Nintendo announces Wii Sports sequel for Switch
Nintendo’s 2006 video game Wii Sports has generated a great deal of nostalgia over the past five years, in part thanks to social media platforms like TikTok, where users frequently upload catchy audio clips from the classic game and repurpose their tunes for comedic purposes. With such an outcry of retroactive tenderness, Nintendo would be foolish not to take advantage of the familiar format with their new console, the Nintendo Switch.
Lo and behold, on Feb. 9, 2022, the annual Nintendo Direct was released, and the company exhibited trailers for new games that will be released throughout the next year. The lineup includes familiar franchises like Kirby and Lego Star Wars, as well as the highly anticipated sequel to Wii Sports.
The trailer brought surprising diversions from the first game to the forefront, opening by stating that only three of the original minigames would be present in Nintendo Switch Sports’ initial release: tennis, bowling and chambara (it is worth noting that the latter is from the 2009 companion to Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort).
The graphics are, thankfully, quite similar to the original game, with more glossy, high-contrast visuals and, of course, more clear animation than that of the mid-2000s. The game’s avatars have also been modernized significantly, with blankly pixelated and emoticon-esque faces swapped for sleek, dynamic movements and expressions. The three new additions to the format are soccer, badminton and volleyball. The game will be updated at a later date in Fall 2022 to include golf, another staple of its first iteration.
The games’ controls pay homage to the Switch’s parent console, with a leg strap that resembles the classic blocky remote and (optional) wrist strap. The number of minigames is also about on par; Nintendo Switch has the seven aforementioned, including golf, while Wii Sports has five.
Another enhancement to the original Wii game is online multiplayer mode. The short-lived Nintendo Wii U had the capacity for multiplayer mode, but the Switch version of the game seems to have vastly improved those capabilities, including both random matches and connecting to other known consoles.
Though the basic components of Nintendo Switch were disclosed, it is unclear how certain aspects of the new game will compare; details on character difficulty, for example, were not disclosed in the trailer. In Wii Sports, there were 60 total characters, known as “Mii’s,” grouped into difficulty levels ranging from beginner to master.
Nintendo Switch Sports launches on Apr. 29, 2022, and I personally am eager to unveil more of the game’s attributes as well as its digressions from the beloved original video game.