Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the planning meeting for this. “Okay, guys, we’re making a sequel to the biggest-selling videogame ever. Oh, and you’re going to have just eighteen months to develop it, and it’s going to have to be a showcase for this brand new motion peripheral which we’re attempting to sell to an audience that doesn’t know they need it because they probably assumed the Wii remote could do all this already.”

No pressure, then.

Wii Sports Resort represents a difficult balancing act - it’s a game which has to sell MotionPlus to the masses, convince the core gamer of both its value as a peripheral in its own right and its potential for future titles - especially in the wake of Natal and Sony’s new motion wand - and to help shift plenty of new consoles to keep Nintendo ahead of its rivals.

You could argue, quite convincingly, that it’s not entirely successful on any of those counts (though it’s obviously too early to determine the latter). You could also argue that none of that really matters - of greater importance is the question of whether Wii Sports Resort lives up to its predecessor as an accessible and enjoyable piece of mass-market entertainment. And there can’t really be any argument about that one.

First impressions are excellent - your route to the titular resort is from the air, as you’re bundled out of a biplane and sent spiralling towards Earth in tandem with a group of fellow skydivers. A semi-translucent remote appears over your Mii avatar, rotating in perfect harmony with your real-world motions. It makes you ache for a Wii Pilotwings. Not long after, you deploy your parachute, and the camera pans up and over the top of the divers, zooming in on your own, which bears the game’s title.

This is how you start a game.

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I’m not going to make any bones about this: I love Iwata Asks. If you’re a fan of the big N, it’s hard not to read these fascinating and enlightening discussions about the trials and tribulations of game development at Nintendo without a smile on your face, not least because of the amount of laughter these round-table discussions seem to generate among the participants.

This time, it’s Wii Sports Resort which comes under the microscope, and among other fact-nuggets, we learn just how keen Miyamoto is to develop WuHu Island into a regular Nintendo ‘character’ (very - he even discusses a few game ideas he’s had for the place), the strengths and weaknesses of MotionPlus, and Miyamoto’s near-dictatorial management style.

Other highlights include the revelation that Air Sports was originally set to feature a hang-glider instead of a plane, that Miyamoto has spent ten years wanting to create some kind of water-skiing/wakeboarding game, and that the brilliant - if slight - skydiving was almost a last-minute addition.

There are also tantalising hints that Miyamoto might want to explore the more Pilotwings-esque events further, and news that the original concept for the game featured winter sports would perhaps suggest that Wii Winter Sports Resort could be a potential future release (although Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games might have nixed that idea).

Obviously, I strongly recommend you give it a read, but in the meantime I’ll leave you with my favourite exchange of the piece:

Shimamura: Well, no one goes to a resort for a sword fight, after all.
Miyamoto: Which isn’t to say that you can just make the sword fights take place on top of a banana boat!
All: (laughter)

Brilliant.

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