not calculate points during multiplayer sessions. The game keeps track of these points by charting them on a graph. After obtaining 1000 skill points in a sport, a player is awarded "pro" level, along with a cosmetic feature for their Mii. A Mii newly turned pro will receive a message on the Wii Message Board notifying them. In single-player boxing and tennis, the size of the crowd grows with the player's skill level. Wii Sports also features a fitness test that calculates a player's fitness age. The test gauges the player's performance in three randomly chosen challenges from the training mode. Calculating the fitness age takes into account a player's balance, speed, and stamina. The test itself can only be taken once a day per Mii. Fitness age results are graphed over one, two, or three months, with daily results posted on the Wii Message Board.
Development
Katsuya Eguchi, who managed Software Development Group 2 at Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development, produced Wii Sports . With the Wii, Nintendo desired to reach people that had not played video games before. To do this they needed software that allowed both long time and first time players to interact together in a fun way. Nintendo also wanted players to use the system daily and intended Wii Sports to be the console's flagship title to help accomplish this. Wii Sports was designed as a simple introductory line meant to offer something for both gamers and non-gamers. Sports were chosen as the theme because of the widespread familiarity with them. Rather than feature professional athletes or have realistic graphics, the game was designed to be simple so that anyone could play. Gameplay like running towards a ball in tennis was excluded to maintain simplicity. At one point in development, Mario characters were used, but were removed because of feedback from players who preferred Miis. The game supports a 16:9 widescreen ratio and progressive scan, runs at 60 frames per second, and makes use of the Wii Remote's accelerometer to interpret the player's motion. Motion-sensing actions, like pitching and hitting, were prioritized to make them as realistic as possible. Because Nintendo did not expect players to purchase the Wii solely to play Wii Sports , they bundled the game with the console; Nintendo believed players would be more likely to play Wii Sports through this distribution method. They also felt players that enjoyed the game would increase its popularity by word of mouth.
Before the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) Media and Business Summit of 2006, the first sport in the game was announced as Wii Sports: Tennis . It was later announced, at Nintendo's press conference prior to E3 2006, it would be part of a sports package. Satoru Iwata introduced this package as Wii Sports , and stated it would include tennis, golf, and baseball. The game was featured as both a video demonstration and an on-stage playable demo. The demo featured Iwata and Reggie Fils-Aime in a doubles tennis match against Shigeru Miyamoto and Scott Dyer, a contest winner. The other sports titles were on display at E3 and shared a similar naming convention to the tennis game such as, Wii Sports: Baseball , Wii Sports: Golf , and Wii Sports: Airplane . At the time, baseball only featured a batting simulation. The airplane title was similar to Pilotwings and required the player to maneuver an airplane through rings within a time frame. It was not included in the final game, but is believed to be part of a future game for the Wii titled Wii Motor Sports . At the Nintendo World event on September 14, 2006, Reggie Fils-Aime announced that Wii Sports would be included free with the Wii. The bowling and boxing titles were also introduced.
Reception
Wii Sports has been immensely successful commercially; at the end of 2007, it was the best-selling Wii game. In Japan, where the game was not included with the system, the game sold 176,167 copies in the first two days of release, a record for a seventh generation console game in Japan. By February 2007, it had sold over a million copies. In early May 2007, game-industry research firm Media Create placed Wii Sports third in their list of top-20 games in Japan. It was the best-selling game of 2007 in Japan with 1,911,520 copies sold. It is the tenth best-selling game of Japan in 2008, selling 841,736 copies in that year. As of March 31, 2009, the game has sold 45.71 million copies worldwide—including bundled copies, according to Nintendo.
Critical response
Wii Sports has received generally positive reviews. GameTrailers called it a good complement to the Wii system and referred to all five games as a "nice total package". They commented that the games provided enough gameplay for long time gamers without making it inaccessible to novices. GameTrailers stated, however, the lack of a tournament mode was a detractor, and did not recommend paying for the game if it did not come bundled with the system. GamePro also commented that the free addition of Wii Sports with the Wii was a pos
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