Wii!!!!!

I got me a Wii for Christmas and it is fun.

I am very impressed by the design of the Wii. The whole channel concept is cute. The controllers are excellent. The whole feel and ease of setup is amazing.

My favorite channel is the weather channel, it shows a rain cloud when it rains and makes a rain sound effect. It stays up-to-date using the WiiConnect24 service. True, it doesn’t do much but the fact they spent that much effort on just weather shows you how nice the rest of the console is.

I’m not sure what I think about the built-in shopping channel though. I can’t see parents giving kids hundreds of dollars worth of Wii points to buy various things online. Maybe it’ll be a good thing, teaching kids the value of money, even if the money is called points. Unfortunately, the purchased channels are not transferable. So if this Wii dies (like most of my console have at one point or another) then I loose all the channels I purchased. On the plus side, my Game cube is my original one; it never died on me.

The Wiimote is an amazing bit of engineering. With accelerometers to detect all kinds of motions and an IR pointing device. It is a good combination of all the different specialty controllers, like the guns, mice and steering wheels, into one device. My only fear is that it may not be good at traditional controls. I won’t be 100% sure I like it till I try out something like Zelda.

I love the idea of the Mii channel I hope a lot of games take advantage of it. You design a character or avatar for yourself and then use it in things like Wii Sports (the default package in the US) and Wii Play (the default package outside the US).

I got to play with some friends yesterday and had a blast. I can really see the potential for party fun with this console. I just need two more remotes or for Fade to get a Wii with two remotes of her own. :-)

I’ve got the following games:

Rayman Raving Rabbids an insane romp involving rabbit abuse in what is essentially a large collection of mini-games.

Elebits is a quirky Japanese style game, similar to Chibi-Robo.

It seems likely we’ll get Super Swing Golf, as Robin is really enjoying the Wii Sports Golf game. I know I’ll get Zelda at some point, but I have to finish up my current RPG first. Wii Play is on the list, in part because I can get another Wiimote with it. As a fan of the WarioWare titles, I will get Smooth Moves when it comes out.

Ooh, so many games, so little time.

Ciao!