Wii Sports Resort

You're really going to need the wrist strap.

Source // Nintendo

I was fairly certain that I hadn't played the original Wii Sports until 2020, some fourteen years after its release, and if that was the case for the entertainment juggernaut that was Wii Sports, what do you think happened with its MotionPlus enhanced sequel, Wii Sports Resort? Did I see the error of my ways and seek to correct my poor judgement as soon as possible?

Hell no. I didn't get around to experiencing the insane overhaul until 2020 when I played a whole bunch of Nintendo Wii titles to get them out of the way before the batteries died and I keeled over from exhaustion.

Most active weekend of the year, that gaming session...

NBA 2K10

Someone say something about Tuesday nights?

Source // PlayStation

Basketball. That's a much better sport than golf. Keeps itself out of the countryside, played on a small and impossibly squeaky court under a million light bulbs, and instead of having to purchase an entire set of clubs that you can't tell the difference between, you simply have to be lucky enough to have been born with a few extra feet in height, ensuring that everybody can play some B-ball.

I've played some basketball. Wasn't very good. I've played some basketball video games too and actually played them long before this 1001 list introduced them to us. Again, I wasn't very good. I've never owned a basketball ball game. I've only just played them.

But now I own NBA 2K10, picked up secondhand from the electronics store because for some reason I had completely overlooked its existence on this 1001 list. Whoops.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10

Can the Gophers have their holes back?

Source // Giant Bomb

I think I'm right in saying that Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 is the last golf game on this 1001 list. Wii Sports Resort might have a take on golf, but it has takes on everything, so that doesn't really count. Tiger Woods here is the last chance the sport has of convincing me that it deserves to exist.

Harsh words, perhaps, and probably unwarranted, as skimming over the many golf games the 1001 list has thrown up has lead me to believe that I am, in fact, fine with golf as a game, so long as it is on the more cartoony side of things. Golfing sims can get out of here.

If PGA Tour 10 is aiming for realism, there's a strong chance I'll not like it. Who makes it? EA Sports? Ah. Well, let's just pad out this foregone conclusion a little bit more, shall we?

Skate 2

Blaow!

Source // PlayStation

Do you know the reason why so many folks have been trying to get EA to do Skate 4? Skate 2.

You'd think it'd be because of the Skate series in general, but after Skate 3 took things a little too far, and then absolutely nothing interesting happened in the world of skateboarding video games for the next decade, players wanted a return to the kind of sports game that was a breath of fresh air, refined a little.

That's a long way of saying Skate was great, but Skate 2 was the bee's knees, the dog's danglies, the shit, so to speak.

The Flickit system was back and better than ev- oh, I'm sorry. Let's introduce the Flickit system for those of you who only know of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater...

Punch-Out!!

Working up a sweat here.

Source // Nintendo

A long time ago, I praised Super Punch-Out!! for being one of the best-looking boxing games I was aware of. Admittedly, the number of boxing games I was aware of was quite low, and there is something about pixel art that shines above even the most glistening of HD sweat effects, but the statement still held: it was a looker, even if I wasn't any good at it.

In the many years since Super Punch-Out!!, boxing games grew to become slobber knocker simulators for the die-hard fans of the sport, but a controller can only go so far. A motion controller and balance board can go much further, and a console that can't put out all those droplets of blood, sweat, and tears needs to shine differently. It needs Punch-Out!!.

Whether you see it as a remake or a series reboot, what matters is that Punch-Out!! has returned to the ring. Can it make the knock-out blow so that it can be crowned the champion?

WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010

Biscuits and Gravy

Source // Giant Bomb

Now we're talking. The UFC might be entertaining to you, but the weird world of professional wrestling is entertaining to me. Or was. Still sort of is, but not so much the WWE.

Anyway, the point I'm making is that ever since WWF SmackDown! on the PlayStation (yeah, that's right, too late for the N64 greats), I have had, on and off, a damn good time with WWE video games. Professional Wrestling doesn't make sense, and so neither do the video games based on it. Whether you're making your own superstar, picking the coolest of finishing moves, or smashing your opponent through all the announcer tables in every single match, these games are about having fun.

I've not played them all of course - as my interest in the 'sport' comes and goes, so does my interest in the video games - and one of the (lengthy) lulls in my attention meant missing out on WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010.

What was happening in the WWE at this time? Who were the main eventers? This is as much a trip through video game history as it is wrestling history, and after my poor performance in UFC 2009, I'm ready to dive right in.

UFC 2009 Undisputed

0-2-0h no, please, no more.

Source // PlayStation

The Ultimate Fighting Championship is, I hear, pretty big. It's quite popular. If boxing isn't exciting enough for you, you might want to check out the UFC where the ring is now a cage and one of the boxers isn't even a boxer, but a martial artist, or a wrestler, or whatever.

Boxing isn't exciting to me, and neither is the UFC. I can name four people to have stepped inside the octagon for a fight. Three of them I know from the world of professional wrestling, and the other is Conor McGregor.

But there's potentially good news here, as UFC 2009 Undisputed comes to us from Yuke's and THQ, who are pretty much synonymous with the WWE games for the better part of a few decades. This will be a different experience for sure, but they must have learned something down the years.

The question is, will I learn anything?

MLB 09: The Show

Bottom of the 9th? Is that a thing?

Source // PlayStation

We've all got our favourite sports, but baseball is never one of them. How could it be? It's an absolute bore. It's so boring that rather than playing MLB 09: The Show, I instead want to try and work out at what point a ball sport becomes interesting, and whether the size of the ball has anything to say about it.

Football is great, Golf sucks. Basketball is cool, Tennis absolutely isn't. Snooker, somehow, is better than Rugby, but American Football is probably better than Snooker.

While I mull that over, let's whizz through a game of MLB 09.

NHL 10

TF is a Deke?

Source // PlayStation

Here's how much interest I have in Ice Hockey: I've just had to delete my entire opening paragraph about demo discs because I had forgotten that this very 1001 list introduced us to NHL Hockey way back on the Sega Mega Drive.

Back then, I fumbled my way through a game against the Italians, who haven't seen ice in their lives, as the Canadians, who come out of the womb with a natural understanding of what a puck even is. Couldn't tell you how I won, but I can tell you that I've not played nor watched Ice Hockey since.

But here we are again, some twenty years later with NHL 10, the latest (at the time of the 1001 list, of course) offering from EA Sports, and you know what that means - the menus will look pretty much the same as FIFA and NFL, the modes will be the same, the names on the back of the shirts will be correct, and I'll have no chance.

Can't wait.

Madden NFL 10

Uhm, hike? Hut? Hgghhh?

Source // PlayStation

There was a time, brief though it may have been, where I was actually interested in American Football. I'm not sure where it came from, but I suspect it had something to do with the Super Bowl being on the BBC and a demo of Madden NFL 11 for the PlayStation 3.

My trophy list would suggest I played it for at least a week in late 2010, but that's a little too late for this 1001 list. We need to go back just one yearly instalment to Madden NFL 10, which changed the game of videogame Handegg like nothing else.

Well, I mean, I guess. I've no idea what goes on in the world of American Football, even having briefly followed it, and you know what sports games are like - when was the defensive AI feature introduced, what changes did the career mode get, what was the game-breaking exploit in this one. I don't know, let's just hit the field and see what happens.

FIFA 10

"How big can soccer get?"

Source // Giant Bomb

I must admit to being a little perplexed by the lack of FIFA on this 1001 list. The tug of war between it and Pro Evolution Soccer should surely have been in full swing for several years now, but as the end of the list draws near it is FIFA 10 that is the one and only FIFA video game we must play.

Why? Apparently, this is the game that finally knocked PES off its perch. Hmm. Let's have a look for ourselves.

Grand Slam Tennis

You cannot be serious.

Source // EA

Motion controls and a tennis game were such an obvious pairing that Nintendo themselves made sure to include the sport in a few Wii titles of theirs, but the addition of the Wii MotionPlus controller meant even more accuracy in terms of what inputs could be captured and used in a game.

And so EA sought to capitalise on it all with Grand Slam Tennis a cartoony looking but deadly serious simulation of tennis, and all the spins and slices your backhands can manage. Do I know what a spin or a slice is? Have you not seen how many tennis games the 1001 list has seen me suffer through already?

Football Manager 2010

Let's be having you?

Football. What a sport.

I'd say I follow it, but following requires a bit of effort. I'd say I'm a fan, but I don't go around parading my allegiances anywhere, even if it's perfectly fine to support Liverpool these days (or perhaps was, until they started playing like the Liverpool I grew up with - losing).

I've been to very few live matches mostly because of having absolutely no desire to go. You get a better view at home, in the warm, away from the racists who think their own team's players are absolute dog-shite, what are you doing, you pillock, my nan could have scored from there.

Football fans who think they could do a better job than the players on the pitch, and especially the manager on the touchline, are just the worst. I'm sorry, but you are. Luckily for you, though, Football Manager 2010 exists so that you can have a go at being the boss in the comfort of your own home.

Please. Only have a go in your own home.

Top Spin 3

Game, Set, Match, Not You. How did you even get into this Tournament?

Source // PlayStation

Oh, joy, another tennis game, and one that is said to be simply impossible for newcomers to get a good start in. That sounds like fun, doesn't it?

Not content with working its way up as the underdog (so I'm lead to believe), the Top Spin series' must-play entry, Top Spin 3, overhauls everything that makes a tennis game a game about tennis and drops everyone, amateur and professional alike, into a simulation that demands you put the legwork in.

You know, like real tennis.

That's not going to happen.

Wii Fit

Now there's something for your body to do while you're Brain Training.

Source // Nintendo

For the longest time now, I've owned a Nintendo Wii balance board and have done nothing with it. I don't get drawn to the Wii for my entertainment. Never have been. But then this 1001 list tends to point out what you've missed out on quite a bit, and in an attempt to broaden my knowledge of video gaming for reasons I don't quite know for sure, I've gotten hold of a balance board, enough AA batteries to power it, and a copy of Wii Fit.

What am I doing?

Free Running

Parkour! Extreme parkour!

In the early 2000s, Channel 4 hyped up a documentary about athletes practising a new way of moving through their environment with grace and fluidity. You will know what Jump London introduced by one of two names, Parkour or Free Running, and if you were of a certain age back then, you'll know someone who tried it out.

Why walk the long way when you can hop a fence or bounce over a planter? Why go to the effort of learning how to skateboard when everyone, everywhere, already knows how to run and jump? Why be boring, when you can head to the rooftops and partake in parkour? Parkour!

Game developers everywhere had their minds blown, Ubisoft especially, who would put parkour front and centre in the likes of Prince of Persia and Assassins Creed. But where was the game that was solely about free running? Where was the Tony Hawk game of the sport?

Follow up documentary sequel Jump Britain would tease the development of Free Running, a PlayStation 2 title that would be the safer, more ridiculous alternative to doing it all for real. And then everybody forgot about its existence and the PlayStation 3 came out...

Everybody's Golf 5: World Tour

a.k.a. Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds

Source // MobyGames

Do golfers find it concerning that the 1001 list has recommended cartoony iterations of the sport over realistic ones? It pointed us towards Golden Tee Live, yes, but also Mario Golf and even Wii Sports. It seems golf games are better when they're not so serious, as wonderfully demonstrated by Everybody's Golf 5: World Tour.

Chunky little cartoon bobbleheads, rainbow-coloured ball trails, even video footage of swimming dolphins.

Wait, what?

Wii Sports

Wear the strap, damnit.

Source // MobyGames

Wii Sports. Wii. Sports. In late, late 2006, it must have felt like this was the only game that existed, as families - not just gamers, families - across the world played sports with the motion controls of the Nintendo Wii, the console for everybody, and the one with the gimmicks the others didn't have.

I was never interested in the Wii. I didn't care that I was 'missing out' on anything. I was having my own good time with the PS3, thank you very much. If I wanted a party game, I'd know where to go, but I never wanted a party game either. And so, basically, I'm playing Wii Sports for the very first time in 2020.

At least, I can't remember a single instance of me playing at any point before now. Did I have one incredibly quick game at some point? I don't think I did, you know. 2020 then. What better year to play sports indoors, on a TV?

Virtua Tennis 3

New balls, please.

Source // MobyGames

I'm not a fan of tennis. I've already said that in the previous tennis games we've played on this 1001 list, going all the way back to Super Tennis on the SNES. It's just not a sport that excites me, and so any video game adaptation has a hard time to win me over - with the exception of silly tennis games, I guess. Mario Power Tennis, perhaps.

The next game to try is Virtua Tennis 3. From the looks of it, there's not a lot of silly happening here.

Tony Hawk's Project 8

Can you make it into Tony's MySpace Top Friends?

Everyone who is a fan of the Tony Hawk skater games knows how the series took such a nosedive in its later years that it is frankly a miracle that there's an actual quality remake of the first two games, THPS2 of course making it onto this 1001 list because it's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2.

While everyone is playing that 2020 remake, I'm sitting here with Tony Hawk's Project 8, the eighth title of the series (bit of luck, that). I never played it back in 2006. I'd moved on. Skateboarding games just weren't doing anything for me any more.

Did I miss out on something worth my time? According to the 1001 list, yes, yes I did. But what did I actually miss out on?