The ‘Nintendo Switch Sports Resort’ Turns Wuhu Island Into a Fully Explorable Open World

The spiritual successor to ‘Wii Sports Resort’ lands this October with 12 sports.

by · Hypebeast

Summary

'Nintendo Switch Sports Resort' expands its predecessor's lineup to 12 motion-controlled sports plus a jump rope warm-up

The game brings back Wuhu Island as a fully explorable resort, reviving a hallmark of Wii Sports Resort

Players can compete or cooperate online using customizable Sportsmate or classic Mii characters

Nintendo is bringing its motion-controlled sports library to Nintendo Switch 2 with Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, a follow-up that significantly expands on the original Switch Sports while pulling directly from Wii Sports Resort‘s format. The game arrives as one of Switch 2’s more nostalgia-driven exclusives, built around the same pick-up-and-play appeal that made its Wii predecessor a fixture of the console generation.

The roster spans 12 sports played with Joy-Con 2 motion controls: boxing, table tennis, archery, tennis, volleyball, bowling, basketball, golf, thumb wrestling, skateboarding, power cruising, and prop plane flying, alongside a jump rope activity used as a warm-up. Most events use one or two Joy-Con 2 controllers for motion input, though skateboarding offers an alternative mouse-control option, giving players more than one way to approach the same sport.

Outside of the sports themselves, the game brings back Wuhu Island as an explorable resort space, letting players fly a prop plane between activities rather than jumping straight from menu to menu. On the technical side, Nintendo Switch Sports Resort supports both tabletop and TV modes, HDR on compatible displays, and surround sound, while online play for up to four players requires a Nintendo Switch Online membership and syncs progress through Save Data Cloud support.

That expanded scope directly answers one of the bigger criticisms of the original Switch Sports, which launched with a noticeably smaller event list and no real exploration layer. Reintroducing Wuhu Island and nearly doubling the sports count positions Switch Sports Resort as a more complete successor to Wii Sports Resort’s format rather than a scaled-down reboot, giving longtime fans of the Wii-era games a more direct equivalent on modern hardware.

Players build out either a customizable Sportsmate character or a traditional Mii to use across every event, letting the same avatar carry over between separate sports rather than resetting between games.

Nintendo Switch Sports Resort launches exclusively on Nintendo Switch 2 on October 22.

Image Credit
Nintendo
Editor Assistant
Mai Vo