Have a Very Merry Wii Christmas!

This article in the Washington Post is a concise look at some folks experiencing the Wii and PS3 side by side. If you are trying to decide, it’s a good read.

“While the people in my group preferred looking at the PS3′s games, they preferred playing the Wii.”

Harry (age 13)-

• “It’s really light and like a small DVD remote – it’s great!”
• “It’s small, and fits in your hand.”
• “It’s really simple to use the buttons.”

Epiphany (age 10) -

• “At first it’s a little hard to control, but in less than 5 minutes you can really get good with it.”
• “This is probably the coolest Nintendo thing ever.”
• “Straps are required. If you don’t wear the wrist strap, it could fly off and hit the TV or the wall”
• “It’s cool how it makes noises when you do stuff.”
• “I really like having the B button on the botton, instead of on the top.”

George (age 7) -

• “It’s really cool. It’s really easy. You barely notice that it’s wrapped around your wrist. You can move it really fast”

Mom (age 36) -

• The sleeves will be a good idea – no fighting over who’s remote is who and if one is lost we’ll know who lost it.
• Definitely – wear your wrist strap.
• Make sure you have room to move around in the living room. It’s hard not to really move and get into the sports games.

Dad (age 36) -

• It’s really good in the right or left hand.
• It’s good for any size of hand.
• I was expecting more weight out of it, but it’s really light. The batteries add weight on the bottom and I myself would like a little more balance in the weight.
• In the Bowling game, you can get alot of precision with the spin and speed of the ball of the remote.

Grandma (age 66) -

• With one hand, it was fairly easy to use. (Grandma had a stroke a while back and can only use her left hand.)
• “I really liked how easy it was to use and type, especially when you personalize your Mii.”

These impressions do not include the nunchuck, since we have been Bowling and playing Tennis all day. [And for those that are keeping track, the kitten is sleeping in the other room and is quite content.]

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! ]

He offers the following review

“The feature gross out ones can take out their brains, can make bats fly out of its head.  You can pull out its heart (that’s cracked!) and it peal off its hand so you can see its bones. You can draw on it with three different colors so you can creep out your mom.”

They have them at Amazon – just click on his guts in the image below:

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!!

• What skills do kids need to play the game? Some games require fast reflexes, some require logic skills, and some require reading. All skills that may be problematic for your child. These may be games to avoid, or games to pick up to help your children grow.
• Is the ESRB rating accurate? As I said above, the ESRB ratings just give the basics about what content is in the game. Our reviews will go into more detail. Maybe the rating was too low. Maybe it was too high. Our reviews will discuss what we think the rating really should be. Every parent is different of course, so help us to provide more information. If a game had foul language that we missed, point it out. If we make a mistake about the level of violence, let us know. We want the reviews here to help all parents, so the more information the better.
• What did our kids really think? Every game here will be played by one of the authors’ kids. Real kids are playing these games and our reviews will reflect that.
• Our reviews will focus on the pre-teen and younger audience. Our reviews will primary cover video games for consoles and handhelds, but PC/Mac games may be covered as well.
• Lastly, most parents don’t want to just let their kids play games by themselves. Our reviewers will also play the games and tell if they enjoyed playing it as well.

There are so many games and so many review sites, that it is heartening to a site with knowledgeable parents and plenty of kids to test the games out.

Kudos guys and can’t wait to see more!

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.

Our oldest son plays Sodoku – and articles like this validate what might otherwise be thought of as an old wive’s tale – games keep your brain active, make you smarter, and are good for you.

As a gamermom, I try to stay on top of particularly engaging games. Mastiff is making a version for the Game Boy Advanced – which I expect will go over pretty well. (Althought it will most often be played on our DS system).

If you have a kid interested in the game, take some time to go read up on the mathematics of soduko at Wikipedia.
This is looking like excellent science fair project material. We’ll definitely be cracking at the graph paper and pencils some this weekend.