Some of the happiest memories from my childhood were created by the Wii console that I shared with my cousin. Nothing beat waking up before everyone else, grabbing a glass of milk, and doing the island flyover on Wii Sports Resort until someone could take me to the park for real-life sport. Back then, my biggest gripe with the world was that my family insisted on having the television screen face the window, which made it difficult to see how accurately I was navigating a seaplane into the crater of the Wuhu Island volcano.
Wii Sports Resort has it all, really: sword fighting on a platform above the sea, canoeing down a waterfall alongside some ducklings, and cycling inside the same volcano you could fly into. But its older sibling, the original Wii Sports, deserves some appreciation too—especially the sports that didn’t carry over to Resort. Boxing was frustrating but rewarding once you got the hang of it, and it was pretty cool seeing all your friends, family, and Darth Vader line up in Mii-form at the baseball stadium for you to swing the bat with. Tennis, the most iconic after bowling, is the most physically engaging of the sports, especially if you have a competitive edge.
Boxing was frustrating but rewarding once you got the hang of it, and it was pretty cool seeing all your friends, family, and Darth Vader line up in Mii-form at the baseball stadium for you to swing the bat with
If you don’t have a Wii, there are plenty of iterations of Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games across most Nintendo consoles, old and new. The final game of the franchise, Tokyo 2020 for the Switch, was met with some harsh critiques for failing to live up to its predecessors—and while yes, nothing will ever beat the 2008 one, the criticism was overblown. Maybe it’s the delusional nostalgia for lockdown summer talking, but nothing entertained me as much as the new sports that it introduced: skateboarding, surfing, rock climbing, and fantasy archery in arenas full of beautiful Japanese architecture. A friend and I held weekly “Olympics” where we’d play each game in sequence, tallying up the wins to determine the tournament’s victor. Considering we couldn’t do real sport outside, it was a fine replacement.
If you’re looking for something a bit more left-field in the old-ish sports video games niche, then Doritos Crash Course for Xbox360 is the game for you. If you’ve still got the console laying about, there’s a free demo you can download which is comprehensive enough to provide hours of entertainment. A ninja-style platformer, you have to jump, climb, roll, and swing your way across an obstacle course in front of a live audience. Basically, if you’ve always wanted to go on Total Wipeout or Ninja Warrior but don’t actually have superhuman strength, this game would let you finally live out your dreams.
