So if Wii Sports was too MLG for you, a mere pathetic scrub, Nintendo is once again going to rub Dettol in your wounds and give you another game that shows you how the machine works…again, because Wii Sports was not enough to help you. Wii Play, released as Your First Step to Wii (はじめてのWii Hajimete no Uī), developed and published by Nintendo and was released in 2006 in Australia, Japan and Europe and in 2007 in the US. It was a launch title in all countries except for America.

Included in the disc are nine mini-games that introduces people into how the Wii Remote works because Wii Sports wasn’t enough. And that’s about it, they’re just random games. Nevertheless, I’m going to talk about them all.

1. Shooting Range (AKA A homage of NES shooting games) – So you use your Wii remote to shoot balloons, targets, frisbees, soda cans and UFOs, but avoid targets with your face or you’ll lose points. There’s even ducks flying around, a homage to Duck Hunt. It’s a decent game, though fun for a small period of time, so it’s not going to be addictive.

2. Find Mii (AKA Where the heck are you ya Wally?) – It’s a pointless game of finding Miis by finding two of the same Miis and finding the Wii you’re playing as and finding the fastest Mii, etc. It’s…what was the point of this mini-game? To tell the player how to aim their remote? Then how could the person aim their remote to select anything in menus? Yep, this is filler material. Avoid this one.

3. Table Tennis (AKA…Table Tennis) – It’s Table Tennis, just tap the ball to your opponent without losing. My issue with this is the motion controls, it’s very wonky, it’s not that I kept losing, it’s just that I didn’t get the feel of hitting the ball, I always think the ball misses the pad but it still counts as a hit anyway and thus it’s a near broken game, not entirely broken, but for a motion controlled game, it’s not perfect.

4. Pose Mii (AKA a slightly original and hard puzzle game…you just got to play it to get to that part) – So you’re supposed to place your Mii inside falling bubbles but you’re supposed to place it while forming a pose to match the bubble. You got to twist and turn the remote to get it to fit and it gets harder as you progress. It’s OK; I put it at the second worst game in the collection for just being another pointless game.

5. Laser Hockey (AKA If your buddy obliges) – Blending Pong and Air Hockey, this is…well Air Hockey to an extent where you move neon pad to deflect shots to score in the goal of the opponent. It’s not bad but it’s more of a time waster with a friend than being entirely pointless.

6. Fishing (AKA Nintendo hates small fries) – It’s a fishing game where you use the Wii Remote as a fishing hook where you drop the hook in the pond and wait for one the paper fish to cling on to the hook; you need to feel the vibration of the remote to rise it up to catch it. Instead of being broken (kind of), it ends up being annoying. Remember those fishing games you played where you had to catch paper fish with a stick with a sting and a weak magnet, the one you played in school, it’s that but less functional. The third worst game in the collection.

7. Billiards (AKA Bring the drinks, this is going to be an all-nighter) – It’s Billiard, like Snooker and like Pool where you knock balls in holes in a table, though you need to knock balls in order of 1 to 9. Trying to hit a ball is a bit wonky depending on the motion capabilities; here’s a tip, make sure the remote is close to the screen to give you the ability to actually hit the ball or you’ll miss a lot. Whilst it’s not perfect, it’s my favourite game in the collection, I played three matches of Billiards because it was addicting and for a better word, fun. I recommend it if you don’t mind the issues.

8. Charge! (AKA The prototype to Sonic and the Secret Rings) – You ride on a horse running over scarecrows with incredibly awkward controls. And that’s it. Also, it uses yarn level design, many years before Yoshi’s Woolly World.

9. Tanks! (AKA Atari Combat Gone Sexual) – Requiring the Nunchuck (or not), you control a toy tank and you got to shoot down other toy tanks. You can also place mines to destroy toy tanks too. It’s OK; at least it’s not broken.

Overall, after playing through this collection…only two games were actually good. It’s a pointless compilation, to be fair; it’s trying to show off the capabilities of the motion controls. Instead, it shows off the problems and this would be what third party developers would use to make pointless shovelware, there’s nothing to this game. I wouldn’t even recommend it as a tutorial to the motion controls; Wii Sports was decent enough as a start-up. Wii Play isn’t really fun and whilst Wii Sports was a game whose longevity fun-wise slowly stopped becoming fun, Wii Play’s fun factor drops faster than a coin the moment you played all of the games in the collection.

It’s not the worst game Nintendo ever made, but it marked the beginning of pointless shovelware and it all started with the big guys. I hope you’re happy Nintendo, YOU started that cycle and the cycle died along with the console itself. If you’re going to get it, GET IT UNDER A POUND, nothing more, nothing less.

You can get it on the Nintendo Wii.

Tags » Wii Play

Wii Play