Yes, Wii may be one of the last countries to get our hands on Nintendo's new power in the battle for console stardom, but at last the United Kingdom have the sexy new Wii! With this in mind and knowing a few close friends (nearly all of them) had queued in the freezing cold (while i was in bed) for the Wii i organised a last minute Sunday Wii fest.
My still-proud-wii-owner friend bought his Wii around neatly packaged in the very box it came in, you know when a console is still desired when people take care in taking it out of the house and do not resort to carrier bags... yet!. After a bit of setting up we were ready to rock! People soon arrived bringing their wii-motes, my idea was to film it and pretend we were part of those American Wii adverts you see, you know the ones, where everyone looks like they should be in the intro to an episode of friends. We didn't bother, we just played Wii sports and forgot about trying to be 'random youtube fodder'.
It didn't take me long to learn the ropes (point at tellly, twist and click, easy), soon i was flung into a game of Bowling, easily the best part of Wii Sports. Having failed miserably the first time around, i soon got the hang of it and got my first strike (and yes, i hit a trailer like pose too) i think the trick is not to rotate your wrist to much! (rotating makes the ball head to the gutters....). Golf was next... which i was really bad at, fun, but really bad! you kind of feel silly when you miss from 2 yards... but thats all part of the genius of the new control system, all it takes is one untimely poke in the ribs and wallah! a Bogey! Baseball...ah baseball... how fun is baseball, anyone who has played the baseball game will know that it is a hell of a lot of fun!!! i hit one home run, but that was as far as i got in the hours that passed. Tennis, well frankly there was not the space needed to play tennis in my house, we did try and yes... i sucked. Didn't get around to playing Boxing.
The plan was to invite friends around and play a few games for an hour or two, six hours later...
Nintendo's Wii is a very addictive, very original, a truly great machine, and unfortunately we only had the time to play Wii Sports, with so many launch titles available and such a low price Nintendo have done the gaming community proud. I feel sorry for people with small tellies and little bedrooms, this is clearly the modern mans latest apartment gadget.
My favourite feature was the Mii's, i had already been created and sent over the net to my friends machine! my god it looks like me, we laughed our bollocks off at all the look-a-likes wondering around his console, all my friends were digitalised, a few of my friends pets were turned into 'what they would of looked like if they were human' even Michael Jackson and Robert DeNiro turned up!! 100 reasons why to have lots of friends, turn them into Mii's.
Also on the side of the remote, in the fine details, etched for eternity is the word 'POO' someone at Nintendo has a great sense of humour.
If i didn't have a mortgage, car, loan and bills to pay i would have been in that cue with them, unfortunately that is not the case and forced to watch from the sidelines. I would urge everyone to buy one if they had the chance, and with the Xbox 360's game line-up looking so strong i have to worry about the ever-delayed PS3 for the UK market. Better start saving!