somewhat disappointing<\/a> Nintendo Switch Sports, which I felt lacked compelling reasons to play it at launch and relied far too much on online play to get much out of it. I was ready to accept that Resort would be a game I play a little bit at a time for a very long time, breaking it out with friends or family on game nights over the course of the entire Switch 2 generation. And there is room in a library for games like that! So I was happy for it to play that role in my life. But I no longer feel this way: I\u2019m ready for a weeks-long stay on Wuhu Island.<\/p>\nResort appears to be solving all of Switch Sports\u2019 shortcomings.\u201c<\/p>\n
I think that\u2019s mostly because Resort appears to be solving all of Switch Sports\u2019 shortcomings. Spocco Square was nothing more than a video game menu that existed purely for you to select your next minigame. Wuhu Island is a place designed for competition, exploration, and leisure. Take Power Cruising (a trademark-free term for Jet Skiing) as an example. I can race my friends on a course that rewards speed and taking huge jumps off the waves as we bob and weave through obstacles just off of Wuhu\u2019s shores. <\/p>\n
Or, we can take a sightseeing tour of the water, taking five minutes to find as many landmarks as we can. Here, there are objectives and achievements to check off: I chased a pink dolphin until it rewarded me with a collectible, and elsewhere I had to line myself up to launch off a huge wave to grab another sparkly thing just out of my reach. At the end of the five-minute round, we saw an overhead view of the island, complete with a tracing of the path my co-op partner and I took around the island, reminiscent of Breath of the Wild\u2019s Hero\u2019s Path feature. We laughed at seeing where we went different directions, and when we met back up, and we talked about what we\u2019d seen and discovered. I didn\u2019t get to try this, but I\u2019m told that there\u2019s a free play mode for certain sports like Power Cruising where you can explore and chill for as long as you\u2019d like with no timer; you just can\u2019t unlock collectibles and achievements in that mode. This is just one sport, but there are many different ways to engage with it: competition, exploration, and leisure. <\/p>\n
In a way, modes like this feel like a more successful realization of Mario Kart World\u2019s Free Roam. You can easily explore in splitscreen with friends, collectibles and achievements are clearly marked and tracked, and they earn you points that can be spent on cosmetics for your Sportsmate or Mii character. It all feels fun, seamless to play with others, and well thought out in terms of rewards and goals to chase. And the denser, more self-contained layout of Wuhu Island means every area has something meaningful to uncover.<\/p>\n
Nintendo Switch Sports Resort Screenshots![\"\"](\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7\")
<\/p>\n
I explored Wuhu Island from two different angles in Skateboarding and Prop Plane. Skateboarding makes use of the Joy-Con 2 mouse controls, where I dragged the controller backwards as if it was my foot and my leg was the ground. I leaned left and right to turn, flicked the controller up to jump, and waggled it around to do spins and tricks in the air. I grinded on rails, crashed into the ocean to see what would happen (my character drowned and was returned to shore), and tried to find a path up to the island\u2019s iconic volcano: Maka Wuhu. I ran out of time before I made it there.<\/p>\n
So I took to the skies instead, using my plane to fly straight into the mouth of the volcano, as I did countless times in Pilotwings Resort back in the day. I was pleased to find a collectible deep within the volcano to reward my efforts. Soaring around the island revealed how much it has changed over the years: the distant golf course has a new resort hotel, there are additional smaller keys surrounding the main island, and the geography of everything has been shuffled a bit. The skies of Wuhu were stuffed with things to find: Landmarks to photograph and make note of, balloons to pop, and more. I spent a lot of time trying to use my water gun to shoot down my co-op partner, to no avail. Even with all this stuff to find and do, goofing around with no goal or objective is just as fun as it always was, and in part what I think this game is made for. It\u2019s summer vacation! You\u2019re supposed to just laze around and have fun.<\/p>\n
But you can still turn up the heat when it\u2019s time to compete. Thumb Wrestling will likely be a bore against the computer \u2013 it\u2019s just too simple \u2013 but against a human opponent, it\u2019s absolutely hilarious as you try to bait the other person to put their thumb down, and just laugh at the absurdity of two adults digitally thumb wrestling each other. We also bowled, and it\u2019s pretty much unchanged from Wii Sports\u2019 original winning formula, but it\u2019s honestly still a classic. I played Archery again, too, which remains one of my all-time favorites. This time, we played a competitive mode where one quarter of the target is assigned to each player. That means it\u2019s risky to aim for a bullseye: if you miss your quarter of the center and hit someone else\u2019s, you hand them a bunch of points. As the round progresses, the target will start to rotate, or adjust the size of each quadrant to put the leader at a disadvantage to allow for last-second comebacks, which is a very fun \u2013 and very Nintendo \u2013 way to keep things interesting.<\/p>\n
We also bowled, and it\u2019s pretty much unchanged from Wii Sports\u2019 original winning formula, but it\u2019s honestly still a classic.\u201c<\/p>\n
I played a round of Table Tennis, which was never one of my favorites, and still feels kind of forgettable here, especially when standard Tennis is also one of Resort\u2019s 12 sports. And while we\u2019re splitting hairs, volleyball is here, too, which makes for three net sports in the package. I would have much preferred another sport that makes use of the island itself: I remember swordfighting hundreds of Miis while trekking across the entire island in Wii Sports Resort, and it breaks my heart that it has been cut from Resort\u2019s roster of activities. And although it wasn\u2019t in the original Resort, this series desperately needs baseball back, too.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Boxing has returned for only the second time since the original (remember Wii Sports Club on Wii U? No, just me?), and it\u2019s great to see one of the OGs again. It was here that Nintendo showed off one of the new single-player elements, where you climb a ladder of increasingly difficult CPU opponents to become the champion in that given sport. It\u2019s like a miniature campaign, and while the lowest ranked opponent I boxed was ridiculously easy \u2013 they almost should have called the fight early for his health and safety \u2013 I\u2019m looking forward to moving up the ranks. It\u2019s just another example of how much offline single-player content Nintendo has included this time around.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m stunned at how excited I am for Nintendo Switch Sports Resort. I plan to 100% this game, which is not something I would have said two weeks ago. I\u2019m still not entirely thrilled with the sports lineup \u2013 I would trade Table Tennis and Volleyball for things like Swordplay, Baseball, or Frisbee \u2013 but what is here is shaping up to be really fantastic. Don\u2019t sleep on this one: I think it\u2019s going to be an enormous improvement on Nintendo Switch Sports and a fantastic return to one of my favorite settings in Nintendo history. I\u2019ll see you on Wuhu Island.<\/p>\n
While you’re here, check out these recent previews of other big upcoming games we’ve checked out recently!<\/p>\n
![\"Logan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20230902_161409_Copy-1696267595007.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Logan Plant is the host of Nintendo Voice Chat and IGN’s Senior Editor, Playlist and DB. The Legend of Zelda is his favorite video game franchise of all time, and he is patiently awaiting the day Nintendo announces a brand new F-Zero. You can find new episodes of NVC every Friday on the IGN Games YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Key Preview Takeaways: Nintendo is bundling Nintendo Switch Sports Resort with Switch 2s this holiday season.Wuhu Island is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":918346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,105],"class_list":["post-918345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}