Nintendo Switch Sports Resort Hands-On: Wuhu Island Returns With 12 Sports

Wuhu Island Has Been Dark for Eight Years

For a stretch of Nintendo’s history, Wuhu Island was everywhere. It anchored Wii Sports Resort in 2009, served as the primary setting of Pilotwings Resort at the 3DS’s launch, showed up as a trio of tracks in Mario Kart 7, and even landed a stage in Super Smash Bros. The island was such a recurring presence that, according to IGN’s preview by Logan Plant, Shigeru Miyamoto once told Satoru Iwata it was effectively becoming a Nintendo character in its own right.

Then it went quiet. 2018 marked the last appearance of Wuhu Island, and it stayed that way for the better part of a decade. Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, previewed this week by IGN at San Diego Comic-Con, brings the fictional tropical archipelago back as the home for a new generation of Joy-Con waggling.

Four Sports, One Demo, Some Early Impressions

IGN’s Plant got hands-on time with four of Resort’s 12 launch sports: archery, bowling, power cruising (the game’s trademark-safe take on jet skiing), and thumb wrestling, which Nintendo’s Yoshiaki Koizumi demonstrated during last month’s Nintendo Direct.

Each sport uses either a single Joy-Con or a split pair, leaning heavily on motion controls with only the occasional button press required. That’s a familiar setup for anyone who logged hours on the Wii, and the controls reportedly feel consistent across the board.

The standout returning sport from the demo was 100-pin bowling, a crowd-pleaser from the original Wii Sports Resort where a single red pin marks the front of an enormous spread of pins waiting to be demolished. It was notably absent from 2022’s Nintendo Switch Sports, so its return will likely land well with fans who felt that game shipped a little thin.

Thumb wrestling, the genuinely strange new addition, has players gripping a single Joy-Con with their thumb resting on the trigger, mimicking the classic schoolyard game with wrist movement and hand weaving. Getting pinned triggers a familiar frantic response: shake the Joy-Con 2 as fast as possible to escape. Plant found it entertaining but questioned its staying power, noting it felt shallower than swordfighting, which was a highlight of the original Resort and remains a more compelling head-to-head format.

Resort Has a Content Advantage Right Out of the Box

One of the more pointed observations from the preview concerns Nintendo Switch Sports itself. That 2022 entry launched feeling sparse, with only a handful of sports that Plant described as really worth playing. One of its slots went to a soccer mode that used a leg strap accessory, an implementation he felt was a step down from how the same strap was used in Ring Fit Adventure. Several sports were added post-launch, over months and even years, that would have been a better fit at release.

Nintendo Switch Sports Resort arrives with 12 sports from day one, matching the count of the original Wii Sports Resort even if the specific lineup looks fairly different. That breadth at launch is a meaningful structural improvement, and it positions Resort to feel like a complete package rather than a foundation waiting to be filled in.

With eight sports still to be revealed beyond the four shown at Comic-Con, there is real room for Nintendo to bring back beloved modes like swordfighting and cycling, or introduce new ones that take advantage of the Joy-Con 2 hardware. The shake-to-escape mechanic in thumb wrestling suggests the team is already thinking about what the updated controller can add to the physical vocabulary of these games.

Wuhu Island as a setting always carried a particular warmth, the sense of a place designed entirely around the joy of playing. If Resort can build out from a strong 12-sport foundation, that spirit has a genuine shot at coming through again.