[For this guest post, I’m once again very happy to hand over to Matt Gardner, editor of the excellent site GameTripper (which I hope to be on again soon!). Matt most recently wrote here about Gears of War 2.]
In my third year at university, I was “the guy with the Wii”. After impulsively buying the console a couple of months after its release, my social status transformed overnight. The shared house I lived in, which was in one of the rougher suburbs of Hull, quickly became the trendy place for people to gather – if only for the cutting-edge, casual fun offered by my shiny new console.
We had a handful of the early classics, including WarioWare: Smooth Moves, Madden NFL 07, and the shockingly underrated Excite Truck. Still, nothing compared to Wii Sports. The first day we booted it up, a friend and I played bowling for 18 straight hours, going to bed at 7am, and not being able to properly move our elbows for days.
It was just as well that all I wanted to do was stay in and play Wii Sports; the Wii turned out to be a very poorly thought-out purchase. When I returned to Hull after the Christmas holidays, I had a few quid in my bank account, so I bought the Wii plus a handful of launch titles. Sadly, I assumed my spring term’s rent had already left my account. Ten days later, I checked my bank balance: £60 to last me two months. Buggeration.
Six months later, I finished uni and moved back to my hometown of Hartlepool. Despite a raft of new and ever more exciting titles dropping for the Wii in a 12-month period – most notably Super Mario Galaxy and Mario Kart Wii – Wii Sports still remained the top dog. My mum and dad, who were well into their mid-60s at the time, were enamoured with it, regularly asking me to switch it on for them. They even carefully designed their own Miis to use, creating surprisingly accurate avatars of themselves.
Family gatherings for the next 12 months inevitably culminated in Wii bowling. Uncles, aunties, cousins, brothers, you name it – they’d play it. By this point, I’d moved to Leeds to begin my career, but given just how portable the Wii was, it usually came home with me on the regular visits back north to see my parents, just in case.
When Wii Sports Resort arrived in the hot summer of 2009, my oldest brother snapped it up and gave it to me as an impromptu present. By this point, my Wii had been more or less relegated to secondary status – a combination of getting an Xbox 360, and the fact the only “TV” in my shared house in Leeds was a projector, which was hideously incompatible with the Wii’s tiny sensor bar.
Well, that dynamic soon changed. The MotionPlus – an ugly condom of an accessory that made the Wiimote even more unwieldy – was revolutionary, breathing new life into the console to such a degree that we had another family gathering just to work through the new games.
Some, like wakeboarding, cycling, canoeing, and power cruising, were quickly shelved. Archery was a firm favourite, even if my parents never quite figured it out. Disc golf was better than regular golf. Air sports was a delightful send-up of Pilotwings 64.
Still, nothing – absolutely nothing – came close to swordfighting. The single-player “Showdown” mode gave my family the biggest laughs in years. Putting my mum on the bridge level on the lowest difficulty and seeing her swatting enemies over the side with incredible precision may be one of my most adored memories of all time. Her flourish when dispatching hapless enemies was a joy to see; her true calling as an Olympic fencing champion was on clear display.
Alas, my dad was a creature of habit, so bowling remained his only real Wii Sports Resort passion. Sure, he enjoyed the 100-pin mode, but the new precision delivered by MotionPlus transformed his game and he became the sole force to be reckoned with; his left-handed in-spin was a sight to behold.
He loved it so much, I decided to start leaving my Wii at home between successive visits, knowing I could look forward to playing with my family when I returned. However, the second time I left the Wii, it proved to be semi-permanent. I was accepted for an internship as a soccer writer in the US in 2010; there was little reason for the Wii to collect dust in my ground-floor bedroom in Leeds, knowing my parents and wider family could enjoy Wii Sports Resort in my absence.
At least, I hoped it would be used, but life had other ideas. That year, my dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer, meaning daily 20-mile round trips to the local hospital for radiotherapy. He overcame that hurdle, only to be hit with Parkinson’s disease later that year. His physical movement was massively affected; in early 2011, he was prescribed tablets to improve his mobility, but this uncovered underlying dementia.
The week this all came to a head, I headed back to Hartlepool. Later that evening, when other family members headed home and I told my mum to have an early night, I booted up Wii Sports Resort while my dad watched on. He loved every minute – and, crucially, remembered the game. While he was a little more frail than usual, I managed to play a full game with him, supporting him each time he stood up. He bowled two turkeys and bulldozed me by about 60 points, and loved every minute.
It was the last time I ever played a game with my dad; he passed away the following year, in mid-2012. The Wii remained untouched until I got a Wii U in 2014, and even then, it was only to get the data and Miis off the console to take them into the next generation.
As for Wii Sports Resort, I didn’t play it on my Wii U until 2015. After fannying around with air sports and table tennis, I thought I’d play a few rounds of bowling, for old times’ sake. In the first frame, there he was, standing behind me in the crowd: my dad’s Mii, cheering me on. Sure, he was joined by the Miis of my ex-girlfriend, a one-time visitor to my house in 2009, and my friend’s younger brother, but his jarringly accurate avatar was there, happy as Larry, jumping in the air with every strike.
Coincidence? Absolutely. One of my all-time favourite memories? You betcha.
Wii Sports Resort spent a total of eight weeks at the top of the UK individual formats chart (including three where it was also top of the combined formats chart). Details of what else was #1 those weeks after the page break.