Wii cult classic MySims feels right at home on Nintendo Switch

Last weekend, I was at a wedding when I struck up a conversation with a stranger. When she asked what I did for work and I mentioned I wrote about video games for a living, she was eager to tell me about her favorite games. A personal favorite of hers that I wasn’t expecting to hear? MySims. The somewhat obscure spinoff had a short life in the Nintendo Wii era, delivering a more approachable Sims experience built for casual audiences.

Lucky for my new wedding pal, MySims is making a surprise comeback this year with MySims: Cozy Bundle. The re-release packages up both the original MySims and the fantasy-driven MySims Kingdom with a few modern touches. I went hands-on with the package at a Nintendo holiday preview event, where I got a taste of how these cult classics have been reimagined for Nintendo Switch. Though not much has changed, there are two welcome — and much needed — adjustments that fans will appreciate.

My short demo dropped me into the very beginning of MySims, where I could create my character and build my house. This isn’t a remake, so the opening moments play out just as they do in the original release. I named my town after Shadow the Hedgehog and made an edgy Sim to match before getting to work making an impractical, boot-shaped house fit for a goth.

The most notable change here is in Cozy Bundle’s reworked control scheme. The original release relied on motion controls, so it needed an overhaul to make it work with a standard gamepad. That transition is a little clumsy at times. My joystick essentially functions as a pointer, as I need to move a cursor around the screen to hit dialogue boxes or pick up house customization options. Camera controls during house building can get especially confusing, as the left joystick both tilts my plot of land and zooms in and out. It took my brain a bit to get used to what very much feels like a motion-controlled game crammed into standard joystick controls.