Why Wii Sports Is So Popular With Video Gamers

Wii Sports is a game that initially shipped with the Nintendo Wii Console. Its popularity is partially due to realistic gameplay - not with the game graphics but due to how the games are played. They mimic real-world sports games.

For example, to hit the ball in the tennis game, one merely swings the controller to the left or right. One does not have to fiddle with a small controller pad to play the game. To hit a  baseball, one holds the controller similar to how one would hold a baseball bat. This is the most realistic game play we have ever seen for sports video games.

The games included are tennis, baseball, boxing, bowling, and golf. The boxing game requires a separate “nunchuck” which plugs into the controller.

All games include training, standard play, several multiplayer choices, and the ability to create your own characters.

The training allows one to hone in on one of three different actions for each sport. Just as in real life, training or practice helps to improve your performance. In tennis, one can focus on returning the ball or placing the ball within a specific area. In baseball, one can practice pitching or batting. Boxing training is useful for learning how to duck and weave and throw your punches at just the right moment.

The standard gameplay involves one player playing against the computer. In some modes, defeating a computer opponent will often result in the gaining of “experience”. With enough experience, your rank increases. One’s rank is cause for bragging rights among his or her fellow gamers.

The multiplayer option allows two, three, or four players to compete against one another. This is Wii Sports at its most immersive and rewarding. Its one thing to pit your skill against a challenging computer player, another to play with living, breathing people whose real-life movements (as well as yours) directly correspond with onscreen gameplay. Of course, each player must have his or her own controller.

With Wii Sports, you can create your own characters and save them for later use. To create your own character, one simply starts with a character from the “Mii channel”. The character can then be customized to one’s own liking. Some of these characters can be used in games other than Wii Sports.

Many gamers enjoy saving their Wii Sports characters to the Wii remote controller, and will take them to a friend’s house, and insert the character into the game at the friend’s house. This adds greater personality to the gaming experience.

Game reviewers have given Wii Sports positive reviews overall, but are quick to point out a few flaws. The game has also won several awards.

The Nintendo Wii Sports game provides hours of fun for people of all ages.

The “missing” elements in the latest Mario and Zelda Wii Games

In a recent interview, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto stated that he believed something was “missing” in the latest installments of his two most popular series: Zelda and Mario. That’s right; Miyamoto said that both Super Mario Galaxy and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess were lacking. In what he did not say, but he feels that other leading games have something his do not. He made it clear that Twilight Princess was not a bad game, just missing something he couldn’t put his finger on.

About Super Mario Galaxy, he mentioned, “And while, personally, I feel like Super Mario Galaxy was able to do some things that were very new and were very unique, at the same time, from another perspective, certain elements of it do feel somewhat conservative in terms of how far we branched out with design. And so this is something I’ve been talking to both of those teams about.”

I agree that it does feel like there is a certain lack of a specific kind of depth in those games that we do see in other franchises. On the part of Mario Galaxy, it’s true that design is in many ways responsible, but there’s something else, too. And I have a pretty good idea of what it is. It’s the aspect of each series that has failed to evolve with almost every other major franchise: characters and story structure.

In terms of the depth-of-character, it’s understandable that they haven’t acted until now. Nintendo’s characters are well-known almost world-wide. What if they give Link from Legend of Zelda a personality, and large groups of people say, “That is not how I imagined him!” Besides, it is true, as Nintendo once said, that Link acts as the “Link” between the player and the character onscreen, and if Link had a specific personality people could not project themselves onto him as well.

However, if Link was truly the “Link”, shouldn’t we be able to customize his looks, or at least clothing? Choose in what manner he talks with people, and the kinds of weapons and abilities he uses? No, the games do not attempt to do this at all. Instead, (in the case of Twilight Princess) they give us a world full of characters, bursting with back-story and, in some cases, inner struggles. But when the main character has no voice or personality, the character dynamics needed to effectively portray these events and character aspects are inconveniently absent. The decision Nintendo has made is not like choosing “this” instead of “that”, it’s a complete absence of both.

The “characters” aspect may not apply so much to Super Mario Galaxy, but the “story structure” aspect does. Searching for star after star and unlocking new worlds is a heck of a lot of fun, but it does start to drag. People just aren’t as driven to beat the game as the case with other franchises any more.

Again, they are both great games, but they are missing the kind of depth that other games have. Shigeru Miyamoto is apparently putting a lot of thought into this, so let’s hope he’ll be able to make the right choice, and lead both series in the right direction.

3 Big WiiWare Games Of 2009

While many third-party efforts for WiiWare have been lackluster and of little consequence, a good many this next year are looking to be surprisingly promising. Not only do these three games look good considering they are cheaply sold offerings for a game download service, but they may just give big-budget games a run for their money.

The first of this three is a game in development by the makers of De Blob, called Swords and Soldiers. Swords and Soldiers is a competitive strategy game featuring cartoony graphics, and a splitscreen multiplayer mode as well as a singleplayer campaign. As the devs have put it, it is basically a sidescrolling RTS, in which the object is to deploy your troops at just the right moments in order to outwit and defeat your foe. The reason for this is that in Swords and Soldiers, the moment your troops have been created they will automatically move toward the enemy base.

However, there are additional tactical elements. For example, certain sections of the battlefield allow you to set up a fortress and bunker down. There are also different specific paths you can make your men take, potentially opposing or confronting an army your path may cross with. Though you can use all kinds of spells and abilities to aid your troops in battle, what it really comes down to is careful timing and resource management.

The second game I’d like to point out is called Cave Story. Cave Story was originally a free-to-play title for pc. It featured an extended storyline about a race of underground rabbit-like creatures called mimigas, who an evil doctor manipulates by feeding them red herbs that transform them into monsters. The majority of the game took place underground, where you, a robot by the name of Quote, had originally been sent to exterminate the mimigas.

The storyline was deep and intriguing for an indie game, and the action utilized certain roleplaying elements, as you leveled up your weapons with every attack. Now, the developers will be upgrading the graphics and adding at least ten levels to the game. It should be interesting to see what this talented developer comes up with on a larger budget and with more possibilities to enhance the game.

Lastly, there is Muramasa: The Demon Blade, a very highly anticipated game that is being developed by the team that brought you Odin Sphere. Like Odin Sphere, it is a cartoon sidescrolling action RPG. The style is so visually awesome that many people called it one of the best looking games presented at the Tokyo Game Show conference. The watercolored look of the environments is nothing less than gorgeous.

The gameplay combines oldschool beat-em-up action with RPG gameplay as the character leaps from area to area defeating enemies; gaining experience and new weapons and abilities. Players can also stop at certain villages and speak with the townfolk, to complete quests for gold and experience. Such deep and engaging gameplay systems are usually reserved for the big-budget games on store shelves.

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