Genre: Sports
Year: 2006
Developed by: Nintendo EAD
Published by: Nintendo
Platforms: Wii
#203
Feeling Like: Whee Sports
Look, I can’t write a blog ranking the top 500 games and say that only a few moments were important to me. If that were the case, the blog would be called the seven cool things I remember about video games and it would have saved me thousands of hours.
Video games are great. Lots of them exceed my expectations and provide a few dozen hours of entertainment before I set them down and don’t give them much more than a second thought. But a few, a very select few, will elevate themselves beyond the rest and become unforgettable experiences. It’s not always because they’re the best of their genre or revolutionary in their design, though neither of those hurt. Nostalgia, timing and social interactions are monstrously powerful when it comes to my enjoyment. Were my friends into it? Does it remind me of much simpler, fatter times? Was it new and exciting like nothing we’d ever seen before? Did we get a Wii at the beginning of the semester, when exams were months away?
You have no idea.
I called every electronics store within a 100 kilometer range every day for six straight weeks trying to get a Wii. They were a myth. Something I saw online, but I’d have more success tracking down the Ark of the Covenant. Sackville, New Brunswick is hardly a hotbed of consumer activity so snagging one locally was beyond impossible. So, it meant frantically begging Best Buy, or Future Shop, or EB Games or whatever Atlantic Canada equivalent to tell us they had a Wii in stock.
They never did.
We were getting desperate. The system had been out for a whole month and a half, and for six university students who all shared a mild obsession with video games (some more than others…), this wasn’t acceptable. Our pleas to the heavens were finally answered via a phone call from Greg, mentioning he’d found a Wii in Moncton and said if we paid him back right away, he’d get it for us and deliver it to our front door.
I’ve never seen us this coordinated, motivated and collaborative. Ok, how much cash do we need (I guess an e-transfer wasn’t possible at this time)? Who has that amount in their account? Do we want to divide it evenly?
We trod into the minus 35 degree weather to Sassy’s, our local convenience store. Their ATM had a $100 withdraw limit and caused some serious consternation. We finally had the Wii in our grasp, who knew that the currency required to trade it would be our main roadblock? Negotiations with the cashier were tumultuous, but we eventually secured funds. Is this how start ups feel when pitching to VCs?
After we got it, signed and delivered, we hooked it up to our Frankenstein of a setup and we were hooked. For a very long time.
I suppose it’s silly to think about how excited we were for Nintendo’s latest console. “Waggle mechanics” and motion controls are a passing fad these days, but in late 2006 and in the subsequent few years, the Wii was everything. It was everywhere. Everybody was playing it. The bar we frequented after hockey games? They had Wii Bowling tournaments. We’d play it with dates we brought over. We’d force our families to enjoy it, with accompanying Wii Avatars, called Miis. Retirement homes had them. This was the kind of strategy Nintendo was going for, it was no longer just for the hardcore but for everybody. And if you were too embarrassed to swing a Wiimote around like a moron during boxing, you were just missing out.
It’s the same feeling I had when gazing upon Grand Theft Auto 3. Or picking up an NES controller for the very first time playing Super Mario Bros. Or trying a VR headset. It’s not about playing a great game, it’s trying something completely new. Even at the time, it feels fresh and exciting and important. These moments are so few and precious that they demand to be chronicled.
It’s not about how it’s aged – Wii Sports hasn’t aged well but that isn’t the point. I can’t even count the number of times we did a round of bowling. More tellingly, how many different groups I played this game with. Theatre people, hockey friends, my parents, my sisters, Dobbo, work friends; it didn’t matter. The universal appeal of picking up a remote and flicking your wrist was too much to resist. I don’t think I saw a single declined invitation when it came to subbing in for tennis, or…well, let’s be real, bowling was the star of the show.
The above screenshot isn’t from Wii Sports (way too polished) but in my mind, that’s how it looked. It’s the perfect party game; enough activity for everybody involved to be interested in, but you could sit back down and chat/eat/drink/yell at the TV with very little effort. That kind of appeal is rare, and that’s what launches Wii Sports into the 203 spot.
Since it came packaged with the Wii, I can’t say exactly how many copies it sold but numbers in this case are irrelevant. It meant Nintendo was back, in a different way. It meant everybody you knew had a Wii, even non-gamers. It meant Danimal, Randy, Fuzz, Lipsit, Dave and I were never at a loss for what to play. It was the perfect party game – nobody had to pay too much attention, it could be dropped when the pub whispered our names, it could be the focus of intense competition, it could be enjoyed sober, inebriated or somewhere in between. We felt cool initiating newcomers to it, we loved being the Centre of Attention when it was obvious nobody else had a Wii and we felt a mild withdrawal when we all went our separate ways after graduation.
It’s certainly been surpassed by other motion control party games since in terms of gameplay refinement, but I still haven’t seen the kind of madness the Wii generated when it first came out 17 years ago. 17! I’m getting old, but not too old to play 18 holes or bowl a few frames, especially if some fun-loving company is around.
The 500 