I’ve had a couple of months experience with Wii Sports now!

The attention to detail is continually impressive. When the tennis ball hits the metal post, it makes a metallic clunk, even though this only happens once in ten thousand shots. When the pins are struck by the bowling ball, they clatter around with beautiful physics, especially when there are 91 of them on the lane at once. And the boxing trainer is black and makes “ugh, oof, oof” noises. Because box and grunt is what black folk do in Japan, I guess. Hmm…

Bowling

Bowling is by far and away the best multiplayer sport. You take turns competing against the pins rather than directly against each other, so it’s a game of many numbers and not too many arguments. I was great at first (I got my high score of 176 on my second or third go), then I started to suck. I’m pleased to get more than 160 now. My brother frequently tops 200, but even after watching him play half a dozen games, I can’t explain what he’s doing differently, and neither can he.

Waiting for your go with more than 4 players would approach boring, but it’s surely less boring than one person sitting out, so it’d be nice to have the option. I don’t think options and configurability are things Nintendo really understands.

I don’t like the Picking Up Spares and Spin Control training games, possibly because I haven’t figured out exactly how to control spin on the latter, and because it’s too tempting to “cheat” on the former by releasing the ball late to make it go straight. Power Throws on the other hand, is 10,000-volt awesomeness. My high score is still only something like 525. Compare that to this guy:

I tried doing this too:

but decided that seeing it done on YouTube was just as good as the real thing. Sigh.

Golf

Golf is surprisingly good. It’s the best looking of all the sports (hey, I have an SDTV and haven’t played any PC games for the last 5 years (aside from those available in .debs, and they don’t exactly have cutting edge visuals)). I haven’t played it enough to have a serious go at becoming Pro, but it seems like it would be the hardest to improve on. After getting a birdie on a par 3 course, where is there to go? A hole in one? This guy says he’s done it.

The golf training games are a little weak. Where’s the minigame where you have to trash a car with a golf club?

Tennis

Wii tennis is the best traditional game of the lot, the easiest, and the most fun for two players. I’ve mastered the power serve technique (when the ball reaches its apex, bring your hand down fast with a sharp flick, as if textual descriptions of Wiimote moves are possible), and now have the ability to direct the ball left or right too! I can beat the toughest opponents (the 1900 and 2000 skill pair) to love every time, but I don’t have the time or the patience to do what this drunkard did.

I gather you can put spin on the ball, but I can’t do this at all.

The tennis training games are all great. I can hit the target 22 times before knocking too many holes in the wall to continue (so… maybe the 22 hits come at too high a price of misses…), and I’ve returned all 50 balls on the blue practice court in the Fitness Test, but not in the actual training game version (I conked out at around 40 on my best attempt).

Hitting the ball is almost too easy for two-player tennis. When I play my brother, we frequently have 30-shot long rallies between our net players at an insane pace, and they always end because we’re laughing too hard at their ridiculousness.

Boxing and Baseball

These are remarkably true to their real-life equivalents, in that they are both rubbish. Well, the Wiimote makes a satisfying chonk sound when you hit the baseballs, and the tennis-ball-dodging training game for boxing is fun. If there’s a Wii Sports 2, I hope to see some cross-pollination of equipment. Bowling with boxing gloves on would be fun, as would boxing with a baseball bat!

Fitness

The Fitness Test is about skill with the Wiimote, not physical fitness, which is why my best age is 22. It’s very tempting to decline to use the nunchuck whenever it gives you the option, but that seems like cheating to me.

Finally, I should mention that the Wii Sports disc never leaves the console. That’s how much of a traditional gamer I have become, although Super Mario Galaxy looks tempting, and if Super Paper Mario does end up supporting the DS in some way, I could even conceivably get one of those, providing I won it in a crossword competition or something.