Nintendo Wii

Monday, July 16, 2007 at 12:00 AM

Jeremy has been pining for a Nintendo Wii for more than a year before the console system was released, as soon as there were rumors about a Nintendo “Revolution”—before the name Wii was even announced. Aidan managed to snag one of the elusive Wiis for his dad for fathers day. The Wiimote is a lot more active than most typical controllers and is by far the most interesting and fun controller with which I have played—it makes Wii Sports a blast! Jeremy has already lost several pounds from Wii fitness activities.

My favorite feature of the Wii has probably been the ability to create and play with Mii avatars in games. I have gone a little (okay probably a LOT) overboard with creating Miis. I have created a legion of Miis with practically my whole family tree and a good portion of Jeremy’s family too. (Perhaps I will assemble my Miis into a family tree and post it.)

Jeremy downloaded a few classical games from the Nintendo store also. I have been able to replay Super Mario Bros. 2 and to catch Super Mario World and Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, both classic Super Nintendo games that I never played the first time around. A $20 Wii point card will buy 2-4 classical games, which seems like a pretty good deal considering the prices of new video games. On the other hand when I have seen cartridges of old games marked at $5-$10 I haven’t jumped at them as a super deal. Perhaps the system makes it too easy to spend Wii “points” without thinking about spending real dollars. We’ll have to watch that. It is convenient, however, to not have to drag out and set up old systems and cartridges to play the games and to have the games directly playable on the console.