Thanks to the more forceful nature of the arm movement needed to bowl, Bowling does give your arm more of a consistent workout than Golf does. There are a few tricks to the way you swing the Wii remote and how you aim the ball down the lane that can help you land hits even more consistently. It’s a slimmed-down version of the sport with simplified physics to help even pin-hitting novices grab a strike or two. Not too far in front of Golf is Bowling. Bowling is responsible for making me think I’d actually be good at bowling in real life, which is absolutely not the case. It might be better if you had to actually walk from course to course, but Ring Fit Adventure-style step tracking was still many years off during the era of the Wii. It pains me to say this, but despite being the deepest game on this list, Golf just doesn’t have great workout potential. It helps that you have to stand up, but you really have to stand up for all of Wii Sports‘ games, so that makes less of a difference than you’d think. By the time you’re at the green, you’re really only tapping the ball. Yes, you do have to actually swing your arm and hand to hit the ball, but the closer you get to the green, the less you’re actually swinging. That being said, it provides the least intensive workout of all the minigames. My dad got really into it and put a lot of time into learning the way the wind physics impact the ball and where all the shortcuts are. Put together, it makes golf, which many people find boring to watch, a fun, strategic experience.

In my opinion, it requires the most skill of all of the minigames: in order to get that little ball into the hole, you have to factor in the kind of club you’re using, the distance to the green, the strength of your swing, the terrain, and the wind speed and direction. Golf is actually my favorite of Wii Sports‘ minigames. ( Ring Fit Adventurewasn’t even on the horizon yet when Wii Sports came out.) In the interest of staying fit and keeping ourselves moving while gaming, we decided to rank Wii Sports‘ minigames based on how good of a workout they give you – or at least how likely they are to get your blood pumping. While Wii Sports wasn’t intended to be a real fitness game – that would come later with Wii Fit – it does get you up and moving in a way that few other games do. The Wii was designed to be family-friendly and to expand Nintendo’s reach to new audiences, but no one expected Wii Sports, a pack-in game with Wii consoles, to be quite as popular as it was. Remember when everyone was playing Wii Sports? It wasn’t just gaming’s usual audience: parents, grandparents, and all sorts of people who had never been interested in games were able to get into swinging the Wii Remote like a golf club or tennis racket.

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