Strolling through the game section of my local Meijer, I came across a startling (but increasingly common) sight—Wii remotes, in the wild. Just, you know, hanging there on the shelf. Lots of them, at least six. Nunchuks too. So, what did I, an underprivileged, owns-one-remote-that-came-with-the-console guy do? Why, I turned right around to face the game cabinet and bought a copy of Wii Play. If you don’t know already, Wii Play comes bundled with a Wii remote, but costs 50 USD like a game. I figured I’d snag an extra remote and get a cool minigame compilation for 10 bucks, like Wii Sports! Win-win situation, right? Right?!

The answer to that question depends on how much you’re willing to spend, and just how much value you place on the gaming stew that is Wii Play. Having a complete set of controllers now significantly changes my opinion of the game.

Wii Play is a collection of mini (some might say micro) games, nine total, that hopes to emulate its bigger brother, Wii Sports. The pack-in disk that shipped with Wii consoles was admittedly simplistic in its presentation, but each of the five sports contained a level of depth that surprised me as I played them to harder difficulty levels. Wii Play lacks much of that depth, but the number of nine games over Wii Sport’s five would supposedly make up for that lack. Unfortunately, this is not true.

Wii Play is really some of Nintendo’s simplest tech demos for the Wii, an early taste designed for trade shows. Some of the games surfaces more recently at events like the fusion tour, but I suspect some of the demos are from far earlier stages in the Wii’s development. Most of these games were probably thrown together before some of the console’s features were even finalized, such as the nunchuk accelerometer or the speaker. The pointer functionality sees the most implementation, and gives the games a repetitive feeling.

Wii Sports, on the other hand, was developed as an introduction to the Wii for people of all ages and personalities, and uses most of the Wii’s abilities to a modest extent. Its subject matter, sports, is something virtually everyone is familiar with, while Wii Play was built to introduce gaming press to the Wii at shows like E3 and TGS.

As a result each of the minigames have a far more “video game” feel to them, but are really just retreads of some of the industry’s oldest offerings. Suffice it to say that you’ve seen most of Wii Play before, just without the remote control. Wii Play also uses Miis like Wii Sports, but they’re not nearly as well integrated. Depending on whether you’re player one or two, you’re blue or red, respectively—the Mii’s face is the only thing that really filters through into the gameplay. As you can infer from that last sentence, Wii Play only supports two human players, or can be played with a computer opponent.

The game forces you to unlock each of the games in a sequential order, and the first part of this nine course meal is Shooting. Disguised as a sequel to the NES classic Duck Hunt, Shooting is anything but—it’s more like a brief homage....