Ok, so I got a Nintendo Wii a couple of weeks ago, as an early Christmas present from my sweetie Shannon. First we had to sit in line for it, which was a different experience in itself, and which Shan explained very well on her website.

So once I finally got it all hooked up (that didn’t take too long, there aren’t that many cords,) and then connected to the internet (also very simple, it’s all wireless…but you do need wireless or you’re screwed,) I was off.

First thing to do was to play the pack-in game, Wii Sports.

Wii Sports is probably the most fun people will be having with their Wiis for the next few months. First of all it comes with the system, second it’s designed to show off the motion-sensing controller, and lastly, there just aren’t really that many good games out for the Wii right now. But more on that later.

Wii Sports contains 5 little mini-games: Tennis, Bowling, Golf, Baseball, and Boxing. Besides those, it also has a daily fitness program you can do that keeps track of your progress and gives you an “age” based on how well you do. Do really well and you can get as low as 20, do bad and, well, you’ll be older as far as the game is concerned. I’ve really liked this aspect of the game because it gives me something to do each day instead of just playing the same sports over and over. The daily fitness program will switch up between the sports and have you do 3 different training exercises each day. The best I’ve gotten so far is age 28.

Tennis is probably the most active and fun sport you can play. Especially 2-player. You can play up to 4 people at once so I’m looking forward to getting some friends together soon. Shan and I played against each other in Tennis, Golf and Bowling, and all are pretty fun. The learning curve as far as controls is pretty small: You swing the controller like a tennis racket or a baseball bat or a golf club, or your arms like you would when bowling or boxing.

I haven’tplayed Boxing too much because the controls have been pretty non-responsive for me. There’s a lot you can do as far as placement of your hands on the screen according to where you’re holding the controllers in “real life.” So anyways, that hasn’t been played much.

I also purchased Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blast. I had bought Super Monkey Ball for the Nintendo Gamecube and it was pretty darn fun. Probably the weirdest and hardest game ever, but still fun. So this one is much harder, and definitely more weird. It tries to use the motion controller a little too much: you hold the Wii remote horizontally, and you tilt it each direction, which in turn tilts the entire world on the monkey ball game. This causes your little monkey ball to roll in whatever direction and you tilt your way through to get the monkey ball to go through the maze and finally end up at the goal. Well it’s very hard and frustrating, and I haven’t gotten far because I’ve wanted to throw my controller through the TV on a few occasions already. There’s also 50 different party games which would all be more fun with multiple people, so I haven’t been able to try them all out yet. Overall, I wouldn’t buy this game again if I had to.

Besides the games, the Wii has impressed me with it’s overall experience. One thing that I relly like abou tit is that it plays Gamecube games. So I’ve still been playing NBA Live 2005 on it a lot. It’s got ports for the Gamecube controllers on the top of the system (the wireless Wavebird controller for the Gamecube is my favorite controller ever,) and places for memory cards.

You can also download select games over the internet through the Wii via what Nintendo calls a “Virtual Console.” I loaded up some “Wii Points,” which costs $1.00 for every 100 points, with my credit card and went shopping. I ended up buying Super Mario 64 for 1000 Wii Points (or $10) and will save my other 1000 points for upcoming released older games. They release a bunch of games every Monday, and the selection right now isn’t too good. They have NES, SuperNES, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, and TurboGrafx 16 games available. I’ve though about getting Sonic the Hedgehog and Altered Beast, but I think I’ll wait and see what else is released first.

The Wii menu is set up into channels, and one of the channels is called the “Mii channel.” Here you go in and design caricatures of people (yourself and others if you want) that will represent you in games that utilize the Miis, like Wii Sports. I also heard the upcoming games like Wario Ware and The Sims will use your designed Miis. Shannon and I made each other and she made her sisters and her friend Robin, and I made Ed. Scott and Megan made themselves on their Wii and sent them over via the internet. It’s pretty silly, but still fun.

Pretty soon there will be News, Forecast and Internet channels available, so that you can sign up for news feeds, get a Google Earth-like forecast, and surf the ‘Net. But these aren’t available right now.

There’s a Photo channel available right now, which will read photos off your SD card and you can send them to people and draw on them and stuff. Haven’t used this yet and most likely won’t, it’s pretty silly, but could be nice for people who don’t have a computer. But if you have a digital camera then you probably have a computer. Oh well.

I guess that’s it. The graphics and stuff aren’t that impressive as far as an update over the Gamecube, but if the games are fun it doesn’t matter. There’s a game coming out in January called Wii Play that will do some more Wii Sports-like stuff like Pool and darts so that should be fun. And I’m looking forward to Super Mario Galaxy, Wario Ware, Metroid, and any NBA game.

I’d definitely recommend a Wii to anyone looking for a video game system. It’s just plain fun, and the games aren’t too hard to grasp so that you can just sit down and be playing right away without having to learn how to play.

So that’s it! Go buy a Wii and then make fun of yourself for buying and playing with something called a “Wii.”

Tags: review, Shannon, video-games, wii