Episode 3 - Wii

Today I had the opportunity to play Nintendo’s next console the Wii. (I know this is shaping up to sound like I’m a Nintendo Fanboy, and maybe there is a hint of that since that is what I grew up on, but I assure you, I try and stay neutral.) But it is something I feel must be reported on. The Nintendo World store in New York City had a ton of Wii games on hand today all day. Titles like Excite Truck, Rayman, Super Monkey Ball, Call of Duty 3 and Wii Sports were all there in playable form and hooked up to quite large HDTV’s I might add.

I got to the store at roughly 1:15 this afternoon. I know, I’m not a good journalist because I slept in. I will do you better when the Sony event comes around… next week I think. Either way, I was in line outside in line for 3 hours. Just to get in the store. Once in the store it was another almost hour and a half wait to get to a console. Yes, there were THAT many people there.

Lets start off with the biggest disappointment. Nintendo World Employees turned off the only console that had Twilight Princess. According to a Nintendo World employee the reason the line outside wasn’t moving was because everyone wanted to play Zelda. Dragon Ball Z and Super Monkey Ball were readily available to the people inside and no one was stepping up to play. When the first announcement was made that there was “no more Zelda inside,” I was really let down. I wanted to hack and slash and be the hero of time… but I guess that will have to wait another 2 weeks. Still I waited for 2 more hours after hearing the news to get in and get my hands on that delectable console.

Once I was finally at the entrance we were told we were only allowed to play one game, and if we wanted to play more than one we had to wait on the long ass line to play again. Dear readers I assure you I took no pleasure in disobeying orders from the Nintendo World employee, but I did… and I did it for you.

I played Wii Sports first. I decided on tennis, it seemed like the most fun of the choices (bowling, tennis, baseball, golf and boxing). Touching the controller for the first time made me tingle a little. It felt good in my hand. It wasn’t too light, or too heavy and I really didn’t feel like an idiot swinging this thing around in front of a bunch of strangers. My first tennis game I lost. It was because I was thinking too much. When you swing the racket both characters swing. I was trying to play the game like a true doubles tennis match with both characters doing their part… that plan proved not so good. The second I did a little better, but still lost. I really wanted to get my front guy into the game, but he was pretty awkward. The one thing that surprised me was that those little guys moved themselves into the right spots. All you do is swing. It didn’t bother me because this isn’t a tennis game. The whole idea of Wii Sports is to get used to the controls of the new technology. Much like a typing class teaches you how to use a keyboard not how to write your novel.

I then ventured upstairs to where the other titles were stationed. It was more or less chaos up there. I was able to look around at just about everything and then made my way to what I decided was the Call of Duty 3 line. It wasn’t really a line, but the guy handed me the controller next so it became one.

They did not have a demo of Call of Duty as I expected they would… no, this was a full version of the game and I picked up where the guy before me had left off. And this had been running all day so I was in the middle some crazy battle and had to pretty much figure out where I was going. Where I didn’t have to press any buttons for Tennis I was pressing lots of them in CoD. The remote felt good in your hand, not too light, and the buttons were all really easy to reach. The nun chuck attachment was awkward because there was no rest of the controller as I had been accustomed to. Both were smoother than I thought, but by no means were they going to fly out of my hand. I noticed I kept bringing my hands together like controllers of past and then I had to separate them because they were doing different things.

The Wiimote was used as your look around and aim. The problem here is the Wiimote is very sensitive when standing close. So I would move over to aim, but instead be spinning in circles. You really have to back up to get proper accuracy. The catch here is, most people don’t have the 42-46 inch TVs that I was playing on. Backing up away from your 20 inch, is going to be an issue.

I picked up the controls pretty quickly, but I can say people ahead of me did not. There were a lot of people spinning in circles and people getting stuck behind walls. I would have liked to play Red Steel since it was developed for this console’s unique controls rather than a game that was just ported over but it was not to be had.

Over all I think the Wii’s controls are very fun to use. Even watching people is fun. Seeing them kind of move with the controls and the characters is quite entertaining and really gets you into the whole scenario. The entire atmosphere at the Nintendo World store was filled with anticipation. People wanted this so badly and I don’t think anyone walked away disappointed.