Wii Is the Champion
Well, we had our first Wii accident yesterday. Note that I didn’t say “wee,” as in tinkle or piddle. Hey, I’ve raised five kids, and have collectively experienced more than 700 wee accidents. Not including my own.
No, this was an incident involving our new Nintendo Wii (pronounced “Wee”). No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5 sons purchased it last week, combining gifts of cash they each received last Christmas.
You’re probably familiar with Nintendo’s Wii, and I needn’t bother explaining it. And yet, I must. Because there’s an ironclad, inescapable and irrevocable rule of journalism that states: “Always explain a hot new icon of pop/youth culture so that cultures which are not pop or youthful will clearly understand its purpose and why it’s iconic. Good luck if you’re writing about Paris Hilton.”
Anyway, the Nintendo Wii is a new video gaming system that No. 3 son (age 11) says will revolutionize human existence. Or at least his existence.
The new big idea behind Wii is a controller that the player holds somewhat like a wand and waves in wild and exuberant motions, especially when playing the Wii Sports games – tennis, baseball, bowling, boxing, and golf – that come with the system. The racket/bat/ball/fist/club on the screen moves in the direction and with the approximate speed, wildness and exuberance of the wand. One such motion led to our first Wii accident.
My wife observed it all: No. 4 son (age 9) was playing perhaps the most physically demanding Wii Sports game of all – I think it was cribbage – when No. 5 (age 5) casually wandered into the wild and exuberant orbit of No. 4’s wand and wound up with a wildly exuberant fat lip.
To dull his pain, No. 5 begged me to tell him his all-time favorite story: How we managed to find a Wii in the first place. See, they’re pretty hard to get. Evidently, Nintendo’s forecast of how many Wii’s to build for its Christmas ‘06 introduction was pretty Wiik. They were impossible to find, and as we visited stores searching, our faces were consistently laughed in.
Most stores said they didn’t know when they would get more, or how many they’d get. So the boys assigned me the critical task of making hourly calls to the nearby Target store to check on Wii-vailability.
Day in and day out, the very same young lady always answered the phone. Pretty soon, she started to recognize my voice, and then she must’ve memorized our phone number from her caller ID screen, because rather than answering with the somewhat impersonal “Thank you blah blah Target, may I help you blah blah?,” she would just bark “Not YET!” and hang up.
Then came the fateful day when she said “YES”! They’d received 24 Wiis four hours ago, and 5 were left. We raced to the store, spotted a guy walking out with one, but got the counter in time to secure the second-to-last one. Boy, were my kids happy! They went “Wii! Wii! Wii!” all the way home.
The system was easy to set up and they were playing games in no time. One of the first things each kid did was create a sort of virtual version of himself. This is called a “Mii.” I guess you can make as many as you like, and name ‘em whatever you want. I said I wanted to make one named DohRay. My kids gave me that “What the--?” look, and I said, “Y’know – DohRay Mii!”
This reference is apparently meaningless to today’s pop/youth culture; they looked at me blankly and called me Wii-erd.
As he played the Wii Sports games, No. 3 observed that the wild and exuberant motions sort of blended gaming with exercise. He figures the games could be part of a new dieting system: Wii Watchers.
When playing Wii sports, your Mii competes against other pre-fabricated Miis. I find them too tough to beat. No matter what sport I play, they turn me into dead Miit.
Then late last night, after several hours of volleying, I finally won Wii tennis! Well, I only won a point, but still, it was a swiit moment. Unfortunately, I got a little overexcited. And that’s how we had our first Wii wee accident.
# # #
TakefiveT5@yahoo.com
No, this was an incident involving our new Nintendo Wii (pronounced “Wee”). No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5 sons purchased it last week, combining gifts of cash they each received last Christmas.
You’re probably familiar with Nintendo’s Wii, and I needn’t bother explaining it. And yet, I must. Because there’s an ironclad, inescapable and irrevocable rule of journalism that states: “Always explain a hot new icon of pop/youth culture so that cultures which are not pop or youthful will clearly understand its purpose and why it’s iconic. Good luck if you’re writing about Paris Hilton.”
Anyway, the Nintendo Wii is a new video gaming system that No. 3 son (age 11) says will revolutionize human existence. Or at least his existence.
The new big idea behind Wii is a controller that the player holds somewhat like a wand and waves in wild and exuberant motions, especially when playing the Wii Sports games – tennis, baseball, bowling, boxing, and golf – that come with the system. The racket/bat/ball/fist/club on the screen moves in the direction and with the approximate speed, wildness and exuberance of the wand. One such motion led to our first Wii accident.
My wife observed it all: No. 4 son (age 9) was playing perhaps the most physically demanding Wii Sports game of all – I think it was cribbage – when No. 5 (age 5) casually wandered into the wild and exuberant orbit of No. 4’s wand and wound up with a wildly exuberant fat lip.
To dull his pain, No. 5 begged me to tell him his all-time favorite story: How we managed to find a Wii in the first place. See, they’re pretty hard to get. Evidently, Nintendo’s forecast of how many Wii’s to build for its Christmas ‘06 introduction was pretty Wiik. They were impossible to find, and as we visited stores searching, our faces were consistently laughed in.
Most stores said they didn’t know when they would get more, or how many they’d get. So the boys assigned me the critical task of making hourly calls to the nearby Target store to check on Wii-vailability.
Day in and day out, the very same young lady always answered the phone. Pretty soon, she started to recognize my voice, and then she must’ve memorized our phone number from her caller ID screen, because rather than answering with the somewhat impersonal “Thank you blah blah Target, may I help you blah blah?,” she would just bark “Not YET!” and hang up.
Then came the fateful day when she said “YES”! They’d received 24 Wiis four hours ago, and 5 were left. We raced to the store, spotted a guy walking out with one, but got the counter in time to secure the second-to-last one. Boy, were my kids happy! They went “Wii! Wii! Wii!” all the way home.
The system was easy to set up and they were playing games in no time. One of the first things each kid did was create a sort of virtual version of himself. This is called a “Mii.” I guess you can make as many as you like, and name ‘em whatever you want. I said I wanted to make one named DohRay. My kids gave me that “What the--?” look, and I said, “Y’know – DohRay Mii!”
This reference is apparently meaningless to today’s pop/youth culture; they looked at me blankly and called me Wii-erd.
As he played the Wii Sports games, No. 3 observed that the wild and exuberant motions sort of blended gaming with exercise. He figures the games could be part of a new dieting system: Wii Watchers.
When playing Wii sports, your Mii competes against other pre-fabricated Miis. I find them too tough to beat. No matter what sport I play, they turn me into dead Miit.
Then late last night, after several hours of volleying, I finally won Wii tennis! Well, I only won a point, but still, it was a swiit moment. Unfortunately, I got a little overexcited. And that’s how we had our first Wii wee accident.
# # #
TakefiveT5@yahoo.com
posted by Don Stuart at 9:53 AM
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