Gun Metal Gaming Chapter 6: The Second-Best Selling Game of 2009

In “Gun Metal Gaming: A 2009 Retrospective,” Wolfman Jew covers one game from 2009 a month for all of 2024. Each is one he’s either never played or played for only a few forgotten minutes well over a decade ago; he’s coming into these about as fresh as a player can. Hopefully, his experiences will give us a good view of one of gaming’s lesser years.

“Okay, everybody; form up!”—the announcer, Wii Sports Resort

In 2006, after something of a slump—the GameCube truly was too good for this sinful Earth—Nintendo hit upon something truly revelatory. It combined the pitch perfect casual game design, universally readable aesthetics, and a design that was inviting. Through this system entirely new kinds of movements and gameplay and experience were possible. While the rest of the games industry was moving in the direction of gritty, high definition detail, this used lower graphics and simple, appealing art to show movement and fun. And while its model would likely never have been sustainable, it was exactly what the industry needed then and there. I speak, of course, of the Nintendo DS g-man rhythm game Elite Beat Agents.

I’m kidding! Of course it’s the Wii! It was beautiful. Shallow, simple, undeniably underpowered, and incredibly fun to play. “Elegance” is the word that comes to mind; its controller was clear and parsable. And while there were incredible games made for that Wii Remote, none surpassed Wii Sports in sales, clarity, and cultural iconography. Everyone who played it knows what I mean. It was fun and immersive, all in a specific way that’s never been replicated, whether by rivals like the Kinect or the more advanced field of VR. Packaging it in with the system was also a brilliant move, of course. All you needed to do was go to the nearest retail outlet, maybe get a second remote for a friend, and the most challenging thing after that was setting up the sensor bar. This was perfect for a purchaser—especially, and most consequentially, the tens of millions of “non-gamers” who bought them up.

Image: Gamestop. Wii Sports Tennis was an absolute delight. I haven’t played it in years, but I’m sure it still will be.

Of course, there were problems, and not just that it didn’t account for disabilities. The one players and developers noticed immediately is that the Wii was far, far weaker than its rivals, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Studios working on the system (many of whom were already jumping into the overwhelm of HD game development) would have to account for that, as well as the challenging motion sensing. So while there were several reputable third party games built for the system early on—Zack & Wiki, a superlative port of Resident Evil 4, the acclaimed Silent Hill: Shattered Memories—that dried up. Nintendo’s own output was the same; their best and most inventive Wii games largely came out in the first few years. Most Wii games were gimmicky by design as developers, including its creators, struggled to get new uses out of it. Many have also become lost games after the hardware stopped being supported. But for Nintendo itself, one issue was arguably the biggest of all.

See the Wii, and its handheld counterpart Nintendo DS, were the centerpieces of Nintendo’s still ongoing if reduced “Blue Ocean” strategy. As former Nintendo President Satoru Iwata noted, the games industry almost exclusively targets committed, supportive repeat customers—at the time, barely a sliver of the world’s population. He and Nintendo’s leadership were invested in expanding that scope to people who might barely play games, or who had never played at all. The financial benefits are obvious, but it also followed the company’s decades-long philosophy that publishers should work to connect games to the broader culture. Of course, they were far from the only ones doing this. While Nintendo tried to couple their consoles’ gimmickry with prestige hits like Super Mario Galaxy, companies like Plants vs. Zombies’ PopCap Games married accessible, polished perfection with a super cheap price point. But the Wii was this direction on the most overt, dedicated scale. It was a game made for “everyone,” at least anyone physically able to use it. Through those lighthearted “Wii would like to play” ads, clear game and UI design, and big motion controls, the console was inviting.

I find this beautiful. As a teen, seeing my relatives’ eyes light up playing Wii Sports was special, like I could give them what I get playing Mario’s greatest adventures. Games can do things other media cannot, so while we don’t need to “sacrifice” our most tactical or niche genres we should actively make room for potential players. Unfortunately, most of these casual Wii fans didn’t make the jump to more committed gaming. Perhaps Nintendo’s marketing could have targeted them more effectively, or maybe not, but for the most part those tens of millions of Wii Sports fans didn’t expand their circle beyond maybe another game or two. So the external interest in supporting the Wii dried out as it became clear that the hardware’s success didn’t guarantee software success, and Nintendo’s own output slowed as they began preparations for the Wii U. Much of the Wii’s last few years involved barely any bright spots amid a sea of shovelware. This story of its highs and lows became an easy shorthand for anyone frustrated with “casual games,” noncompetitive experiences, or any interest in expanding the market. You could point to it and say “this is why we shouldn’t make games for casuals.” It’s sad.

Anyway, during this time Nintendo did what every hardware manufacturer does and tinkered with their product. The 2009 Wii Motion Plus was an attachment to the remote that added a much greater range of motion (this did not extend to the Nunchuck attachment, which as always was an awkward extension, like Ray Milland in The Thing with Two Heads). Nicer in 2010 were new Wii Remotes with the tech already built in; I have the golden one from when I bought The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. This peripheral allowed the sensor bar—which normally just reads up to down, left to right, and closer or further to the TV—to read ordinal directions and subtler movements. And much like how Wii Sports was a pack-in game to sell the Wii, this device was sold with a game to use it: Wii Sports Resort. All of its sports mini-games were ways for Nintendo to try things that simply couldn’t have been done in 2006.

A few caveats here. Because I only have that one 2011 Wii Remote Plus, I can’t play multiplayer, the main reason we played Wii Sports at all. Playing against NPCs just doesn’t have that communal sensation. So I was the only one playing a used copy, and my review is gonna be more negative partially because I can’t experience the inherent fun of playing with other people. This also means I’m not going through a story mode or actively hitting the credits, just reviewing the available mini-games. How they play, feel, and compare. It was unique and somewhat uncomfortable for how I normally review things, but I think that’s okay. And, again, playing on the Wii makes me dependent on published screenshots from elsewhere.

Image: IMDb. Our topic of review: twelve games.

There are twelve games in Wii Sports Resort, over twice what the last game had. Sadly, the level of quality isn’t as consistent. I found the first game I tried, Swordplay, the highlight of the whole affair. The “remote as sword” fantasy was always the easiest one to imagine with the Wii—and something Twilight Princess, Red Steel, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed had already explored—but the greater sensitivity is far from those, whose fights mostly descended into waggling the stick. You can see the movement of your Mii’s arm shaking, tilting, and eventually dropping the hammer. It’s really fun, and I imagine it’d be even better going up against a human player. I assume this one is first on the selection screen because of that. It reads as a statement of intent. More than anything else, Resort is a response to the success of its world-conquering predecessor. Instead of overtaking it, as executives typically expect from sequels, its job is to compliment what was the most popular thing around.

Image: IMDb. Swordplay, probably the most “universally accessible” entry of this game in the sense of the movement you make. Two handed sword fighting. It works.

Wakeboarding is also fun, but it also speaks to perhaps the biggest problem of the game. In this one, you hold the remote like you’re riding behind a jet ski, turning hard to the left or right to jump over waves and land on your board. Top notch Nintendo game feel, too. The problem is that it, well, never feels like you’re doing this in real life. I have no idea how true it is to actual wakeboarding, but I never felt like I was doing anything other than holding a remote. This is a real issue because what made Wii Sports so epochal was the immersion. The Motion Plus should allow greater immersion, in theory, but these games don’t exploit it.

I’ll confess here that the third game almost killed my enthusiasm entirely. Frisbee is awful. It isn’t fun to play, it doesn’t seem to correspond to any sense of skill or accuracy, and the act of physically moving as though you’re throwing a frisbee never feels right. Making comparisons to the first game is unfair after a while, but one of the virtues of Wii Sports was that the language of swinging a racket or throwing a bowling ball was about as close to “universal” as something could be. At a time where games were making their first movies to granular, obsessive tedium, that was somewhat audacious. Frisbee breaks that. Perhaps this was inevitable once Resort paired a sport where you throw something with a controller so notorious for being chucked into TVs that it needed a wrist strap.

Archery, on the other hand, is closer to Wakeboarding: fun, physical, but not really that immersive at all. More so, at least, since the act of holding the imaginary drawstring back is very physical. Another thing I appreciated about it (and probably the broader Wii Sports IP to a broader extent) is that it’s very direct. You just hold up one hand, pull the other back, and do your best. There’s some wind shenanigans, and the later stages are at distances that seem impossible for a bullseye, but there’s not that much else. You aren’t changing bows; there’s no magic or fantastical elements. It’s stripped down… albeit less so than the original game, another example of the complex dance Resort has to do.

Directness is dependent on the basics, though, and Basketball (or rather, a three-point contest) is really nothing but bad motion controls. It never feels right, or that you’re able to aim a shot. The actual sport, sinking as many balls as you can, is fine but not nearly as dynamic as, you know, actual basketball. I assume this is partially out of the desire to avoid the control stick as much as possible, which I get. We’re trying to keep the mechanics as simple and based around motion controls as humanly possible. Unfortunately, the end result is tiring.

Image: IMDb. Table Tennis.

Table Tennis is alright. As something of a sequel to the first game’s ultra-popular Tennis mode, it’s a lot more precise, intimate, and, crucially, immersive. It’s a bit finicky because of that, since the trade-off of the Motion Plus is that the sensor is more intense and frenetic than ever. Overplaying your hand—i.e. accidentally hitting so hard that the ball goes out of bounds and you lose by default—is way too easy, and while I think that’d be fun with a second player it takes on a bit of a different tone when the gormless Mii you’re vying against is a CPU. But by being an evolution to an earlier game, Table Tennis is also a good example of the fact that this game fails, and maybe needs to fail, that tenet of how sequels should be open to those unfamiliar with the original. Because… if you bought the Wii, you very likely had Wii Sports (though some Wii models did end up getting sold without it. Actually, both Wii Sports actually were bundled in one game package). This game was firmly for people who wanted more. This sounds like a criticism, but I think it actually gives Resort some kick amongst sequels. It’s freer. Much like the wild motions that kept costing me wins.

While Table Tennis is a follow-up, two of Wii Sports’ games were actually brought back and reimagined with the more fine tuned motion controls. And while Golf was no one’s favorite sport back then, it’s so bad here. Making the golfing pose feels bad, putting and driving are awful, and there’s no sense of real responsiveness. Maybe it’s the distance. Maybe it’s that golf itself lacks the immediacy of archery or tennis or hitting each other with kendo sticks. Either way, it’s joyless here and a poor show for both game design and motion controls.

Fortunately, the other game from Wii Sports and the best of that bunch, Bowling, really elevates things. It’s hard to see the differences at first: you still move your Mii’s position and angle and try to aim for Pins 2 and 3. But I at least felt a much greater sense of control. It felt like I could control the angle and speed better from my hand and not just from where I started. Like I could really make those twisting, curving throws. Nintendo’s corporate culture suffers an anxiety about the possibility that new games will make old ones redundant or less commercially viable if they’re too similar or share too much content (if you’ve ever wondered why so many mediocre Mario sequels have strange gimmicks, there’s your answer). So remaking Bowling and Golf certainly feel odd, but I think this is a good, smaller showcase for the Motion Plus.

Power Cruising is probably the worst example of the overall problem of immersion. The way you hold the Remote and Nunchuck—with no left handed option, unlike most of the others—feels wrong. The main motion here is probably turning the remote to simulate revving an engine for a speed boost. It’s neat but doesn’t do anything for the movement controls. In some ways, it reads like a leftover idea from Mario Kart WIi or Excite Truck, and it certainly seems a bit redundant when MKW did so well with its own, much clunkier peripheral.

Image: Video Games New York. Canoeing. You can notice that the graphics are a fair bit nicer than they are in the original Wii Sports. There’s more color, depth, and detail.

Perhaps Canoeing is the most interesting sport because after a bevy of broad and confusing motions, this one has the opposite problem. It’s incredibly immersive, possibly the single most one outside of Swordplay. I instantly got nostalgic flashbacks to canoeing in my own life. It at least seems to measure your place in the water, so moving forward isn’t purely alternating left and right but reading the space. This also provides a nice space for the improved graphics. But it’s also… not fun, just a racing game where you paddle air aggressively. Nintendo almost religiously believes in the marriage of fun and immersion, but much of this game is a compromise. Fun chosen over immersion. This goes the other way, and as such it comes across as experimental in a way that’s pretty cool. I’d love to see this used for literally anything other than a racing mini-game, perhaps as a way to explore a waterlogged Zelda world.

Cycling is on that level, just without the immersion. It’s the furthest Wii Sports Resort feels from a fun Nintendo party collection and the closest to a workout game. I actually worked up just a bit of a sweat, which was nice. Unfortunately, it’s also not fun. The craziest part is that it tries to incorporate wind directions and resistance, going against the simplicity of the brand.

And finally, it’s all brought full circle in a fully goofy Air Sports mini-game where you skydive, hold other Miis’ hands midflight like it’s Point Break, and pose for the camera. I found this quietly charming. There’s not much more to it, or the game as a whole, but this finale does show something neat. During production, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto pushed the team to create a unified setting, a location that could be branched out and reused just like a character. Miyamoto has a history of sticking his nose into productions, and this instance led to charming, picturesque Wuhu Island. There’s a volcano, lanes for jet skis, soft beaches, and you can see the locations of other mini-games no matter where you are. That’s especially true in Air Sports, and the game even opens with the mini-game for an oddly cinematic start. This idea is really cool; it adds an unnecessary but slightly immersive sense of worldbuilding not unlike Isle Delfino in Super Mario Sunshine. Wuhu Island itself returned in sequels to Pilotwings, Mario Kart, and Super Smash Bros., adding a fun connectivity across the Nintendo of the late Aughts and early Tens. The Wii era is associated with passionless, soft disinterest, but here’s this sequel to the symbol of that era debuting a bizarre twist on a “shared universe.” A shared location.

Image: Smash Wiki, via Giant Bomb. Wuhu Island in Wii Sports Resort is delightful, and over the next five or so years it’d be reimagined again and again.

I want to be very clear about this: Wii Sports Resort was a resounding success. Though it could obviously never match its predecessor’s sales, it was the second-best selling game of 2009, the third-best selling game of the Wii, and would end up moving over 33 million copies. I think we can comfortably assume the Motion Plus did even better. But like its console, the peripheral’s success had little of a knock-on effect. Few games and almost none of note were built around the greater sensitivity; Nintendo themselves only made three Wii games for it. They had an amazing idea with the Wii console but had little idea of how to evolve it. Then they found a way, by adding valuable sensitivity to the controller, and had even less of an idea on how to use that. That this could achieve so much material success while still feeling largely adjacent to the success of its console is a testament to the strange place in which Nintendo found themselves.

Today, the near-unstoppable Nintendo Switch has learned from the Wii’s successes and failures. For one thing, new releases are consistent and consistently good. Mario, Link, Samus, Kirby, Tom Nook, and the rotating cast of Fire Emblem have had some of their most successful and acclaimed adventures in the past seven years. Every year has had major releases, usually on a fast timetable. And while the Wii was this abnormal space where the console sold great but games often didn’t, the Switch perpetuates that stupid “rising tide lifts all boats” aphorism; software sales have been very strong, across genres and series, and have led to a wildly thriving indie scene. It even has a successor to the Wii Sports brand in Nintendo Switch Sports. But there isn’t anything quite like that original game on here. There’s nothing with Wii Sports’ pure immediacy, and there’s certainly not a standard pack-in title. It remains special amongst the world’s most culturally notable games.

And I suppose that Wii Sports Resort represents that in its own way. You couldn’t recreate Wii Sports, though this never tried to (beyond, of course, remaking two of its mini-games). It instead compliments it, albeit in an ungainly way that highlights the flaws of the series, the console, and the controller around which it all orbited. I don’t think I liked it on the whole; many of the sports were unsatisfying without a friend. But several were, and this is still an ambitious game with a lot of ideas for how to use this new peripheral. It is a sequel in the truest sense of the word: a follow-up no less imaginative than its predecessor and always game to try something new. In a late Aughts climate where video game sequels were expected to be bigger and better in vague, often compromising ways, this both followed and bucked that trend.

Next game: Borderlands.

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