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The Wii itself

It’s a thing of beauty, approaching the level of product design slobbering usually reserved for Apple. The buttons have perfect feedback, the shiny white doesn’t show fingerprints nor seem to get dirty and (nearly) everything works exactly as you’d expect without reading the instructions.

The console is tiny, which at first made it look kind of silly sitting in place of my (now gone) Playstation 2. Now I’ve come to appreciate the space surrounding the console as a signifier of quality, like gobs of whitespace denoting a luxury product.

Mii’s are hilarious, and if you spend a little bit of time focusing on each facial bit separate from the whole, you can get an pretty amazingly accurate rendition of yourself. Coming back to a blue glow means somebody out there in Wii-land loves you. (Send me love!: 2410 7465 0051 7859)

Virtual Console

Playing old games from my childhood was a huge OMG! moment for me when I read over the specs, and while I can respect Nintendo’s decision to roll out the games over time, the greedy part of me wants to open up Virtual Console and see thousands of games, just waiting to be downloaded. So far I’ve gone on a Mario kick, grabbing Mario 64 (which I never played, as I didn’t own a N64), Super Mario World (one of my all-time favorites) and Super Mario Bros. I totally forgot how stingy the original SMB was with 1UPs — it’s a bit of a bitch to try and rush through. (Although it’s super easy to hit World 5 in about 2 minutes, remember how?) A neuroscientist should definitely do a study on why I can’t remember the names of highways but can still pinpoint each mushroom/flower/coin block 20 years later.

I also downloaded ToeJam & Earl, thinking it would be a hilarious game for Brittany and me to play together. I was pretty anti-Sega back in the day (although I did eventually own a Dreamcast) but remember playing this at a friend’s house in 5th or 6th grade and loving it. Online reviews say it’s still worth playing, but I’m having trouble getting back into it.

Zelda: Twilight Princess

The greatest Zelda ever made. Period. Reason enough to purchase the Wii; even if all it did was play Twilight Princess it would still be worth the cash. The controls are intuitive, the visuals gorgeous and the story engaging.

I’d say more here, but it would just be compliment after compliment after compliment.

Wii Sports

I’ll give Wii Sports more props than “tech demo for the Wii-mote”, but there’s a pretty big difference in fun between the games. Bowling is incredible; what it may lack in realism it more than makes up for in addictiveness. Tennis is a bit slow to start, but once you boost your ranking above 1000 the AI makes for a pretty tough opponent. (Be sure to branch out and try different strokes; slices, spins, etc. The more you pretend it’s really tennis, the more accurate the controls seems to be.) Golf is decent but boring. Baseball even worse — it’s just pitching and hitting, neither of which take any skill on your part. Boxing could be a ton of fun, but I think the controls are horrendous.

WarioWare, ExciteTruck, Super Monkey Ball

WarioWare: Smooth Moves is … unique. I purchased it specifically to be a party game, however you can’t actually play “multi” until you beat the game in single-player mode. Then to top it off, it doesn’t support multiple Wii-motes. Huh? It was either rushed out the door, or the game designers are morons. Two reasons to still give it a chance: the oddball descriptions of each position, and the can shooting game. (The can shooting game is intense.) Game review sites seem to love, so maybe I’m missing something…

Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz: I bought this to be a party game as well, but I found it to be more frustrating than fun. Sold it back to the store.

ExciteTruck: It’s definitely a launch title, but a pretty damn good one. Steering with the Wii-mote is surprisingly accurate, once you get a feel for how far to rotate your hands. It was great to play together (Britt and I) until we unlocked Super Excite mode, and then we promptly stopped because it gets hard. Maybe we’ll come back to it someday soon. There’s a plethora of vehicles to choose from, but they all pretty much suck except for a couple. Completing a race perfectly, with all the boosts, rings, smashes, etc. definitely gives you a huge rush.

Opera, streaming music, Wii Transfer

Opera’s trial browser gives you such a portal into expanding the functionality of the Wii. Mostly I stream music through Finetune (finetune.com/wii), which is a decent enough experience. The interface was designed very Wii-like which is great, but their selection of songs can be a bit lacking at times. I search via a specific artist, it plays similar songs — but usually I run through all the songs it relates to the artist within a couple of hours and have to search again.

I’m most excited about Wii Transfer by Riverfold Software — it’s a tiny server you run on your Mac that gives you access to your entire iTunes library (with playlists + album art support!), plus access to your iPhoto library. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get the software to actually work, but don’t let my experience thwart you. Manton’s been trying to sort it out with me via email, and the software seems to work for everybody else.

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