Wii Resort: Shoot the ball

I'm a simple man. I like simple video games. Don't give me the X Box controller with its 48 buttons. That's why I'm a Wii kind of guy.

My new obsession during our Coldlanta spell has been Wii Resort. My parents bought the game a while back and let me borrow it because they never play it. I'm a huge fan of the 100-pin bowling. What could be more simple than that? You hold the controller and move it forward like you would an actual bowling ball. It's not as heavy, obviously. I couldn't even imagine the automatic pin setter for a 100-pin alley. Plus it would be an entire bowling facility wide.

That's not my obsession. I've been playing the basketball game. It's the three-on-three pickup game. My favorite old-school Nintendo games were Ice Hockey, in which you picked the skinny fast guy, the medium guy, or the slow fat guy. The slow fat guy beat up the small skinny guy if the slow fat guy could catch him. I also have the original Tecmo Bowl, in which you select one of four plays and have two buttons to press. One switches your player and the other throws the ball. Easy.

In this basketball game, it's your Mii character plus two of your "friends" against a team of three. You hit the A button or the directional button to pass to one of the other three players. You hit B to shoot and you move the controller in a shooting motion. Ideally you want your player to have some space between the defender, because the defender can jump really high to block your shot. It's simple.

You pass, and pass some more until your player has space and takes the open jumper. If your player doesn't have space, you have a few seconds from when you press B until you shoot. You can try to fake your defender into jumping early so you can wait for the player to fall and you can take your shot.

It's like the old Madden or college football games in which I found my favorite five or six plays and ran them over and over again. I'd wait for my player on the wing to separate from the defender, pass and shoot. When on D you can thrust your controller (how naughty) forward to try to steal. If you don't steal, you either lose your balance or fall down. If you fall down, the opponent gets an open look.

In all Wii games like Wii Sports, the goal is to win enough to earn points and get to the Pro level. Sadly the rewards at Pro level aren't great. In the old Wii Sports bowling game you got a sparkly bowling ball after you won. I played this game probably 30 times and just reached the Pro level. I'm afraid of playing again because if I lose my score could go below 1000 and I lose the pro ranking. I think this kind of obsession is the only reason why I haven't won the Pulitzer for my great American novel.