Top Picks for Your Holiday Season Gaming Goodness #3: Wii Sports Club

Let's party like it's 2006 and recall the wonderment of Wii Sports. This was the game that introduced the world to Nintendo's non-lazy-ass gaming policy. No longer could we lay idly on the couch, scratching our balls and languidly pounding buttons on our controllers. Hell no. We'd be up off our asses, flailing our Wiimotes/man-boobs around the room and looking pretty damn dickish all round.

With hindsight, we discovered that a simple twist of the Wiimote would suffice to perform the in-game action. Even so, that first encounter with the amazement of motion-controlled gaming blew our balls off, and we had to put maximum effort in. Remember that boy on Youtube, who threw his ‘mote straight through the TV during an over-enthusiastic round of Wii Baseball? That's what you did to society, Nintendo.

Such casualties aside, Wii Sports was a phenomenon, and remains the best selling video game of all time (if we're being pernickety, this is due to it beginning life as a pack-in game for the all conquering Wii). While hardly the biggest or longest game, it has a kind of universal appeal which demands attention. Possibly medical attention, once your drunk brother get too into Wii Tennis. Protect those priceless Ming vases in your living rooms for this one, folks.

But anywho, our point is that it's an all-inclusive affair. Your kid sister can join. Nerdly gameaholics can join. Even Grandma Egotastic --whose only experience with the television is wondering aloud what that actor's name is, and if he's dead or not, for the whole damn length of the movie-- can join in. As such, it was a perfect holiday game.

Now feast your eyes, ears and bodily orifices on its successor, Wii U's Wii Sports Club.

Arriving on the console last month, Sports Club is Nintendo's attempt to prove that they know their shit. They've invited some trendy young groovesters into their office, to explain just what in holy hell 'downloads' and 'uploads' and 'online functionality' are. Continuing their decade-or-so-late endeavor to conquer all things digital, the game won't be available at retail (yet, at any rate). Still, let's grab our spangly new MotionPlus controllers and take a look.

Here we have fancy HD remakes of the original's minigames, designed for said MotionPlus attachment. This allows for far better options and control than 2006's Wii Sports. In Tennis, for instance, more accurate detection of our movements enable us to perform different types of shot. Lob, backhand, forehand, foreskin, all of these can be yours.

That is to say, they will be yours. As of right now, the full complement of games is not available. The title launched with tennis and bowling, which are available via some Wii Fit U-like shenanigans. They can be individually purchased or 'rented,' giving you permanent access or 24 hours of unlimited play. The in-game Clubs are a sort of community, with which you can play and compare scores and such.

A Wii Sports 2.0, then. Which is great news, when Wii Sports 1.0 was already the perfect family funtimes experience for the holidays.

Images: thegamingpixelshow.