Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

whee for wii

I had a chance to play with a friend’s new Nintendo Wii this evening, and boy is it fun.

It’s a rare thing that I just have fun with a game. We played Wii Sports, sampling the boxing, baseball and bowling games. The controller responds to your physical movements, so you actually jab your fists in the air to box and swing your arms to bat. Boxing in particular is actually a bit of a workout! (Indeed, I saw that there’s a fitness routine built into Wii Sports; I’ll have to check it out sometime.) It’s such a unique way to play — and yet, not. To date, video games have made players adhere to an arcane set of buttons to make things happen. But here, you just make the natural motion that you might have made if you were playing this game in the real world — no button mashing required.

It’s about as fun to watch as it is to actually play. We only had one controller for the three of us, so we’d switch off turns playing the games. Watching someone fake-box is a pretty silly sight.

And I love the little interface niceties, like the way the controller actually vibrates a little bit when you move the cursor over something clickable. Or how, in the baseball games, base runners scurry to their destinations and then bouncebouncebounce at the plate; it’s so cute.