Nintendo Switch Sports Resort review: The most feature-packed Nintendo sports game yet

Next month marks the 20th anniversary of Wii Sports, one of the most influential games in the history of the medium.

Whether you got along with its motion controls or not, there can be no denying that Wii Sports scratched an itch with a huge number of people who wouldn’t traditionally call themselves video game players.

Its 82 million units sold – many of which were bundled with the console in the West, of course – played a major role not only in the Wii becoming Nintendo’s first home console to break the 100 million milestone, but in transforming the shape and typical demographics of the video games audience.

Since then, Nintendo has gone back to Wii Sports a few times in an attempt to keep that audience returning. Wii Sports Resort made use of the Wii’s new MotionPlus accessory, and sold 33 million units as a result. Wii Sports Club on Wii U was less successful (as was practically everything on Wii U), offering an odd digital delivery method where players paid for each sport separately.

The series returned after a nine-year break in 2022 with Nintendo Switch Sports, and while it may not have dominated the headlines on specialist video game sites, its 18 million sales showed the series was still no slouch when it came to appealing to the mainstream market after all this time.

Now Nintendo’s back – just in time for the 20th anniversary – with the fifth game in the Wii / Switch Sports series, and while it’s still never going to win over the anti-motion control crowd, those who are more accepting of it will find that it’s easily the most feature-packed entry in the series to date.

Nintendo Switch Sports Resort gameplay: All 12 sports

As the name suggests, Nintendo Switch Sports Resort does what Wii Sports Resort did 17 years ago and sets the game on a tropical resort, the returning Wuhu Island. While the various sports on offer take place in venues on Wuhu Island, part of the game also involves exploring the resort itself.

There are 12 sports on offer here, consisting mainly of returning classics but also throwing a few new events into the mix. Fans of the original Wii Sports will be happy to see the return of Tennis, Boxing, Golf and Bowling (let’s face it, Baseball was nobody’s favourite), and they more or less control like they did back in the day.

This has its positives and its negatives, as it ever did. Tennis’s simple ‘swing the Joy-Con to swing the racket’ control method means players of all skill levels can play together, but accuracy is still determined by the same slightly unwieldy method as before, where swinging too early or late would send the ball to the left or right respectively.

With no option to move your character using the control stick, or have more control over where your shots go, Tennis still has that odd vibe to it where it’s fun but always feels a little random. You’ll still feel great satisfaction when a shot flies diagonally across the court and lands right on the sideline on the way out, but it’s mixed with the knowledge, deep down, that you weren’t fully responsible for that.

Five of the other sports – Archery, Table Tennis, Basketball, Power Cruising and Prop Plane – come from the Wii sequel, Wii Sports Resort. Basketball is probably the weakest sport in the game because its dribbling and off-the-ball running controls are clunky, but the other four are among the best.

Table Tennis provides the accuracy not seen in Tennis, while Archery originally made great use of the Wii MotionPlus controls back in the day and is still has that ‘one more go’ factor as you try to hit successive bullseyes over increasingly long and windy distances (not to mention more ridiculous locations, culminating in a round inside a volcano).

Power Cruising and Prop Plane, meanwhile, do have competitive elements of their own but they’re best used for the Sightseeing Tour mode, which I’ll get to in a bit.

The final three sports bring the list to a close are Volleyball, Thumb Wrestling and Skateboarding. Volleyball returns from its debut in Nintendo Switch Sports and remains a reasonable enough take on the sport, but it’s probably not one of the more exciting events in the package.

Thumb Wrestling is also rather basic but it does at least have a degree of strategy in it. By resting your thumb down you can power it up and make the thumb bigger, but obviously this also leaves you wide open to being ‘pinned’ by your opponent’s thumb. It’s simple but it’s also the one I’ve spent most time on so far.

This is also the only event in the game which actually features the dreaded w-word, so if you – like me – are a Wii apologist who was bored of people saying every game had waggle in it back in the day, you might want to pretend this one doesn’t exist, even though it’s actually fun enough.

That leaves Skateboarding, which is the only event to specifically make use of the Switch 2’s unique controls, specifically the mouse controls on the Joy-Con. In a sort of easier variation on Nintendo’s wheelchair basketball game Drag x Drive, here you use a single Joy-Con in mouse mode and drag it back to speed up, while tilting it to turn

It works very well, but it’s perhaps the one event that may have a bigger learning curve for complete novices. My 8-year-old daughter got used to every other sport in the game, but struggled for a while with the Skateboarding controls and asked why she couldn’t just walk around the island instead.

Which brings me to one of the more entertaining parts of the game, the Sightseeing Tour. There are a total of three different Sightseeing Tours in the game, found in the Prop Plane, Skateboarding and Power Cruising menus, and completing them all will take you plenty of time.

These tours build on Shigeru Miyamoto’s original belief that if Wuhu Island was used for multiple games – Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit, Mario Kart 7, Pilotwings Resort – it would eventually feel like a character in its own right. Nintendo Switch Sports Resort lets you explore the island in greater detail than ever before, as you search for Spocco Photos and Island Missions in 5-minute sessions.

“These tours build on Shigeru Miyamoto’s original belief that if Wuhu Island was used for multiple games – Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit, Mario Kart 7, Pilotwings Resort – it would eventually feel like a character in its own right.”

Spocco Photos – of which there are 105 in Prop Plane, 80 in Skateboarding and 60 in Power Cruising – are camera icons which, when driven over, reveal information about the island’s points of interest. Island Missions, meanwhile – of which there are 128 divided across the three vehicles – offer a wider variety of tasks to carry out, from popping balloons to finding hibiscus flowers.

The Sightseeing Tours are a crucial part of the game, because they’re one of a number of features that add a level of purpose to proceedings, and elevate the game beyond simply playing the games in local or online multiplayer. They’re the reason the game’s single-player offering is more in-depth than seen before in the series.

Getting all the Spocco Photos and Island Missions will take you long enough, but then you have to get 60 achievements, five in each sport. These include things like clearing Bowling with either a strike or spare in every frame, or winning tennis with at least three smashes.

And even if you manage all that there’s the Island Crown mode, where nine of the sports (everything except Prop Plane, Skateboarding and Power Cruising) have leaderboards where you start at number 20 and work your way up the rankings, taking on increasingly difficult CPU opponents, until you reach the top and defeat the island champion.

Doing all this continually earns you special unlockable outfits, facepaints, emotes, profile images and equipment which let you customise your character. It also earns you currency which can be spent on the rotating weekly and monthly themed gacha machines, which can be used to get even more unlockables (thankfully as you buy each one it’s removed from the list, so you never get doubles).

The result of all this is easily the most feature-packed Wii / Switch Sports game Nintendo has produced, and the one that should appeal to the widest range of players. The ‘casual’ family members who got a kick out of Wii Sports tennis, bowling, golf or boxing will find them here, just like they always were (for better or worse, controls-wise).

Those searching for a bigger multiplayer challenge will find that in the ranked and casual online modes for most of the sports. And those who prefer single-player and may have felt more under-represented in previous games will now find a wealth of modes aimed at them, with collectibles to find, achievements to unlock and nine separate CPU leaderboards to clear, as well as hundreds of cosmetic items to unlock.

The only main issues are those surrounding the controls. By their nature not everyone is in love with motion controls, and even those who are happy to embrace them will find that some of the sports like Tennis or Basketball don’t quite provide the accuracy they’re hoping for, especially when playing the harder CPU opponents who don’t seem to have those issues.

Come to terms with this, however, and Nintendo Switch Sports Resort delivers a brilliant sports compilation that may not overtake the 82 million sales of the original Wii Sports, but certainly offers a significantly more well-rounded experience.