Wii stand together

My arm is sore. From playing Nintendo, no less. Good gravy.

By “Nintendo” I’m referring to the Wii, of course. Saturday evening we had a bachelor party for my old roommate (who’s getting married not long after Christmas), and we ended up playing tennis and bowling and boxing and such on the Wii. (Quick disclaimer: I generally don’t play video games, but the Wii’s pretty revolutionary and I had to try it at least once. :))

As for why I’d be sore, it’s because with the Wii, you actually swing your arms to hit the ball in tennis, and you actually jab with the controller to sock your opponent in boxing. I guess they want to help fat couch potatoes get some exercise. ;)

From a design point of view, it’s an extremely interesting idea. Not only are the controllers wireless, but they have motion detectors (accelerometers, to be precise) so they can tell how you’re moving them. Ingenious. For the bowling game, you actually have to lift your arm up, swing it back, and then bring it forward again as if you were using a real ball.

All that said, I still think real life is better. :) (And I’d rather read books, because at least then I don’t forget to blink. Fried eyes are no fun.)

I’m so proud of you for trying the Wii! I’ve been playing with my brother since he got one at Thanksgiving and I love it. It’s nice not to have to remember tons of button combos.

And the new Zelda game definitely beats out some books I’ve read recently, both in terms of plot and compelling characters. Plus there’s lots of mind boggling puzzles. And I’m only 1/10th of the way through. . . . :D

But to each his own.

Alas, my friend didn’t have Zelda. I haven’t seen any of the Zelda games since Link to the Past (for the SNES, and yes, I know that’s a very long time ago :)). Not that I’m averse to it — in fact, Zelda’s one of the games that has a secure spot in my heart, since I grew up on it (at the neighbor’s house). I played the first game a fair amount, the second one hardly at all, and the third one all the time. I dreamed about it. I practically ate, slept, and breathed it. The music still gives me goosebumps. Ah, Zelda.

Yes, truly Zelda is one of the few video games worth playing, along with maybe Sonic the Hedgehog . . . . :D Good ol’ Link to the Past was my first video game.

Ah, Sonic the Hedgehog. Good memories. :) For those who started with the NES (or earlier), there’s a site called VirtualNES.com that lets you play hundreds of old NES games in a Java applet. It works quite well, too, but I’m not sure on the legality of doing so. If only they’d release the old games into the public domain… (But they won’t, because now you can buy them and download them onto the Wii and play them there. Oh well.)

But they are pretty cheap on the Wii–$8 for Sonic, $10 for Super Mario 64 . . . . And you can save!

True, true. :) I’ve heard that it looks like games are migrating from computers back to consoles, that in not too many years people will be playing games almost entirely on consoles instead. I don’t know if that’ll actually happen, but I can see the majority shifting back to consoles. Probably a good thing.