Well I got my hands on the new Nintendo Wii which launched in Europe late last week. 😀 I’ve had a unit booked for the past few months so went along to Gamestop on Henry Street at midnight on Thursday to pick it up. We actually got to the shop a bit earlier at around 11.30pm so were queueing up with the 4/5 people who were ahead of us. There were a couple of families, which I was suprised at considering the hour, and a couple of hardcore nintendoids. After playing Wii Sports tennis with my brother and then waiting around for another while we eventually got to buy the unit and head on home. Was quite disappointed to find out that Gamestop had no additional controllers or copies of Wii Play (which comes with a controller) so we got the Wii itself (which comes with Wii Sports), Zelda: Twilight Princess and an extra nunchuck.
Got home from town around 1.15 and proceeded to set it all up and switch it on. First impressions on a console are important and the Wii just astounds you. It’s hard to fathom how Nintendo have been able to come up with such an intuitive controller that’s so radically different to anything before it. After myself and my brother had created our Mii characters (cartoony in-game representations of yourself) we kicked in to Wii Sports. Playing on your own is great but the Wii really comes into its own with multiplayer and luckily I could try it out on Saturday after my cousin picked me up an extra controller. After a few days of Wii Sports my favourite is bowling or tennis although boxing is quite funny with two people. I’ve even got my mother to play it and she really enjoyed the fact that the controller wasn’t as complicated as the Gamecube etc. I’ll be doing another post on Zelda as I’ve only played a few hours so watch out for that at some stage this week.
4 replies on “Wii”
I don’t know why, but I’ve really had a soft spot for this console; I’m not a console head, and I hardly play any games as it is, but maybe it’s because I’ve had enough of the pissing contest between Sony and Microsoft over who can deliver the most over-priced, over-powered console. Nintendo seems to have had an entirely different perspective, which I would have thought was obvious. Make it fun and affordable. It’s a box for fun.
I installed a game recently called Aleph One (based on the old Mac Marathon series) which, though a little ropey is great fun. Well-designed gameplay and fun beats heavy, intricate graphics every time – hasn’t anyone learned?
Anyway, look forward to reading more about your experiences.
Anthony, have you any plans to get the wiimote working with your PC? According to this Wired article –
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72307-0.html?tw=rss.index
– it doesn’t seem too difficult. It’s already working for Half-Life 2 but I’d love to use it for Second Life.
Hi James, I hadn’t really thought of hooking it to the PC like that but I may just give it a go. 🙂 Half-Life 2 would be quite cool with it. I haven’t played Second Life although I have heard quite a bit about it.
Dude you’re lucky you got your hands on the wii. It’s sold out everywhere right now. I’m trying to find one.