I spent Thanksgiving weekend with some friends who had managed to get their hands on a Nintendo Wii
Of course the Wii came with just one of its innovative motion-sensitive controllers, so there was no playing against one another. We went on the hunt for additional controllers but there were none to be found in local stores. The Wii also only comes with one game, Wii sports, but for a weekend it was more than enough to suffice.
I can see why there have been reports of television sets being broken with the controllers because the games require you to act as if you’re actually swinging a tennis racket, or a golf club, or a bowling ball. Wii Sports also includes baseball and boxing, and swinging that wand is a lot more fun than simply pressing buttons. I was with a few people who really had no interest in videogames at all, and after using the Wii they were transformed. This one’s going to be a huge success. Nintendo sold over 600,000 Wii consoles in its first eight days.
My favorites were tennis and golf. The potential for improvement in this system is obvious. Down the road I can imagine you might be playing against a fairly realistic-looking version of this.
Part of the fun of the Wii is designing your own character, called a Mii. You start with a head shape and add from dozens of features until your character is created. Of course, this ultimately turned into an incredibly amusing diversion. As you can see, it wasn’t long before our friend Martin’s journey into cyber-drag resulted in the character below.
When hooked up to WiFi, you can send your Miis over the internet to participate in a parade on another user’s Wii.
