Way back last year whilst you were sitting around your living room television with your assorted family and friends on Christmas Day, it’s quite possible that the most strenuous activity that you performed was leaning to reach the television remote, or to squeeze a nut cracker around a walnut when you felt peckish. Had someone informed you that in 12 months’ time you’d be jumping around your lounge with your Dad waving your arms around like a madman then it’s quite likely you’d have not believed them, or thought they’d indulged in a bit too much festive cheer.

Cue Wii Sports, Nintendo’s freebie (unless you’re based in the Far East anyway) offering which comes packaged with your lovely shiny new Wii console. Offering five different sports for your participation – baseball, bowling, tennis, golf and boxing – the game aims to introduce you to the Wii Remote in a friendly, competitive manner. Don’t go thinking that Wii Sports is just a tech demo though; you’ll soon realise that whilst the Zeldas of this world are the games you’ll eventually sink most time into, Wii Sports is an addictive and satisfying game in its own right and will keep you slotting the disc in time after time.

Of the sports on offer, bowling is probably the best realised and most enjoyable. By swinging the remote in a manner identical to that of actual bowling you dispense your ball towards the pins with a surprising amount of accuracy. Twisting your wrist left or right will add spin, and in no time at all you’re developing your own individual tactics to suit your style. The remote works well in this instance and there is very little to moan about in regards to the action on screen not corresponding with what you’ve been waving about in front of it.

The same cannot be said for the remainder of the sports on offer, to a varying degree of annoyance. Baseball is probably the best of the bunch, with the batting seeming tight and intuitive. The pitching (bowling for those of us outside the United States) however seems detached and distinctly random, with various manoeuvring of the remote making little difference to the end result. Obviously it was never going to map the exact path of your wrist to what eventually plays out on screen, but a little variation would perhaps have been a good thing.

Tennis and golf hover on about par (geddit?!) with each other in terms of enjoyment. The former involves swinging the remote in backhand and forehand motions with an added twist of the remote adding back or top spin, yet the timing of the swing seems woolly and difficult to get used to which means that directing your shots become a slightly frustrating magical mystery tour. Golf, on the other hand, suffers from not being able to predict or get used to exactly how much power you need to be adding to various types of shot which means that the chances of you not landing your drive in the rather damp lake on the right side of the fairway seem slightly random and perhaps more hit-and-miss than they should be.

Finally we have boxing, which is probably the least fun sport to partake in. Using both the remote and the nunchuck add-on to represent your left and right fists, the player thrusts both at varying heights towards the screen to throw punches at the opponent. In theory this sounds like fun, but in actuality you soon realise that half the time your punches don’t register or represent even close to the action you asked it to. Multiplayer matches quickly dissolve into a flurry of manic fist thrusting which is amusing for a few minutes, but quickly makes you feel as if your arms are going to literally fall off.

Rather like Nintendo’s Brain Training on the DS, Wii Sports throws in a rudimentary ability test that will keep track of how sprightly and aware you are over a period of time. Offering three different tasks to the player – hitting home runs in baseball, racking up spares in bowling and returning various balls in tennis – the game will rate you on how well each is performed and calculate your Wii Sports age at the end, with obviously the lower being the better. The feature works very well and certainly gives you that added incentive to play the game each day which otherwise might not have been there, whilst also giving your parents a chance to boast and goad you if you somehow manage to have an older age calculation than they.

So, how do we rate something like Wii Sports? It is obviously intended as a game to get you using the remote in different manners, but at the same time it is immediate, enjoyable and good to play with your mates, which seems to be Nintendo’s Wii ethos in the first place. The sports are obviously not anywhere as detailed as other sport-specific titles: golf has the one course with nine holes, tennis features one court and doubles only, baseball keeps itself to three innings and boxing has three rounds, although the latter point turns out to be a godsend. Graphically it’s about as basic as basic can be with some simply textured shapes and bright colours, and sonically it varies between various twee Nintendo tunes and some classic over-the-top announcement when something occurs during whatever activity you’re playing.
In a nutshell, Wii Sports is a simple title that offers a lot of playtime and enjoyment if it is accepted as what it is. Whilst not boasting detail or offering a visceral feast, you’ll find yourself standing in front of your television waving your arms around like a lunatic with your friends for the foreseeable future. It all goes to prove that the heart of good gaming still beats the same word it always has: fun. If Wii Sports was intended as a short burst of what Nintendo have up their sleeves then we all have a lot to look forward to as the months roll on.