Go Vacation

Go Vacation is a party and sports video game. Players explore four resorts located on the fictional Kawawii Island: Marine, City, Mountain, and Snow. They start the game in the Marine Resort. More than 50 activities, both competitive and co-operative, are available.

These include bungee jumping, ice fishing, scuba diving, miniature golf, tennis, off-road racing, and snowman building. Some minigames require or allow for the use of different controllers and accessories, such as the MotionPlus controller, the Wii Zapper, the Balance Board, or the Wii Wheel. Winning some minigames unlocks more challenging modes. The island open world can be navigated at the player's leisure by walking or riding on vehicles, the type of which depends on the resort, and each resort has certain places where players can fast travel to.

Go Vacation was announced at the 2011 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) as the third entry in the We Ski series. Bandai Namco Games began development of the game in 2009, shortly after the release of We Ski & Snowboard because the developers felt they had not given players a "complete sense" of winter in the previous game. When discussing ways to address this, the developers decided winter alone was not enough; they wanted to depict other seasons. Producer Kenya Kobayashi wanted the game to focus on the experience of going on a resort holiday, rather than strictly focusing on the minigames themselves.

Part of the game's development was outsourced to other companies; the rest was done by Bandai Namco Games staff who had previously worked on the Ridge Racer series. After realizing the word "vacation" is frequently associated with relaxation, Kenya Kobayashi named the game Go Vacation to clarify that it is a game in which you must be active.

Go Vacation received a mixed reception from critics; both versions of the game received "mixed or average" reviews according to review aggregator Metacritic. Andy Robertson of Wired stated the game was one of his "go-to family gaming suggestions", calling it "a real treat". James Stephanie Sterling, writing for Destructoid, argued that "to call it bad would be unfair, but to call it anything better would give it more credit than it deserves". The Wii version of Go Vacation was the third-best-selling game in Japan during its first week, selling 47,209 copies, behind both Macross F: The Wings of Goodbye Hybrid Pack and Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Impact.

The controls of the Wii version received a mixed reception but those of the Switch were praised. Of the Wii version, IGN's Audrey Drake said, "from Marine bikes to roller blades to horses, traversing the island proves engaging in its own right". Sterling took issue with the need to plug and unplug the Nunchuk controllers on the Wii version when swapping between minigames. Nintendo Power's Cody M.