Wii Sports - Bowling

[Note: This video and description were originally posted on Youtube on July 20, 2016.]

This is a capture of me playing the Bowling mode in Wii Sports for the Wii. This was recorded directly from my Wii (not the Wii U).

It's hard to believe that it has been nearly 10 years since the Wii was released. I still remember having to hunt down a system about two weeks after launch because the Wii was sold out everywhere on its release date. But once I got the system home and tried out Wii Sports, I was instantly hooked. Tennis and bowling were amazing, and the other sports were fun too.

Almost a month later, on Christmas day of 2006, my visiting family members learned that I had obtained a Wii, and they demanded that I bring the system out into the living room so they could play Wii Sports. My mother, cousing, aunt, uncle, and even my grandmother all spent a few hours playing multiple rounds of each sport, and we had tons of fun. It was then that I realized the true genius of the Wii: you could get anyone to play it. Coming off the N64 and GameCube eras where I couldn't get anyone except my friends to play video games with me, this was a welcomed change. People had so much fun with the new system that I ended up taking the Wii to various friends' and family members' houses throughout 2007 for bouts of Wii Sports and other games.

Wii Sports itself was nothing short of a phenomenon along the lines of Tetris or Super Mario Bros., and a damn good game as well. The new Wii Remote was a ton of fun and allowed me to use gestures that actually mimicked the sports themselves. I had been a fan of different controllers, such as turbo controllers, joysticks and light guns, dating all the way back to the NES era, so the new Wii Remote really captivated me.

I actually used to be on a bowling league in elementary school, so I was a huge fan of the sport. Also, my local bowling alley had a huge arcade section, so I got to play all of the newest arcade games during the early/mid '90s, which made me want to go bowling even more. Needless to say, I was a big fan of the sport.

However, I didn't really play many bowling games as a kid. I only recall playing a single bowling game for the NES at a friend's house around the mid '90s, but I don't remember which one it was. Bowling games just didn't seem all that fun because you had to use a D-pad and buttons to control meters which then determined the speed, spin and angle of the ball. It didn't replicate the actual sport very well.

But when I obtained the Wii and played Wii Sports Bowling for the first time, I was instantly hooked. Video game bowling was suddenly fun, and the first time ever, it acted as a proper substitute for actual bowling. I played a lot of Wii Sports bowling with friends and family members, and to me, there was no point in ever going back to D-pad or analog stick controls for this type of game.

Later on, when Wii Sports Resort came out, I stopped playing the original Wii Sports Bowling because Motion Plus made it easier to control the ball's spin. However, the original Wii Sports Bowling was still excellent overall.

In this video I completed a full game of bowling and actually set my all-time high score in the game.

Recorded with the Hauppauge HD PVR and the Wii's component cables at 60 frames per second.

I'm using a Wii Remote.