Unlike Wii Sports, Resort actually gives the player a setting for their activities, the luxurious resort island of Wuhu Island (which is actually the same island you can jog around in Wii Fit), and amps up the original five sports to twelve individual summer sports, all taking place somewhere on the island, and like Wii Sports, all games are played with the remote's motion controls:
Game Modes
- Swordplay, where you can pretend your remote is a sword to fight other characters, challenge them to a speed cutting contest where you have to slash objects in specific directions, or defeat hordes of enemies.
- Wakeboarding, where you pretend your remote is the handle of the rope as you attempt to get big air to score major points.
- Frisbee, where you toss Frisbees, either to get a dog to catch them, or to play a game of Frisbee Golf, with some golf courses from the original Wii Sports making a return.
- Archery, where you pretend the Wii Remote is the bow, and the Nunchuck is the string, pulling it and aiming for targets at various distances, mobility and wind conditions
- Basketball, where the Wii Remote is a basketball, and either you try a shoot out, or to play a 3-on-3 game.
- Table Tennis, where the Wii Remote is a paddle, and you play a basic 6 point match. Wii Play already covered Table Tennis, but this version plays more similarly to Tennis from Wii Sports.
- Golf, which is pretty much the same as it was in Wii Sports, but with more sophisticated controls and some new courses.
- Bowling, which is also the same as it was in Wii Sports. But now you can play actual games with 100 pins, or with various obstructions to try and bowl around.
- Power Cruising, where the player pretends their Wii Remote and Nunchuck are the handles of a jetski, trying to get through rings.
- Canoeing, where the Wii Remote is a paddle, and your goal is to try to get across further and further distances within a certain amount of time. Up to four players can share a single canoe, where hilarity ensues.
- Cycling, where the Wii Remote and Nunchuck are the pedals of a bike, and you use them to gain speed and steer in a race against multiple people. Two players can share a tandem bicycle and co-operate to race together.
- Air Sports, where you can sky dive to try and get as many pictures in as many formations with other Miis as possible (this game actually plays the first time you start up the disc!), or engage in an Island Flyover where you are challenged to fly around the Island and find all the points of interest, including the various locales that the other sports are held, or a Dogfight where two players can fly around the island trying to shoot down each others' balloons.
All modes have stamp cards, which challenge the player to achieve specific objectives in order to collect stamps (such as getting a perfect game in Bowling).
Nintendo Switch Sports, a successor to the original Wii Sports, includes Chambara as a sport, adapted from the Swordplay duelling in this game.
Wii Sports Resort includes examples of:
- 100% Completion: Getting all 80 i Points in Island Flyover gets the player a vacation home built on the Private Island. The game also has the collective Stamps earned via completing achievements in each sport (and branch thereof), but they don't unlock anything — they're just there to satiate completionist needs.
- Achievement System: There are a set of five Stamps for each event, awarded for such things like getting a perfect score, performing certain tasks like fighting their opponent to a draw in Swordplay, popping balloons while air touring the island, or hitting hidden fruit targets in Archery.
- A.I. Breaker: In swordplay, lunges (thrusting attacks) are a downplayed example. Most A.I. opponents (and most players for that matter) have trouble defending against them, since parrying them requires you to line up the length of your sword precisely with the path of your opponent's sword's point (unlike real fencing, there are no sweeping parries to divert the blade).
- Always Night: The 3-Point Contest. You can also unlock Nighttime Flying for Island Flyover.
- Arrow Cam: Archery does this a couple different ways; first, it happens if you ace a section (all three shots are tens) you will get a replay of the last shot in this view. The other is, in each of the 12 areas there is an alternate target (an overly large fruit, cake, or in one case a timer) that if you shoot in such a way that your arrow will near it, it follows, even if it misses at the far end.
- Artificial Stupidity: Particularly evident in Cycling; sometimes the other cyclists will just suddenly swerve to the side... right off a cliff/into the water.
- Automatic New Game: This game selects one of the player's Miis and places them directly into the Skydiving event before unveiling the title screen the first time.
- Bald Head of Toughness: Like boxing in Wii Sports, Matt, the only bald NPC Mii, is the champion of swordplay, in contrast to the NPC Mii Ryan, a long-haired Mii. He is also the final boss in swordplay showdown.
- Beach Episode: For the Wii series, with the sports being what you'd experience at a resort, such as Table Tennis and cycling. And of course, we have Frisbee dog, which is literally on a beach.
- Cap: The highest possible skill level for each game is capped at 2500. This leads to the aversion of Off the Chart, contrasting its straight play in the first Wii Sports game.
- Captain Obvious: Like with Wii Sports before it, dunking a golf ball/ Frisbee into the watery depths in Golf / Frisbee Golf has the game proclaim "Water Hazard" at you, and comes off as a bit snarky.
- Circling Birdies: One of the features of Cycling is that it has a stamina system. If a Mii's stamina runs out, he/she stops in his/her tracks with stars circling his/her head.
- Clock Tower: Wuhu Island has the Broken Clock Tower as a landmark, which has the peculiar trait of not having clock hands at all, as said hands were stolen some time ago. However, in its Mario Kart 8 Deluxe appearance, the clock seems to have been repaired.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
- In the later stages of Swordplay Duel, the opponents begin to hit a LOT harder than you are to able to, and can block your attacks instantaneously.
- The Champion of Speed Slice has reaction times beyond that of most, if not all human beings. Beating him essentially becomes a Luck-Based Mission where the winning point is decided on guesswork.
- Convection, Schmonvection:
- You can fly up to the top of a volcano, down into it, and inches over the lava and be totally unharmed.
- Zigzagged during the Archery game. The lava does produce enough rising heat to affect your shot, making you aim lower than you'd expect, but your character still doesn't seem overly fazed by standing in the crater of a lava lake.
- Cool Old Lady: An NPC Mii, Nelly, is badass territory by being a pro in all sports, and has an elderly appearance.
- Cosmetic Award: The stamps you gain by performing certain tasks in each of the games. They tend to be based on reaching certain thresholds of skill, with the highest ones requiring perfect games in some instances. A particularly egregious example is the final reward for Island Flyover. Most of the other rewards are pretty cool and affect gameplay in some way (alternate times of day, upgrades to the plane, and so on). So, how does the game reward you for finding 70 and all 80 info points? You get an alternate skin for the Whale Shark with your face on it and a tiny shack that has a flag with your face on it respectively.
- Diagonal Cut: One of the minigames consists entirely of doing this as fast as you can, using the direction indicated onscreen (left to right, diagonal cut, vertical cut etc). This includes cutting hilarious items such as giant sushi, giant hard boiled eggs, a giant LED timer that stops and shows the timing when cut, and giant human-sized diamonds. You can even work in a few extra iai slashes before the next item loads, if that's what you're into.
- Disapproving Look: Frisbee Dog gives this to the player if they miss enough times in a row.
- Easter Egg:
- When you fly over the Hillside Cabins in Island Flyover, you can hear someone playing Super Mario Bros (or possibly The Lost Levels) inside one of the cabins.
- In Cycling, moving the control stick on the Nunchuk rings the bicycle's bell, which doesn't do anything.
- Holding 2 while Archery is loading turns off the aiming circle.
- Holding 2 while Basketball Pickup is loading lets you play at night.
- Holding 1 and clicking A on the "Warning" screen in Table Tennis after beating Lucia (the champion) gives you a hotel slipper that you can use as a paddle.
- Holding 2 and doing the same thing as for the shoe paddle in Table Tennis lets you play an 11 point match, though it is a bit faster.
- Holding 2 while Swordplay Duel is loading lets you play in the evening.
- As is to be expected, some of the Easter eggs from the original Wii Sports are retained here:
- Holding a specific direction on the D-Pad while Bowling is loading changes the ball's color. Down for green, left for red, and right for gold.
- Holding 2 while either Golf or Frisbee Golf is loading turns off the Heads-Up Display.
- Elite Mooks: In Swordplay Showdown, Miis with red and purple armor will begin to show up in the higher levels. While they are not as powerful as the boss, they are significantly more dangerous than the green and golden Miis, as they take 2-3 hits to defeat and can regularly block attacks before launching a counterattack of their own.
- Everyone Knows Morse Code: There are three different messages you can hear in Island Flyover in Morse Code, between the player on a seaplane and the Light Candle; the larger-than-intended lighthouse:You: "Morse code takes forever."
Light Candle: "It sure does."
You: "Does anyone out there know Morse code?"
Light Candle: Sorry. Use your radio.
You: Why does anyone use Morse code anymore?
Light Candle: Good question. - Everything Fades: The items you chop up in Speed Slice mode just fade out of existence after being cut. The opponents in Showdown on the other hand swell up, turn blue and then disappear in a flash of light when knocked down.
- Fingerless Hands: Just like in the game's predecessor, the Miis can partake in a wide array of sports despite this impediment.
- Forced Tutorial: The three-minute-long unskippable video tutorial on installing, removing and maintaining the embedded Wii Motion Plus plays when you boot the game for the first time, and can be viewed again afterwards. The cutscene plays even if the Wii Motion Plus is already installed.
- Foreshadowing: The description for the Private Island in Island Flyover says it would be a good place to build a vacation home. You get one built on that island when you collect all 80 i points.
- Genius Loci: According to Shigeru Miyamoto, Wuhu Island is the game's "mascot" of sorts
. - Hammerspace:
- Where Matt pulls the items you have to cut up in Speed Slice.
- Ryan uses it to the same extent when you face the Speed Slice Champion.
- Hollywood Skydiving: The game actually manages to avert this. In the "Air Sports" skydiving game, the player jumps out of an airplane and has three minutes to link up with other divers for photographs. The chute opens automatically with ample time to spare, avoiding the trope. Except for the fact that a three minute free fall would require about 35,000 feet of altitude, which would only be accomplished through the use of high altitude HALO gear, and the chutes opened rather low, in reality, that altitude would only be a few seconds from the ground. Also, and automatic opening from an AAD is Truth in Television, but no one would ever actually rely on it.
- Irony: Ryan is the worst fencer in all Swordplay modes, whereas Matt, the Speed Slice judge is the Champion. Guess who shows up to serve as referee for the Champion match in Speed Slice.
- Lighthouse Point: One big lighthouse named "The Candle" is a prominent landmark on Wuhu Island, as seen in this game and others where the island appears, such as Mario Kart 7, Super Smash Bros., and Pilotwings.
- Meaningful Name: An NPC Mii, Midori's favorite color is green, which is what her name means in Japanese.
- Mercy Mode: In the Golf game, if you do badly enough on a hole, the game forces you to skip it and go on to the next one. Obviously, that's a lot slower than just completing the hole normally, however, if you have a good overall score, then the game will start putting the hole on more difficult sections of the green to give you a challenge, which makes completing holes quickly a lot harder. Therefore, runners will skip Hole 1 by deliberately shooting their ball into the water repeatedly and then play the rest of the game normally. Their terrible score on Hole 1 makes it so that the game gives them easy hole placement for the rest of the game, which more than makes up for the time loss suffered on Hole 1.
- Mook Chivalry: In Swordplay Showdown, the enemies will only attack you one at a time, while the rest of them circle your battle idly. Funnily enough, if your swing is wide enough, you can actually harm the enemies that are just standing there while they can't fight back.
- Multi-Mook Melee: The entire point of Swordplay Showdown mode. The event has the player take down dozens of sword wielding Miis. Most of them are KO'd in one hit but some take two and the final enemy (a boss if you will) has to be hit 3 times.
- New Work, Recycled Graphics: Many of the assets, such as the sounds for bowling and miscellaneous props are from Wii Sports. The island itself is literally just Wifitty island from Wii Fit, only modified further for this game's events.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: If you crash at just the right angle in the volcano when you're flying the plane, you will see your Mii hit the lava and come away seemingly unharmed.
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Nintendo Hard: Many sports become incredibly challenging should you progress far in them. - No "Arc" in "Archery": Averted in Archery, where you have to use the Nunchuk to draw the bow and you have to factor the distance from you to the bullseye combined with cross-winds into your aim.
- Non-Lethal Bottomless Pits: Fall off the track while Cycling, and you'll just get transported back close to where you fell off. Interestingly enough, this doesn't apply to the CPU cyclists.
- Nostalgia Level: Three golf courses from the original Wii Sports are present here under the name "Classic Courses". They're even compatible with Frisbee Golf.
- Old Save Bonus: The game is able to grab Miis from the Check Mii Out Channel if the player has it installed.
- One-Steve Limit: All the opponent Miis have unique names, although some sound very similar to each other (e.g., Steve, Steph and Stéphanie)
- Overly Long Gag: The instructional video for plugging in the Wiimotion Plus. It lasts an agonizing five minutes.
- Palmtree Panic: The entire game, really, but special mention goes to Frisbee Dog.
- Pandering to the Base: When unveiled at E3, it was specifically noted that 1/1 sword fighting was long requested.
- Pass Through the Rings: The flying and skydiving events have these, as does the "Power Cruising" event.
- Pixel Hunt: The archery game contains Easter Eggs for you to shoot, granting you an achievement if you get them all. They are very far away to begin with (thus occupying only a few pixels at best), but, even worse, some of them are literally impossible to see from where your Mii stands. It requires paying attention to the arrow cam and other camera idiosyncrasies to learn where they are.
- Purple Is Powerful: In Swordplay Duel, Matt uses a purple sword to signify his Champion status. After beating him, you can use the same sword by holding down 1 when selecting your Mii.
- Roaring Rapids: The game has several games with kayaking and jet-ski piloting that involve maneuvering through rapids.
- Rubber-Band A.I.: The further ahead you are compared to the A.I. in Speed Slice, the faster it reacts. This works both ways, as it will also have more delay if you are lagging behind.
- Scenery Porn: The game has amazing graphics for a casual game on the Wii. You can see it to its fullest extent in the Island Flyby, where you can enjoy the scenery of the island from any angle (and pop some balloons too).
- Smashing Watermelons: This is part of the Speed Splice game. The player's Mii has to slice falling fruits, including watermelons, in specific directions. The accuracy and speed of the speed in each slash will determined the score.
- Songs in the Key of Panic: During the Swordplay gauntlet, the music slowly adds more instrumentation when you get close to the end of the course. Another layer is added for when the player is down to one heart.
- Stuck on Band-Aid Brand: A registered trademark symbol appears on the title screen for "Frisbee", as the word is a registered trademark of the Wham-O toy company, and the brand name far eclipses the other terms people have tried to make such sports that use them (like disc-sports).
- Shout-Out: While every other Mii in the Swordplay minigame gets either a red or blue sword, Matt uses a purple sword like Mace Windu.
- Smashing Watermelons: Giant watermelons show up occasionally in Speed Slice. Along with cakes, pencils, and bombs.
- Tandem Parasite: This happens quite easily in the Cycling game if one of the riders doesn't know what they're doing or refuses to keep rhythm.
- Tech-Demo Game: For the Wii Motion Plus peripheral. It is also notable that a lot of the mechanics in this game would later be closely replicated in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, ranging from fairly self explanatory (Archery, Swordplay, skydiving) to the more subtle (Bowling becoming the ability to roll bombs, flying an aircraft being adapted into controlling your Loftwing). Even something like being able to control your Mii's posture during skydiving finds its way into the Boss Key rotation puzzles, making Resort feel like a test run for Skyward Sword in places.
- Tiebreaker Round: In the Swordplay duels, if neither combatant wins best of three, it goes to "Sudden Death" where the arena is reduced to the center circle, and one good hit can easily knock the opponent off. Interestingly, even this can be tied, awarding the player with an Achievement ("Stamp") for the round.
- Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction: In the Speed Slice challenge, giant diamonds are one of the possible objects to cut. Don't ask how it's possible.
- Tropical Island Adventure: The game is set on a tropical island resort called Wuhu Island, and many of the game's sports events take place close to the coast.
- Unlockable Content: Each sport is divided into categories, but some of them have to be unlocked.
- A Winner Is You: The celebration for bowling a perfect game is less than spectacular.
- Wide-Open Sandbox: Island Flyover lets you fly anywhere on the island, and Power Cruising's Practice mode lets you go anywhere in the water around the island.
- Wind Turbine Power: a set of wind turbines are used as the sole source of electricity on Wuhu Island.
