I Love the Wii

One of my prouder moments was when I camped out with my friends in front of Target to get a Wii on the day that it was released.

Or rather, I camped out and offered moral support while they bought Wiis and I looked on enviously. Since then I've racked up hundreds of hours of Wii time on my friends' consoles and I have to say it really doesn't get old. I've become proficient at Wii Sports, pretty respectable at Monkeyball, and a living god at Madden 2007. No joke. I'm like some sort of crazy fusion between Joe Montana and Jim Brown.

Some graphics snobs may scoff at the Wii's graphics; only slightly better than the GameCube. But I think that graphics can take a game only so far. There are tons of beautiful games out there that I really don't want to play because they're un-original, repetitive, and the story sucks.

The Wii offers a viable alternative to ogling the high resolution character but struggling to figure out the controls. I personally wouldn't call the Wiimote intuitive, but that's because I've spent so many years playing with classic, non-wave-around controllers. For someone who hasn't played many video games, I bet that the Wiimote is the most intuitive controller ever.

The tennis game in Wii sports is a great example. In other tennis games you'd have to steer your player over to the ball, then press a button at exactly the right time and perhaps steer the ball to where you want it to go. With Wii tennis, you just swing the Wiimote as if it were a racket. Not only do you hit the ball, the Wiimote even vibrates just the tiniest bit, giving tactile feedback that actually makes it seem like you hit the ball. It's genius.

One thing that gives me consistent warm fuzzies in the bottom of my stomach is how much better the Wii is doing than the PS3 and the XBox 360. I'm a big Nintendo fan. I also like a good helping of schadenfreude.

On an aforementioned field trip to San Francisco, my friend went into an Electronics Boutique and asked if they had any Wiis in stock. The answer was a somewhat amused, derisive "no" (as if there hadn't been any in stock for weeks). When asked if there were PS3s in stock, the clerk replied "Yeah, there're three over in the corner."

Warm fuzzies galore.

-Keenan