With all the chances you get in Wii Sports to play games like bowling, tennis, golf, etc, does the Nintendo Wii actually improve you real-world game? It’s hard to say, but I had a chance to put this theory to the test when I recently went bowling at our old CAVEradio haunt, The Palace.
I’ve had the Wii for a little over a month now and have played the crap out of Wii Sports; mostly bowling and tennis. In Wii world I am a bowling pro, which isn’t saying much, other than I have played it way too much. Since the Wii games are played with actual body motion, you can act like you do when you really bowl and the game will (kind of) respond accordingly. So by all rights if my game improves in Wii world then my game should improve in the real world, shouldn’t it?
Well, the most obvious difference vs. the Wii is the lack of 14 pounds hanging from your arm. Going back to a real game of bowling (which I hadn’t done for quite some time), this was the hardest thing to get used to. And there’s nothing on the Wii that can help you hold a bowling ball better, properly, or how to throw it down the lane. It just can’t. So the Wii will not improve your bowling game in that way.
However, the area where I did notice improvement was analyzing the pins and determining where I should throw my ball. Because the physics model on the Wii is pretty accurate, when the pins are sitting there and the ball hits them, they react as they would in the real world. So when I have four pins left after my first throw, my Wii game lets me try different angles at which to knock them all done. This is where the Wii does help your real bowling game.
Needless to say the number of strikes during my real games were not as high on my Wii games. But I was able to pick up more spares in the real game because I had a better of idea of where my ball needed to land. Of course, if I wasn’t able to chuck my ball the right way or at the right speed then it didn’t matter.
For the record, my previous real-world bowling average was about 140. I played four games just this last time I was bowling and my average was 163 (with a high of 177). So my game did improve since I got my Wii. Whether or not the Wii had any effect on that increase I just don’t know…but I’d like to think so.
