We Ski

We Ski can either be played with or without the Wii Balance Board. If using the board, the player can distribute their weight and use the Wii Remote and Nunchuk as virtual ski poles, simulating the sport of skiing.

The game features 14 courses, which can be skied during both day and night. Besides racing, the game also features different modes such as a Ski School, Centipede Races, and Search and Rescue in addition to a Freestyle mode in which up to 4 players may ski freely.

We Ski was produced by Namco Bandai Games employee Yozo Sakagami, a veteran of the company's Ridge Racer series. The publisher suggested to Sakagami that he create a racing game for the Wii that took advantage of the system's hardware capabilities, namely its motion controls. Sakagami quickly began to question if a racing game was suitable for the platform, as the Wii's target demographic consisted of children and parents in their 30s and 40s. He began thinking of a theme that would appeal to any age group, before settling on skiing as he believed the Wii's intuitive controls would make such a game possible and fun to play.

We Ski's development team consisted largely of those that worked on the Ridge Racer games including Ridge Racer 7 director Kenya Kobayashi. It was designed as a successor to Namco's Family series for the Family Computer, which were themed around sports or games and possessed simplistic controls and cute character designs. The soundtrack features music from singer Yumi Matsutoya, in addition to remixes of tracks from older Namco games like Xevious, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, and The Idolmaster. We Ski is the first third-party game on the Wii to use the Wii Balance Board peripheral.

We Ski sold 1.2 million copies worldwide by December 2008, making it one of Namco Bandai's most successful releases of the year. The game holds a 67/100 on the review aggregator website Metacritic, indicating "mixed or average reviews".