All Sports Ranked By Best To Worst In Nintendo Switch Sports Resort

Published Oct 22, 2026, 4:52 PM EDT Josh Coulson is an editor at TheGamer covering breaking news on everything from colorful platformers to the latest Lego sets. Primarily a news writer since 2018, Josh has covered just about every major game from the past decade. Now an editor, their focus has shifted to being the leading affiliate expert at the site, building relationships between TheGamer and global brands including Mattel, Funko, and The Pokemon Company. Nintendo created Wii Sports in 2006 and unknowingly established a franchise that would stand the test of time, sitting alongside the likes of Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid. 18 years later, that series lives on through Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, the Switch 2 exclusive, which marks four games in the long-running Nintendo series. Switch Sports Resort has returned to its roots, giving players a roster of 12 different sports to choose from. Some of them are stalwarts that have been there since the series' inception that almost feel like characters themselves, while others are brand new, providing the series with a much-needed breath of fresh air. Here, we run through all 12, definitively ranking them and deciding which sports, new and old, hit, and which ones, maybe not so much. 12 Thumb Wrestling Nintendo Sorry, Yoshiaki Koizuma, but it's Thumb Wrestling crashing in at last place. You enthusiastically showed us all how it worked during that Nintendo Direct and quickly became a rather unfortunate meme. Sadly, that pre-launch peek at the new sport wound up being its highlight. Thumb Wrestling isn't exactly the most exciting sport in the world, and its inclusion here always felt a little strange, even before we got the chance to play it. It feels a little like the great minds at Nintendo thought too outside the box when coming up with which new sports to include. The first time you play it, it's funny, but beyond that initial novelty, there's nothing that will make you want to keep playing. 11 Skateboarding The thing that really sets Switch Sports Resort apart from all of the games that have come before it is its leisure sports. Activities that take you off the court and let you explore the island. It's a cool idea that has been executed in a few different ways, and the most poorly executed of those ways is Skateboarding. Skateboarding in Switch Sports Resort just doesn't feel good, and the leading reason for that is because this is where Nintendo has shoehorned the console's mouse controls into the game. You never feel like you're fully in control of the skateboard, which makes exploring the island on one feel more laborious than fun. Races aren't bad, but only if you have a full lobby of human players to compete against. 10 Power Cruising One of the other leisure sports on the Switch Sports Resort rundown is Power Cruising, more commonly referred to as jet skiing. Riding the waves around Wuhu Island feels marginally better than rolling around its streets on a skateboard, but not by much. Finding the leisure sports collectibles should be challenging, but doing it in a jetski is less challenging and more irritating. No mouse controls here, but the way you man your power cruiser still isn't great. Having you hold the Joy-Con as if they're the handles on your jetski is a neat idea, but whoever from Nintendo playtested that method either has incredible endurance or didn't play it for longer than three minutes at a time. One lap around the island and my arms feel about ready to drop off. Like Skateboarding, racing saves Power Cruising a little, but not enough to see it rank more highly on this list. 9 Basketball I was excited and intrigued to play Basketball in Switch Sports Resort. It's that anticipation to see how exactly Nintendo would pull it off in this new entry that is why this one disappointed me so much. My opinion of it was tainted before I'd even bounced my first ball too, as unlike almost every other sport in this game, the tutorial for Basketball really dragged. After taking longer than these games typically do to tell you the basics, they then feel repetitive and slow-going once put into practice. Unlike real Basketball, the point scoring in this mode is low, and the matches quickly get repetitive. Paired with how much you're forced to stop and start, while there are flashes of excitement, Basketball is, overall, a bit of a letdown. 8 Tennis Tennis is a Nintendo sports game mainstay. There since the beginning, and returning in Switch Sports Resort. Quite rightly, too. Not only is it a popular sport played the world over, but it's one where you have to swing a racket at a ball, making it perfect for a game where you have to swing a Wii Remote, or in this case, a Joy-Con. There are two reasons why Tennis ranks so low on this list. The first is that, unlike a sport we'll get to a little later, it feels the same as it did 18 years ago. Sometimes that's okay, but in Tennis's case, it's not. It feels plodding, and the rackets still don't react the way you want them to a lot of the time. The other reason is that there's a new, smaller, better version of this sport later on this list. 7 Volleyball Back on the court for Volleyball, and there are ways in which it suffers from the same things as basketball. There's a lot to learn before you get started, and when you're putting those skills into practice, it can sometimes start to feel a little repetitive as you repeat the same three moves over and over again. What sets Volleyball apart from Basketball in Switch Sports Resort is that the moments where everything you've learned comes together make for big moments that feel incredibly satisfying. Whether it's successfully piecing together a dig, set, and spike with your teammate, or blocking a shot when your opponents do the same, Volleyball has big moments that occasionally make it great. 6 Boxing Back to the mainstay sports that made this series great from the start and continue to do so to this day, and next up is boxing. Nintendo has been letting us put on boxing gloves and punch people since Punch Out on the NES. The key difference since Wii Sports is that we're literally throwing the punches. That feels as good and more reactive than it ever has before when you step into the ring in Switch Sports Resort, and sending your opponent to the mat is still incredibly satisfying. The one thing Boxing still hasn't managed to shake is feeling like all skill goes out the window relatively quickly and everyone starts flailing wildly. It's fun, and the motion control equivalent of button mashing, but it would be better if the punches you're throwing consistently felt more deliberate. 5 Prop Plane The third and final leisure sport introduced via Switch Sports Resort is Prop Plane. The ability to fly around Wuhu Island and really see it is by far the best way to get around. Whether you're just flying around taking it all in, collecting cameras as you go, or competing in a balloon battle with other pilots, Prop Plane is a fantastic addition to the series' pantheon. The only thing holding Prop Plane back from placing even higher on this list is the odd way in which Nintendo wants you to hold the Joy-Con while you fly. It suggests holding the controller like a paper airplane, which works for the most part. However, as soon as you need to start pressing buttons to fire your gun, it gets awkward. 4 Golf Much like tennis, Golf in a game where you're swinging the controller around to make things happen just makes sense. Stand like you're a real golfer and swing away, taking in Wuhu Island's beautiful backdrop as you go. It somehow manages to feel new and improved, but still like the same old Golf that has kept coming back since the series began. There really isn't much to critique about Golf in Switch Sports Resort. We've reached that stage on this list where we're discussing the sports that stand head and shoulders above the rest. The controls can feel a little oversensitive, and even a little lacking in options, especially when it comes to putting on both counts, but the only reason this isn't ranked more highly is that everything else from here on in is simply better. 3 Bowling When you think of Wii Sports, you think of Bowling. Honestly, I think that original game could have just been Wii Bowling and its stock in the wider video game landscape would have been the same. Whenever a new one of these games is revealed, we're all collectively holding our breath until bowling is shown and we let out a shared sigh of relief when it is. Bowling is back again in Switch Sports Resort, and it's as good as it has ever been. This was the sport I referenced when talking about Tennis, as, perhaps unfairly, I'm going to celebrate Bowling for never changing. Nintendo nailed it in 2006, and it knows it. What it didn't realise is how much we love 100-pin bowling. The mode has returned, and once you try it, you'll never want to go back to bowling with ten pins again.