Wii Play

Wii Play is a party game consisting of nine minigames that make use of the Wii Remote's several unique features. These games can either be played in single-player mode or in a two-player multiplayer versus mode in which each player's number of wins are recorded. Upon starting the game, only one of the featured minigames is accessible, but the other eight are systematically unlocked as the player tries each one. The player is able to use their own custom Mii avatars created through the Mii Channel, who appear in several of the included minigames. High scores are saved when playing in single-player mode, and achieving certain high scores awards the player with bronze, silver, gold and platinum medals for the respective game, along with a message sent to the Wii Message Board containing a short tip for that respective game.

Shooting Range is a shooting game similar to Duck Hunt in which players go through several consecutive rounds of shooting objects that appear on the screen by pointing the Wii Remote at the Wii's sensor bar to aim and firing with the controller's trigger button. Objects include balloons, bullseye targets, clay disks, tin cans, and UFOs which descend from the sky and attempt to abduct tiny copies of the player's Mii. Extra points can be earned by shooting several objects consecutively without missing, and ducks also occasionally fly across the screen which can be shot for additional points. The game's multiplayer mode has two players competing to earn the highest number of points; conversely, a second player can join during single-player mode and help player one earn points, or player one can take a second Wii Remote and use it with their primary controller to assist in shooting.

Wii Play was one of several games that were developed as a part of Shigeru Miyamoto's "Wii Project", along with Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and Wii Music. The project was a compilation of several technical demos exhibiting the capabilities of the then-upcoming Wii console and its controller, the Wii Remote. These prototypes took advantage of several of the Wii Remote's features; the controller was able to sense rotation, which was prominently used in Pose Mii and Laser Hockey, while the detection of depth movement was featured in Table Tennis, Fishing and Billiards. These tech demos were first publicly shown at the 2006 E3 convention alongside the games used in Wii Sports. A demo of the shooting range minigame titled Shooting, which was speculated by several people to be a sequel to Duck Hunt, was also presented during the 2006 Nintendo Fusion Tour.

Wii Play officially began development when Miyamoto decided that the demonstrational games would be fleshed out and released together for the console. The development team at Nintendo EAD was given around seven to eight months to develop the game, with Motoi Okamoto, who had previously worked on Pikmin and the touchscreen minigames included in Super Mario 64 DS, serving as the game's director. The demo games were put into two different categories; the sports-themed games were grouped together and bundled into Wii Sports, while the rest of the games which made use of the Wii Remote's pointer became Wii Play. The game was developed directly alongside Wii Sports, with the two games' development teams sharing several artists and programmers.

Wii Play received mixed reviews from critics, holding an aggregate score of 61.64% on GameRankings and 58/100 on Metacritic.

Common Sense Media gave the game 3 stars out of 5, concluding that the game "isn't as fun as Wii Sports". 0, stating that while "anybody can play it, including grandma,... [y]ou'll probably be bored in minutes". GamesTM gave the game a more scathing reaction, scoring it 3/10 and stating that "Even the games that do work break down due to a combination of being extremely bland or too repetitive", and even that the strongest game, Shooting, "loses its charm as soon as you realise the targets follow a similar path every time you play".