Love it or hate it, Wii Sports on the Wii was a force to be reckoned with. The game helped define the Wii experience and helped make motion control gaming take off around the world. While Wii Sports Club more than likely will not have that kind of impact on gaming, the ability to play these games again, this time in HD and online, are a welcome addition to the Wii U library. Bowling was one of my personal favorites from the original Wii Sports, so when I heard that the game was coming to Nintendo’s new console as a downloadable title, my money was already as good as spent.

As many of you know by now, each game in the Wii Sports Club collection is available to purchase separately. After downloading the Wii Sports Club application for free from the eShop, you have the first 24 hours to try the first two releases, bowling and tennis. Purchasing the games can be completed inside of the application via an eShop widget from which you can select to buy either another 24 hour ticket or one of the games for 1,000 yen ($10). Before you can play any of the games, you are asked to join a club but are still able to opt out into an “Open Club.”. In Japan, the clubs are based on your regional location, in this case, prefectures. Statistics are kept for things like wins and losses for the club, average numbers of strikes per member, best score and a whole lot more.

Gameplay is just as simple as it was before. If you know how to bowl in real life, chances are playing bowling with your Wii Remote Plus should be a breeze. Players can choose from online play, local play and practice. In each mode, options for a standard games, 100-pin games and spin control (which has several small walls on the bowling alley) are available. Online mode is where I went right away to see how good the competition out there really was.

After choosing standard game and my preferred Mii, I was then given options to choose between squaring off against anyone, friends, or specific clubs. After choosing the “anyone” option, I was almost immediately put into a match with four people from all over Japan. Online play remained consistent and smooth throughout the session and over several games that I had afterward with only one odd occasion of the game hard-locking my system. Despite the one hiccup, the experience was just as good as playing Wii Bowling in your living room, except this time you probably have a bigger pool of people to play against.

Miiverse integration is another part of Wii Sports Club. Players can write messages that will appear on the GamePad screen’s of other players based on certain in-game situations. For example, you can enter a comment for that could appear if they get a strike, spare, etc. Of course, you can also make posts talking about how a most recent game went directly after it concludes. Another interesting addition to online play is the ability to assign quick messages to the Wii Remote Plus d-pad. These can’t be constantly spammed and are usually available after your competitor rolls. Messages range from simple text saying things like, “Great job!” or, “That was a close one!” Using the touch screen, gamers can also design custom messages that will appear as well. With the creative community of Miiverse, it’s going to be great to see what kind of things people come up with over time. These subtle touches may be Nintendo’s way to opt out of full on communication with things like voice chat, but for a game as simple as bowling, these short messages are really all that you need.

Wii Sports Club Bowling isn’t going to set the world on fire with originality. It does, however, show that a game that is as solid as Wii Bowling really benefits from the option of being able to play online. Competition in sports games is a good thing. It’s finally good to see this series expand upon the living room only model of multiplayer gaming.