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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The game's Power Cruising mode looks to have a couple of variations.

A little unenthused about Wii Sports Resort after Nintendo’s lacklustre onstage presentation at E3? This here video could well change your mind.

If you can cope with the frequent pauses (it seems Nintendo of Japan hasn’t quite got the hang of how to make a video buffer effectively), then you’ll see a game with much more to it than the original - a fact which was hardly made clear by the game’s E3 showing. Twelve events, some of which appear to have multiple modes, and from the looks of things there are certain individual challenges (that basketball clip near the end as some sort of certificate is awarded is surely evidence of that).

I’m also really keen on the resort hub. While Wii Sports was fun, the events felt disconnected. There’s much more charm to an island environment filled with Miis, and I’m hoping that during the aeroplane sections you’ll be able to swoop down and see characters from your Mii Plaza duking it out with swords, shooting hoops, or wakeboarding in the surf.

The clip instantly shot the game to the very top of my wanted list for this year, and the thrilling news that I’ll likely be getting my hands on it in three weeks (when the Japanese version launches) has me very excited indeed.

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It’s looking increasingly likely that Wii Sports Resort will arrive in either April or May, if new information on a Wii version of Virtua Tennis 2009 is anything to go by.

VG247.com is reporting that the MotionPlus logo has been seen on the Sega game’s boxart, and given that the third-party release is arriving in May, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Nintendo’s flagship release must be hitting shelves a little earlier.

Of course, it could just be rumour and speculation, but Sega isn’t denying that the game features MotionPlus (despite the non-mention in the official press release) which tells its own story. And it’s a game that would undoubtedly benefit from Nintendo’s new peripheral.

Two plus two equals five? Perhaps. But I firmly believe now that we’ll be seeing Wii Sports Resort in the first week of May at the very latest.

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It’s no exaggeration to say that Wii Sports is one of the most important videogame releases, not just of this generation, but of all time. It introduced a whole new way to play games, offered a way in to those who’d previously considered games too complex or inacccessible, and is one of the main reasons for the console’s unrivalled success in this generation. While Nintendo has built well on the foundations laid by Wii Sports, it’s arguably the launch title which has had the biggest impact on its host console. For a long time, Wii was a Wii Sports player. No pressure on the sequel, then…

Yet Wii Sports Resort has an ace up its sleeve too, in the form of MotionPlus, the peripheral that, when attached to the Wii remote, will allow it to more effectively recognise movement in 3D space, picking up the most delicate of motions far more accurately than ever before. Sure, it’s bound to lead to more than a few grunts of dissatisfaction at Nintendo bringing out another peripheral, and there will be several complaints that it’s only allowing the remote to do what we were all led to believe in the first place. But if there’s anything Nintendo’s expanded audience wants, it’s more Wii Sports. If it’s not massive, then something has gone seriously awry. It would take a screw-up of epic proportions to stop this being one of the biggest titles of 2009.

So what do we know about Wii Sports Resort so far? In truth, very little. We’ve seen three minigames, only two of which seem to use MotionPlus in any real meaningful way. The dog frisbee game will no doubt be skipped by most of the game’s male players, while it’s fair to say that Nintendo’s ever-growing female audience won’t necessarily be quite so taken with the Wave Race-esque jetskiing. More universally appealing is the sword fighting, with Miis swinging rubber weapons atop a high platform overlooking a pool of water - get knocked back once too often and you’re in for a dunking.

With a rumoured ten games featured this time, it should offer more variety and longevity than Wii Sports, while still providing the thrill of the new in terms of its control. One potential sticking point is that  - like its predecessor - it’s likely to be a more multiplayer focused title. In which case, shouldn’t Nintendo be bundling at least TWO MotionPlus add-ons with the game? Particularly if the rumoured retail price of £15 for the peripheral turns out to be accurate - we can’t see too many people wanting to shell out for four of these. It’ll be interesting to see just how Nintendo handles this - will the games require MotionPlus or simply be improved by the more flexible controls? Will all the minigames feature MotionPlus enhancements, or just a few? Nintendo has a tricky balancing act here - it needs to really sell MotionPlus as a key component to the game (and, indeed, something which future Wii titles will benefit from) while making sure that Wiimote-only players don’t feel left out. If it can somehow get that right, then Wii Sports Resort will be an unqualified success. As it is, it’ll be a big hit, but will that necessarily make for a good game?

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