NINTENDO SWITCH SPORTS

The legacy of the Wii era lives on in this long-awaited successor

This is going to hurt a bit if you’re an Edge reader of a certain vintage – sorry. There is no escaping it: people get nostalgic about Wii Sports now. Just as some of us experience warm, fuzzy feelings when thinking back to the 8- and 16bit eras, so many players’ rose-tinted gaming memories involve swinging a Wii Remote to play tennis with their families. For a generation of players, it is as much a foundational text as, say, Super Mario Bros is to another, sparking an interest in videogames that has since become a consuming passion.

How else to explain the response to Nintendo Switch Sports? As many people did, we watched the Direct announcement and figured: about time. An update to one of Nintendo’s biggest-ever successes has been an open goal for a while, particularly for a company so practised in repackaging its past. But it is easy to underestimate how big a deal this is to a swathe of Switch’s userbase. There was the kind of widespread delight you would expect to greet the announcement of a third Super Mario Galaxy. It has become accepted wisdom that the casual audience Wii Sports attracted largely moved on to mobile games afterward, but here was a reminder that a significant percentage of that group are more deeply invested in their hobby: the blue-ocean strategy made waves that continue to ripple 16 years on.