No game has been more influential in recent history than Wii Sports. But Nintendo gave it away for free. That’s how it got consumers to pony up $249 for its Wii console with the newfangled remote-like Wii controller. It was perhaps one of the smartest ways to launch a new product, ever.

Nintendo sold more than 50 million consoles since the fall of 2006, dethroning Sony from the No. 1 console spot in the process. More than that, Nintendo broadened the market to include people who were once intimidated by video games. In my own house, I saw a three-year-old go up against a 73-year-old grandmother in Wii Sports.

Now the sequel to Wii Sports has arrived: Wii Sports Resort. And it comes with its very own accessory, the Wii MotionPlus attachment that makes the Wii-Mote more accurate. It’s been almost three years coming, but gamers should be happy that Nintendo’s chief game designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, took his time with this project.

It’s just in time. Video games desperately need a summer blockbuster. Console-related sales have fallen four months in a row. The recession has bitten, and game companies are starting anew with layoffs. Never mind, though, because Wii Sports Resort is just the sort of game to take your mind off any troubles.

From the very beginning, Wii Sports Resort has more of an adventure feeling to it. You jump out of an airplane and twist the controller to level out your position as you skydive to a tropical resort island. From above, you can see that this place, WuHu Island, seems to have a lot of charm and personality, like something out of a Mario game, and you aren’t disappointed when you’re on the ground.

You can engage in 12 different mini-games, each a sport unto itself. As with Wii Sports, you can choose your own avatar, or Wii character known as a Mii, and insert it into the game. Some of the mini-games are very clever. With the archery game, you plug the Nunchuk attachment into the Wii-Mote with the Wii MotionPlus. You hold the Wii-Mote steady as if you were holding a bow, then you pull back on the Nunchuk. It sounds like you’re pulling back on a real bow and your field of vision narrows to just the target area. You release your arrow when you let go of a button on the Nunchuk. It has a very realistic and satisfying feel as the arrow sails into the target. Each shot gets harder and harder, as you pull further away from the target and have to compensate for wind.

The Wii MotionPlus has built-in gyroscope chips that make it better at detecting action like the flick of a wrist for a frisbee throw or the sideways slice in a sword fight. It’s a big improvement over the accuracy of the Wii-Mote. But there is still room for improvement. In the Wii Sports Resort sword-fighting match, it was often hard to tell if the Wii knew that I was slicing forward with my hand, or sideways. The improved accuracy is limited on that front, even though you have to recalibrate the remote before each round in a sword-fighting match.

Of course, when I played with my little ones, none of that mattered. Nintendo has surrounded the game with cuteness. When you duel with swords, the loser falls head over heels into the surrounding water. My kids guffawed each time someone else knocked a character into the water.

My kiddies are also fond of canoeing, a new sport where you use the Wii-Mote as if it’s a paddle. As you race friends, you have to skillfully paddle on both sides of your canoe or else you’ll start veering off in the wrong direction.

The gyroscopes let you play games you couldn’t do before, like wakeboarding, where you control your Wii-Mote as if you’re hanging onto a bar attached to a rope as you trail behind a speedboat. Frisbee is fun since you can make a dog fetch and catch the Frisbee as you toss it sideways. In bowling, golf and ping pong, you can put spin on the ball now.

I think the game hits its finest with the airplane game, where you fly a plane over the island, twisting your wrist left or right to make the plane turn or do rolls. It’s remarkably easy to fly, even though you don’t have a traditional joystick in your hand. You can fly over sights such as the volcano or the bridge and get little rewards as you fly through markers. The rewards reveal more about the island, which is like a character unto itself in the game.

The island is what gives connection to the 12 mini-games. It’s akin to a meta game itself as you try to accumulate the experience to fully explore the tropical paradise. As Microsoft gets ready to introduce Project Natal — a new way to control games through body gestures in an add-on for the Xbox 360 coming in 2010 — it would do well to remember how to engage gamers in both mini-games and meta-games as Nintendo does so well with Wii Sports Resort.

Strategically, Wii Sports Resort will accomplish the task that Nintendo needed it to: put a more accurate version of the Wii controller into the hands of a lot of people. Game publishers can count on making games for the Wii MotionPlus and still get a large audience. That’s because Wii Sports Resort is a great game and should be a hot seller. Let’s hope that it gives a nice shot in the arm to sales of video games this month and begins the much-hoped-for turnaround in the recession-pounded video game market.

The game went on sale Sunday for $49.99 in stores across the country. It is rated E for Everyone.