Wiiiii

So, this is my newest toy. It's a Nintendo Wii.

I have a love/hate relationship with the games industry. On one hand, I enjoy playing games and my partner in crime earns his living creating them. I grew up on adventure games and have fond memories of playing King's Quest IV, with the first graphical female heroine. I enjoy puzzly games and for a while played a lot of Puzzle Pirates, but all in all, a large portion of the output of contemporary software companies doesn't do it for me.

I could sit here and link to every possible example of tits and ass and thongs and absurd beach volleyball action with a sliding scale of boob jiggliness but I will refrain because some of us are children or at work--and besides, I don't mind that stuff SOME of the time. It's when it starts showing up everywhere that it makes me sad.

So what is special about the Wii? What makes it really different is the controller (on the left in the above picture), which is equipped with motion sensors. While I'm not all that familiar with or interested in the mechanics of how this works, what I do know is this: if you swing the controller, you swing your sword. Or your golf club. Or your baseball bat or tennis racket. If you hold it in front of you like you're putting and swing it, you...putt.

So I've spent some time playing with the Wii, and I have to say that it's fabulously intuitive and incredibly fun, and I'm glad we spent every cent of the $250 we shelled out. In the end, HD graphics and frame rates and chips and this and that don't mean crap to me.

Several of my coworkers have asked me, teasingly, "How are the graphics, Sensibletron?" and my response is always, "My Wii is FUN." Because the graphics on this bad boy aren't the point, and I'm glad that someone in the games industry finally noticed that bigger and flashier and whatever else doesn't actually equal enjoyment.

Several of my friends who aren't generally interested in videogames have had an absolute blast playing with the Wii. The graphics on Wii Sports, which is bundled with the system, are fairly rudimentary, but the gameplay is just so extraordinarily intuitive that the simplicity doesn't detract in any way. The console encourages you to invite your friends over to bowl or box, and basically enables you to have a fun time with your friends, socializing and playing games.

So yes, I love my Wii. It encourages me to be social. It eschews the technical advances of other systems (which essentially have all the same intonations as someone bragging about the size of their wang) in favor of fun and innovation.