Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. Features

Let’s admit that Wii Sports is the best game ever made

Giovanni Colantonio
By

What is the greatest video game of all time? In the early 2000s, it was a heated debate between The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII fans. The conversation has widened since, with no real critical consensus to speak of in 2022. Maybe it’s Breath of the Wild. Heck, maybe it’s Elden Ring. Perhaps there’s no answer at all, because trying to pick the “best” game, as if there’s an objective metric for what makes art good, is a flawed exercise.

But in my opinion, all of those answers are wrong and no one can convince me otherwise. The older I’ve gotten and the more video games I’ve played, the more ready I am to die on a very specific hill: Wii Sports is the greatest video game of all time.

Related Videos

The GOAT

Wii Sports was an unlikely success story for Nintendo. Included as a free pack-in game with the Wii in 2006, the sports anthology was less of a game and more of a tech demo. It was a simple way to get new Wii owners comfortable with the idea of motion controls by having them mimic familiar actions. The result was an incredibly fun and intuitive game that everyone and their grandmother could play, quite literally.

Miis play tennis in Wii Sports.

It was almost too good at what it set out to do. Wii Sports quickly became a social sensation, smashing sales records (though it’s a complicated metric to judge). It started the motion control era out on an incredible high that Nintendo was not prepared to capitalize on. No Wii game after it could capture the same magic; Nintendo had gotten a hole in one on its first swing.

The more time that passes, the more I’ve come to accept what a colossal achievement the game is. That was easy to take for granted in 2006. At the time, it felt like a modest gimmick, especially since it launched alongside the glitzier The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Games like Gears of War edged it out of the “game of the year” race, but Wii Sports debatably won the marathon. Its immediately satisfying gameplay gave it a long-term appeal that modern games with far more compulsory hooks struggle to maintain.

A Mii swings a baseball bat in Wii Sports.

Simplicity is its secret weapon. The fun of Wii Sports came from the fact that you could hand a Wiimote to just about anyone and they’d be able to start playing and have fun in seconds. That design helped break down gaming’s hardest barrier for entry. Anytime I hand a modern controller to someone who doesn’t play games, they stare at it like it’s an alien device. As someone who plays a lot of games, I always forget just how complicated even the simplest game controls can be.

Wii Sports famously eliminated that confusion, unlocking an entirely new “casual market” that helped broaden the industry’s appeal. It’s the most important seismic shift the gaming industry has seen to date.

Disrupting the industry

In 2006, then Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata summed up the company’s strategy in a GDC keynote speech prior to the Wii’s launch. “Some people put their money on the screen, but we decided to spend ours on the game experience,” Iwata said. “It is an investment in actual market disruption. Not simply to improve the market — but disrupt it. We believe a truly new kind of game entertainment will not be realized unless there is a new way to connect a player to his game.”

That philosophy explains the lasting significance of Wii Sports. The game ushered in a new era of approachable design that made both players and creators see the medium in a new light. And it accomplished that by bucking industry trends and bankable formulas, allowing Nintendo to convincingly deliver on its promise to disrupt the gaming world. As I look at today’s gaming landscape full of tired live-service games and repetitive open-world retreads, I find myself appreciating those warm afternoons bowling in my living room even more.

Is Wii Sports my personal favorite video game? No, and honestly I’m not confident it’d even crack my top 50. But at this point, it’s hard to deny that it should be placed in the history books next to phenomena like Pac-Man and Tetris. It’s a historic accomplishment that’s transcended Nintendo’s ill-fated Wiimote gimmick and it’s high time we put some respect on its name.

If you’re looking to relive your virtual tennis glory days, Nintendo Switch Sports launches on April 29.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
The forgotten games of 2022: 7 sleeper hits worth returning to
Three Hopes characters on a stylized purple background.

These days, it's simply impossible to keep up with every great game that releases in a year. With such a mass of experiences to choose from, players have no choice but to curate. That means that every year is bound to produce what I've started calling "forgotten games." It's a term I use to describe sleeper hits that would have garnered attention in a less crowded year, but were simply lost among a sea of great titles.

"Forgotten games" tend to break my heart. Generally, they didn't do anything wrong -- save for maybe skimping on their marketing budgets. They're strong games, just ones that didn't generate conversation. Sometimes it's just that they weren't groundbreaking enough to break into "game of the year" discussions. They're not polarizing or controversial enough to generate discourse. These games simply aren't conversation pieces and that's a difficult place to be in during our social age, which makes them hard to prioritize.

Read more
2022 was excellent for sports games, depending where you looked
The cursed golfer, hitting his shot surrounded by citizens of purgatory

Sports games are one of the most ubiquitous genres in gaming, as NBA 2K, Madden, and FIFA top sales charts every year. These franchises also happen to be some of gaming's most stagnant as their developers and publishers tend to focus on minor tweaks and changes year-over-year rather than significant innovations. The disappointment of games like Madden NFL 23 gives the genre a bad rap, but 2022 was actually one of the best years for sports games in a while. That's thanks to games that were willing to get weird.
Of course, the multi-million dollar mainstay sports franchises aren't going anywhere. That said, games like OlliOlli World, Rollerdrome Cursed to Golf, Windjammers 2, Roller Champions, What the Bat? and even Nintendo Switch Sports pushed the limits of what the genre can do. Sports inherently translate into solid video games, but this year highlighted how those games can go a step beyond, becoming kookier than what's possible in reality. That helped breathe some life into an otherwise stale genre.
Sports games get weird
When looking back at 2022, there are a lot of sports games worth calling out outside of the usual suspects. Nintendo Switch Sports is the hallmark casual sports game from this year, giving people an accessible and motion-control-based way to play golf, badminton, tennis, bowling, chambara, soccer, and volleyball with Nintendo's signature first-party visual flair. Though that was one of the more high-profile twists of the genre, indie developers led the charge, allowing the sports genre to shine this year.

Roll7's OlliOlli World, for instance, is one of my favorite games of the year. Skateboarding games have been a sports gaming mainstay since the 90s, but OlliOlli World realizes that formula in a way that's as fulfilling to play as Sonic the Hedgehog's best games. At its best, OlliOlli World is a colorful, fast-paced 2D platformer where each level has multiple paths that accommodate various player skill levels.
It's not trying to have accurate physics or recreate iconic real-world locations. Instead, it crafts its own vibrant fantasy world where everything is based on skateboarding, and the gameplay gives players enough wiggle room to experiment and possibly fail with flashy tricks. Roll7 didn't stop there, also delivering Rollerdrome, a game that combines score-based rollerblading with shooting to create an action-sports game mix players didn't know they needed.
Playing sports can give you an ultra-focused adrenaline rush, and a game like OlliOlli World and Rollerdrome can achieve that same flow state through gameplay. Meanwhile, other games interpret sports in a brand new way outright.

Read more
The best live service games of 2022: 10 ongoing games we couldn’t stop playing
A Sea of Thieves skeleton sits in front of text that says 2022 Best Live Service Games.

Some games are meant to be played once, savored, and then shelved for the next one -- not unlike a book or a movie. But many other games are meant to be played and replayed over a long period of time, offering wildly different experiences each time you sit down and boot them up. There were many ongoing games to pick from in 2022, a lot of which include live service elements like online multiplayer, microtransactions, and regular content updates -- though not all are worth investing your time into.

Even though there are plenty of stinkers out there to avoid, there were also several ongoing games that kept our attention in 2022, ranging across several genres. From globe-trotting online roleplaying games to far simpler games you can play at a café bench, here are 10 games that set the bar for live service in 2022.
Fortnite

Read more