Nintendo Switch Sports Preview: Hello, old friend!

A great way to catch up with REAL old friends.

Nintendo Switch Sports will soon be upon us, the newest iteration of the long-running Wii Sports franchise.

Fittingly, the Switch’s take on the franchise will include six sports at launch. Two of those — tennis and bowling — come direct from the original; a third, chambara, is from Wii Sports Resort, albeit with a different name. Newcomers (of a sort) arrive in the form of soccer — and yes, that’s what it’s called in Australia — alongside volleyball and tennis’ cousin, badminton. A seventh sport, golf, will be added later in the year.

Simply put, if you’ve played a Wii Sports title in the past, you’ll easily be off and running within this new iteration. There are some small differences, most notable in bowling, but otherwise you slap a Joy-Con in one hand and play a sport as you would in real life. When it comes to volleyball, you place a single Joy-Con in either hand — and yes, you can use a left-handed Joy-Con in your right with zero issues if you’re lacking spares — and proceed with motions attached to bumping, setting and spiking.

When it comes to the latter — as is also the case with blocking — you don’t need to jump. If spiking, you’ll need to first raise the Joy-Con to have your on-screen avatar jump, and then swing downward to actually hit the ball; blocking is done simply by swinging the controller upward.

Volleyball is arguably the hardest sport in the bundle — as in, likely the hardest for young children to master — as it’s really all about timing. While you’ll hit the ball by moving too early, it’s not as forceful or as well-positioned as a hit that’s been timed; come in too late, of course, and you’ll miss the ball entirely. The other slight difficulty about the sport is that it can be played locally with up to four players, and I occasionally lost track of myself and the ball with so much going on at once time across the screen.

While you can play competitively in a 1v1 scenario with AI helpers, a four-player game means you’ll be in a 2v2 configuration and will need to not only get your timings right, but hope that your friend can do the same. The better your team’s timings are, the more ruthless your shots become.

As strange as this could sound, tennis, badminton and chambara have the most in common; each controller will need to be calibrated ahead of each match by pointing it directly at your screen. In each sport, the Joy-Con becomes the thing you’d normally be holding, be that a racquet or sword. The racquet sports require you to swing as you would in a real world situation; you can also lob the ball by holding down a single button on the device itself.

In chambara, the same is basically true, but a button press is what activates a block. Fighting itself is similar to the rock-paper-scissors system found in the likes of For Honor in that you need to have an open path to score a hit. If an opponent is blocking vertically, they’ll successfully negate a vertical slice from an opponent. Diagonal attacks are also possible, so the attacker would need to slice in the same path a blocked sword is being held in.

Bowling is basically as you remember it… and let’s face it: we all remember bowling because that’s the thing you’d either show your friends after getting a Wii, or that’s what they’d show to you after getting their own. With a single Joy-Con in hand, you’ll be able to use its joystick to position yourself in the lane, then using another button if you’d like to angle yourself to the inside or outside of centre. From there, you’ll need to hold down the Joy-Con’s trigger to start your swing — obviously then moving your controller in the way that you would swing a bowling ball — and away you go.

The biggest change in bowling on Switch as compared to Wii is that you’ll need to keep the trigger depressed through the entire swing and follow through, which will take some getting used to if nothing more than just forgetting an old piece of muscle memory. You can still twist your wrist with your delivery for added spin.

Finally, football — ahem, make that soccer — is currently (mostly) a two-handed experience where you’ll use one Joy-Con to move your character and the other to kick the ball. Of the available options inside soccer, only one will support the leg strap that comes with physical copies of Nintendo Switch Sports or Ring Fit Adventure (though it will be sold separately as well): shootout. In that configuration, you’ll use a single Joy-Con strapped to your leg to kick. Nintendo does plan to roll out the leg strap functionality to all the other soccer modes; then, you’ll keep one Joy-Con for movement.

With two controllers in hand, non-shootout modes can be pretty hectic. You’re playing with an enlarged ball in a pitch with plenty of room to distance yourself from opponents and therefore, set up some decent strategies. Players can throw themselves forward to headbutt the ball and can jump and kick at the same time; with some expert controlling, swinging your Joy-Con up, down, left or right to aim, you can really make some great shots or solid passes. The shoulder button allows for a brief sprint, but Breath of the Wild-style, players will need to manage their bursts of speed against an ever-depleting green stamina circle. On the whole, soccer really feels like Rocket League with Miis (though we didn’t play with Miis, just its new sports avatars); if that doesn’t instantly sell you, nothing will.

There’s plenty more to get into, but we’ll save that for our review. In the meantime, get excited for Nintendo Switch Sports! Not only did I get the chance to go and visit Nintendo’s Melbourne-based office for the first time in two years to check things out — alongside its very impressive new renos too, I might add — I was honestly surprised at how quickly my one hour of hands-on time sped by. If you’ve ever gotten a group of friends together to play Wii Sports, you’ll excatly know how rewarding these experiences can be. I’m overjoyed we’ll all get the chance to do it again soon (but please be safe in doing so!).

Nintendo Switch Sports heads to the Nintendo Switch, naturally, from 29 April. Expect our review ahead of that release date.

Nintendo Switch Sports 29 April 2022 Switch   Buy on the Nintendo eShop Buy on Amazon