{"id":12183,"date":"2014-08-01T00:01:15","date_gmt":"2014-08-01T00:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=12183"},"modified":"2014-07-26T21:16:19","modified_gmt":"2014-07-26T21:16:19","slug":"the-games-of-wii-sports-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/01\/the-games-of-wii-sports-club\/","title":{"rendered":"The Games of Wii Sports Club"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SPORTS_BOX\"<\/a>One of Nintendo\u2019s most popular sports titles on the Wii was Wii Sports.\u00a0 So when the Wii U first came out, naturally Nintendo had a Wii Sports title for that, too.\u00a0 But they released it a little differently.\u00a0 Shortly after the launch of the Wii U, you could download and play games on Wii Sports Club.\u00a0 You could pay for each sport separately or pay to play by the hour.\u00a0 But now Nintendo has just released a disc copy of Wii Sports Club with little to no fanfare, so I thought I\u2019d write about it a bit in this blog.<\/p>\n

As much as I like Wii Sports, I never downloaded the Club version.\u00a0 I\u2019m not against downloadable games or anything like that, though.\u00a0 Heck, if it wasn\u2019t for downloadable games, I wouldn\u2019t be able to review as many games as I do now!\u00a0 But when I download a game, I never really feel like I \u2018own\u2019 it.\u00a0 I know most of that is psychological, but I like to try and buy a physical copy of a game when I can.\u00a0 Plus I didn\u2019t like the payment plans set up for Wii Sports Club, and how much memory it would take on my Wii U hard drive. So when I learned that there was going to be a disc version, I jumped on that opportunity.\u00a0 One thing you should know, though, is that the game requires you have at least one Wii Motion Plus controller or accessory.<\/p>\n

Wii Sports Club takes five games from Wii Sports and gussies them up with HD graphics, Motion Plus and Wii U pad controls, and online play.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t played online with anyone, but that\u2019s because I\u2019m not much on playing online anyway.\u00a0 When the original Wii Sports came out, my friend from work and I said that if it had online play, it might\u2019ve been as big as Halo!\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s too little, too late now, or if we were just talking big, but at least you can play online with Club.\u00a0 You can also use Miiverse to post words of encouragement to other players, but I don\u2019t know how that works or how you\u2019re supposed to post while playing.\u00a0 But that\u2019s OK because I don\u2019t really mess with Miiverse much either, as cool as it may be.\u00a0 When you first start up Wii Sports Club, you\u2019re also asked to join an online club based on your region.\u00a0 You can pick any you want and change after 24 hours, but I kept it real and local and joined the Texas Club.<\/p>\n

The five games on Wii Sports Club are Bowling, Tennis, Golf, Baseball, and Boxing.\u00a0 You can play each sport in three different ways: Online, Local, and Training.\u00a0 The training modes offer three different mini-games that let you practice the skills you use in each of the sports.\u00a0 So let\u2019s take a quick look at each sport you can play.<\/p>\n

Bowling<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think Bowling is the least changed sport that made the transition from Wii to Wii U.\u00a0 I can\u2019t tell that it uses the Motion Plus controls very much, and all you see on the gamepad are Miiverse posts.\u00a0 But even so, bowling is my favorite game on Wii Sports, and I\u2019m sure it\u2019s many others\u2019 too.\u00a0 Bowling is so good here that I never felt the need to buy another bowling game on Wii U or Wii.\u00a0 You know what was another good bowling video game?\u00a0 Monkey Bowling on Super Monkey Ball on GameCube.\u00a0 Similarly, I never felt the need to buy another bowling game on GameCube because it was so good.\u00a0 My favorite arcade bowling game is The Simpsons Bowling.\u00a0 Konami made it a few years after their Simpsons beat \u2018em up title, when they probably still had the license to do Simpsons arcade games.\u00a0 It was pretty good, though, and very funny.\u00a0 It had PSOne era 3-D graphics, but still looked good for the time.\u00a0 The only other bowling game I ever wanted to try was Ten Pin Alley with Animaniacs on PSOne.\u00a0 And the only reason why I wanted to try it was because it had Animaniacs in it, and that cartoon rocked.<\/p>\n

Tennis<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never really liked Tennis on Wii Sports that much.\u00a0 But that\u2019s mostly because I\u2019ve never really gotten into too many tennis video games because I feel like they\u2019re just glorified Pong clones.\u00a0 And also because I\u2019m not very good at them either.\u00a0 And now that Tennis on Wii Sports Club uses Motion Plus controls, you need more finesse and control to play it.\u00a0 And finesse and control are two qualities that I do NOT have!\u00a0 I think the only tennis game I really got into was Sega SuperStars Tennis.\u00a0 It had a lot of cool gameplay modes based on classic SEGA titles, and any game that has Ulala and Tails in it can\u2019t be all bad, right?\u00a0 Remember when companies used to sell attachments for the Wii remote that looked like tennis rackets, baseball bats, and golf clubs?\u00a0 That was so useless.\u00a0 I also remember seeing Wii remote attachments for Cooking Mama that looked like frying pans and spatulas.\u00a0 I remember the box for those said \u201cCooking Mother\u201d on the front.\u00a0 Man I\u2019m glad the days of useless Wii attachments is gone and done!<\/p>\n

Golf<\/strong><\/p>\n

Golf is fun on Wii Sports, but also has the highest learning curve.\u00a0 Swinging with the Wii remote remains the same, but now you put the Wii U gamepad on the floor to see your club and the ball on the screen!\u00a0 I heard that one of the courses on Wii Sports Club is based on the courses found on NES Open Tournament Golf!\u00a0 Golf games really took off on the Wii, and I have a few of them.\u00a0 Capcom\u2019s We Love Golf and Tecmo\u2019s Super Swing Golf series (based on Pangya) to name a few.\u00a0 I\u2019m surprised there was never a Mario Golf on the Wii or Wii U.<\/p>\n

Baseball<\/strong><\/p>\n

I find baseball boring to watch on TV, and I certainly can\u2019t play it in real life with my poor vision.\u00a0 But as long as they keep things simple and arcade-like, I do enjoy me some baseball video games pretty well.\u00a0 Batting remains pretty much the same in Wii Sports Club, but I can never get the hang of the timing!\u00a0 But then, it\u2019s like that with me and other baseball games, too!\u00a0 But pitching and fielding now use the Wii U gamepad!\u00a0 Point the Wii U gamepad at the TV screen and pick your pitch style and strength, and tilt to aim where you throw.\u00a0 Catching fly balls is fun with the Wii U gamepad.\u00a0 You have to point the gamepad in the direction the ball is falling, and line it up so you can catch it!\u00a0 I\u2019d like this game a lot better if I were better at batting, though!\u00a0 You know who makes really fun baseball games?\u00a0 Namco!\u00a0 I love their Family Stadium and World Stadium games (the first was brought to the US as R.B.I. Baseball on the NES), and Namco also made the Mario baseball titles, too.\u00a0 Speaking of Namco, I wish they\u2019d make another We Ski and Snowboard or Go Vacation games.\u00a0 Those were really fun Wii sports games as well!<\/p>\n

Boxing<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think Boxing has changed the most due to the Motion Plus controls.\u00a0 On the old Wii Sports, you just wailed like a spaz maniac with the remote and nunchuck.\u00a0 But here you can use two Wii Motion Plus controllers or just box one-handed if you don\u2019t have two.\u00a0 This way you can execute more accurate punches and dodge blows more effectively.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure Boxing on Wii Sports helped prompt Nintendo to make the Punch Out game on Wii.\u00a0 I never played Wii Punch Out, though.\u00a0 I tried the one on NES and rented the SNES Punch Out once, and I didn\u2019t play the arcades ones much because all the bigger kids hogged them.\u00a0 But for some reason I could never get into Punch Out games.\u00a0 So I never bothered with the Wii one.\u00a0 But then, I\u2019m not much of a boxing fan anyway.\u00a0 I admire the athletic men and women who do that, but I don\u2019t like seeing them getting hurt.\u00a0 One of the Wii Sports Club Boxing training games is Dodgeball, where you must dodge balls coming at you.\u00a0 I wish Dodgeball was a sport on Wii Sports Club!\u00a0 Super Dodge Ball on NES was my favorite sports video game before Wii Sports came along.\u00a0 Mario Sports Mix on Wii had a dodgeball game on it, and it was pretty fun.\u00a0 Speaking of Mario Sports Mix, that game was made by Square, and since they made it, did you know the final thing you did in the single player mode is fight a giant Final Fantasy purple Behemoth using your sports skills?\u00a0 True story!<\/p>\n

Conclusions<\/strong><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s all the games in Wii Sports Club!\u00a0 Since the games use the Motion Plus controls a lot, you have to have more finesse to play them, so since I don\u2019t have any finesse or grace (I\u2019m a real klutz), I guess I\u2019ll just have to learn to enjoy playing the game poorly!\u00a0 In the comments section, tell me your favorite Wii Sports games, and other sports video games in general.\u00a0 That\u2019s all for now!\u00a0 Later!\u00a0 –Cary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of Nintendo\u2019s most popular sports titles on the Wii was Wii Sports.\u00a0 So when the Wii U first came out, naturally Nintendo had a Wii Sports title for that, too.\u00a0 But they released it a little differently.\u00a0 Shortly after the launch of the Wii U, you could download and play games on Wii Sports […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12183"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12186,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12183\/revisions\/12186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}