Electric Dreamstate

I already posted how I got my Wii over in the comments of this post at the Crap Shack, but it's repeated below my review of the Wii hardware at the bottom of this post as well.

Just over two weeks ago Nintendo released its fifth system, the Wii, and I was able to snag one. As you probably know the Wii uses a controller that looks much like a remote control. The controller acts as a pointer on the screen as well as a motion tracker (with tilt, roll and yaw).

Also, you can attach a little dongle onto the bottom of the remote that looks like a nunchuck called, creatively enough, the nunchuck. It allows the use of an analog control stick. Most of the games are designed around the controller.

Here are some more info-bits.

• The graphics are like Nintendo's fourth console, the GameCube, but maybe a little bit better. If you really care about graphics this isn't the system for you. However, the graphics certainly aren't distracting.

• It seems the most fun when played in groups. The included game, Wii Sports, has an almost perfect recreation of bowling, and a fun recreation of tennis. They can lead to hours of fun in a group, though they get a little bit boring solo.

• The Zelda game that came out with the system is truly excellent, though a bit easy. If you haven't played a Zelda game since Ocarina of Time or even Link to the Past, this is a great game to try out, though it doesn't really use the Wii controls that creatively.

• The interface is very elegant and iPod like. In fact it's probably easier to use than most Apple products.

• The Virtual Console download service allows you to pay a small fee and download NES, SNES, N64, Genesis, and Turbo Graphix-16 games. You can play most of them by turning the controller sideways. The emulation is for the most part, excellent, better than almost anything you can get on a computer, and probably the best way to play old games on a newer TV.

• It generally seems to be the perfect system for people who haven't owned a Nintendo system since the Super Nintendo or NES days.

• If anyone else has specific questions about the system, I can answer them in the comments.


Here is the story of me getting the Wii.

People were lined up for the Nintendo Wii all night. Although they didn't need to be. Here's my story of getting one:

My friend and I went to Best Buy/Wal-mart/Superstore/Future Shop Sunday morning at around 1am to guestimate how early we would need to line up. The fact that there were almost 100 people at the Best Buy and almost as many at the Wal-Mart, but that other lines weren't full made us ballsy enough to decide that we didn't need to get anywhere until 8am. So, anyway, I went home and watched Battlestar Galactica and then went to bed at like 4am.

We got to the Superstore on Calgary Trail at 7:50 or so and there were only about 20 people waiting. Cha-Ching. Or so we thought. It turned out that there were only 12 units at the Superstore. So we went to the London Drugs on 51rst. No one was there. The lady at they door asked why we were lining up (at least 5 people from the Super Store came with us). We said we were waiting for the Nintendo Wii. She said "what's that?" and then went to see if they had gotten any. Now this place had gotten five PS3s so we were pretty certain that they would have Wiis. As it turns out that certainty was ill placed. They aren't carrying the Wii.

One of the guys in who was waiting there with us said that EB in Southgate might be getting extra units beyond the 15 they had set aside for pre-orders. We thought it was a long shot, but what the hell, it was only about 5 blocks away and the hard part wasn't waiting it was the getting up early and we had already done that. So we went to Southgate and went in the door (now this is key, since it was only about 8:20 at this point and every door to the mall was locked except for the one we tried, although we didn't know that at the time) and we made our way inside to the EB.

There were two guys waiting there already. They worked in the mall and had used an employee entrance. We sat down and started waiting. The EB manager showed up and told us that he didn't know how many units extra he had, but there were certainly enough for the four of us.

In the end they had 26 extra units and you could have gotten one if you had shown up at around 9:30 or so (although the line was full after that). Beyond that most of the waiting was waiting for the EB guys to get done ringing in the presales.

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