The Wii is a guarantee that couch potatoes never take root in your living room!

• Each of the kids takes a different section of the living room with plenty of room, and volley the ball back and forth. You won’t want to stand too close – even though you aren’t hitting the ball at the same time, the opportunities for collisions are pretty high. Space out and let your kids really move around.
• It seems to be harder to cross the court, and we haven’t mastered that.
• The Wii remote makes a very nice sound as the rack swings and hits the ball. Watching a game is much like watching Wimbledon games in the late 1970s and early 1980s. So far, I don’t seem to have a John McEnroe in the family. Thank goodness.

or maybe Red Steel……I’ll let you know….

Turns out that before we could do any Wii Sports, we needed to spend a few hours doing the Cable Dance. Jack seems to think that I have held up the show – I apparently have pretty serious ‘cable issues.’ “All this would have been done a while ago, except she has this issue with seeing wires….”

Hmmm….I’m still seeing wires, so I’m not sure about just how dire my ‘cable issues’ are. I certainly don’t want to be tripping over wires, or unable to close the cabinet doors because of them. Apparently a trip to Fry’s will make all this much easier. Fry’s is the purveyor of a very particular magic box (High-def component switchbox). Jack’s TV is somehow lacking – it has a mere 2 imputs. This is the same TV that we waited for patiently and is the only TV worth watching certain football games.

…

We finally have Wii!

We nicknamed our Wii, Zakalwe, a mercenary for hire from the Ian Bank’s Culture books. We don’t know how’s we’ll end up using the nickname, but once we do I’ll let you know so you can name yours approrpriately.

Now, we pick up Grandma, and make up our Miis. (What is the plural form of Wii and Mii, anyway?) While we are waiting, you can make your own Mii here.

Again soon!

[The kitten has been sleeping all day on the sofa. She is content, as are we. ]

11/18/2006

9:00pm: Last night we cruised to our local Target, GameStop, Best Buy and Walmart at I35 and Parmer and scoped the scene.

• Walmart’s line was already longer than their inventory (28).
• GameStop had presold it’s inventory.
• Target expected to have 24.
• Best Buy expect to have 15 (but ended up selling 45), and ToysRUs had 22 (plus their 10 preorders.)

[Sidenote: there was a 4 mth old kitten on our porch that we hadn't seen in the neighborhood, we left her some food.]

9:30pm: We went home and tried to sleep. [Kitten had eaten all the food and was sleeping on the porch.]

~~~
11/19/2006

~~~

3:00am: Jack left to get in line. Target and Best Buy were full, and he ended up 7th in line.

6:30am: I came by to let him get coffee and a bathroom break. [Kitten is freezing on the porch so we let her come inside. She is immediately comfortable.]

7:30am: The folks at Toys-R-Us handed out tickets and let us head home.

8:04am: With kolaches and coffee, we checked Target just to see how they did and picked up Zelda, Super Monkey Ball and Red Steel (and a $20 Target gift card – w00t)

8:30am: Began to clean and prep the house for the Wii festival to come. [Kitten meets dogs, that seems to go well. Hmmmm....do we have a new cat? Let's leave her on the porch when we leave.]

10:00am: Purchased our Wii at Toys-R-Us…victory!
We’re at home now, getting set up. [The Kitten was still home and expecting to come inside when we arrived. No one seems concerned that we have both a kitten AND a Wii.]

More Wii news to come. [And if you happen to have a Wii inspired name for a kitten - drop us a comment! ]

If you haven’t already – go calculate your wii budget now:  http://www.n-sider.com/newsview.php?type=story&storyid=2440
I expect we’ll get Zelda and plan to play alot of Wii Sports and hold off on other games until Christmas.  The kids are already hinting that Santa could easily leave wiimotes and nunchucks in their stockings.   32 Days till Wii!!

Nintendo’s new Wii controler is likely to bring even more gaming activity into our living rooms. Games like DDR are not only fun, but they get your heart rate up too.

I expect parents to be seeking the Wii and it’s wiimote and nunchaku for Christmas this year.  It’s is engaging, and my 6 year old will love swashbuckling with the new wiimote.  In fact, I can just see my kids jumping off of towered pillows, or the sofa, in fantastic moves that one would expect from only Jackie Chan or Peter Pan.  We’ll have our friends over to lob tennis balls at one another, and my daughter will conduct orchestral symphonies – not sure which game that actually is, but they showed alot of conducting on stage.   In fact, WiiSports and Zelda will apparently launch on the same day as the device – hopefully with some nice bundle packages.
The wiimote will have some sounds directly on the device, which they demoed with Zelda’s bow and could be very engaging.  And we thought we already had surround sound!

On Thursday I’ll get the grand Nintendo tour and I’ll post over on Killer Betties a full review and specials for families here at Gamermom.

The family got me a version for the DS, and with any luck, I’ll have some time on the plane next week as I’m traveling to E3 to play it and whip out a review for it. Stay tuned…

Since you are killing off your own troops, Nintendo seems to have apologized ahead of time.
From their website:

The main character in Odama is Yamanouchi Kagetora, the general credited with creating the Way of Ninten, a philosophy that puts the greater good above the individual’s needs. With this philosophy to guide him, he finds that his individual soldiers can band together to create a force strong enough to defeat even the most powerful enemy.

Hmmm, so maybe that justifies the collateral damage, but the video they’ve released for the pre-launch does not indicate any of this nobility.   I can hear Spock clearly in my truegeek brain, “The needs of the many, out weigh the needs of the few, or the one.”  But do the troops extol such virtue? No, instead you hear “This is no way to die!”  Other dieing troops yell out proclamations that add a touch more depth: “Good bye, my liege,” and “Tell my kids I love them!”  Or simply, “Ow ow ow!”

As Odama gets closer to launch, I hope we see a bit more of the game.  Right now, it’s looking like it’s got all the brutality of medieval warfare, which may have been the point.  We are likely stick with more traditional pinball games here.