Around October 2006, the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii went on pre-sale on the same day. People lined up outside of electronics stores to pre-order the PS3 for $700 in the hopes of selling it for $2000. The lucky few who were given the right to sell them before they actually had one (people with at least 50 sales on eBay, a nice little “screw you” to casual sellers) actually did make decent money on them, while those who had to wait until they actually had one were lucky to make a profit. Within a few days of the official launch, PS3s were selling for less than cost (that is, if you were lucky enough to get a buyer who didn’t send you a fake PayPal payment confirmation with a shipping address in Nigeria). Anyone who paid full price for one was a sucker. The reality was that the hype was fueled by speculation. No one actually wanted to own a PS3, just to sell one.
The Wii, on the other hand, sold for $250 and auctioned for $500 or more until Christmas. And then into 2007. And when supply still hadn’t caught up with demand by next Christmas, the Wii became the first console in history to be “the toy to own” two Christmases in a row. It’s Christmas 2007 and the hottest toy in the world is the year-old Nintendo Wii. And you can’t have one!
The Wii, like the GameCube, launched without a Mario title, but by 2007, Super Mario Galaxy was out, so the Wii was getting even more exciting. By late April 2008, I still hadn’t seen a Wii in a store. I still haven’t. Demand apparently still exceeds supply, because you simply can’t go to a store and buy one. But, in the previously mentioned April 2008, my local supermarket advertised a sale on the Wii. I know (because I’ve called them every week since 2006) that they get two or three Wiis at a time every few weeks, they can arrive at any time of day, and they’ll be gone the second they arrive. Short of living in the electronics section, you can’t have one. But there was a sale, and since they never have the things that are on sale, my big plan was to wait outside until the store opened, ask for a Wii, be told that they didn’t have any at that location, accuse the store of pulling a bait and switch and demand a rain check. When they advised me that there were no rain checks, I was going to ask to speak to a manager, who I assumed would make an exception because of the lack of supply during an advertised sale and allow me to buy one the next time one was in stock.
To my utter astonishment, there were Wiis in stock when the store opened. I finally own a Wii. I’ve been back to the store many times since, and I haven’t seen another one. They’re still hot, and you still can’t have one.
The Nintendo Wii comes with a game called Wii Sports, which consists of 5 games (tennis, bowling, golf, boxing, and baseball). Tennis is okay but would probably be better with a second human playing. Bowling is quite nice. I enjoy boxing. Baseball has been my favourite. And then there’s golf. Golf is an absolutely beautiful game. The trees and water are so realistic, I could scarcely believe that so much effort had been made in a free game to show off the Wii’s capabilities. The game itself, of course, is unplayable.
I’m on the green and I need to hit the ball gently. I swing the Wiimote like a putter. I’ve been playing miniature golf since I was a child, and I’m very good at putting. So I swing the putter, and nothing happens. Right. Putting just doesn’t work at all. The system isn’t sensitive enough to detect that I’ve swung the Wiimote. So how to putt then? Well, you don’t actually have to swing the Wiimote to play baseball either, though it’s more fun if you do. To pitch, I just shake the Wiimote. All that’s necessary is for the end of the Wiimote to move enough to detect motion. So I try to shake the Wiimote gently to get a gentle putt. Nothing happens. I shake it a bit harder and nothing happens. I shake it a bit harder, and my character drives the ball at maximum strength and launches the ball off of the green. Those are the only options. Every motion I’ve tried is either too soft to result in a swing, or so hard that the ball is hit at 100%. It’s all or nothing, 0% or 100%. Screw this game.
Okay, so Wii Sports comes with a fitness program that keeps a graph of your fitness level as you play every day. That seems like a good idea: a fun way to motivate me to do some exercise every day. So, I enter the program and it randomly selects the games that I’ll be tested with. This is the same as Brain Age or any of the other mind enhancing games for the DS, except that Brain Age picks about five or six games for me to play. There are only two games in Brain Age that I suck at, so as long as I don’t get them, my brain age is usually 18 (the highest score). Even if I get one of those two games, my score in the other tests is usually enough to keep me close to 18. In Wii Fitness, however, only 3 games are selected. If you’re bad at even one of them, you’re playing for 67%. If you’re bad at two of them, you’re down to 33%. So, like anyone, I kick ass at some games and suck at others. Depending on my luck, my fitness age (composed of reflexes, speed and balance) ranges from 20 (the best) to 45. That’s what happens when you use too small a sample size. A range that large is ridiculous.
Brain Age will only track your brain age once per day, but you can take the test as many times as you want. The game just warns you that your score won’t be counted, which is fine by me. In Wii Fitness, after I got a lousy score due to unlucky random game selection, I wanted to try again to get the same score I got the day before (20). Wii Fitness informs me that I can only play once per day. Yes, that’s fine, I realize that this is my score for today. I just want to take the test again for myself. No, Wii Fitness refuses to let me try again. What??? Um, excuse me, but I own you and I’ll play as many @&!*ing times as I want! Have you ever heard of a game that told you that you can’t play it? I was stunned. A game that refuses to let me play. I just can’t get over this. How do you respond to that kind of insolence? I didn’t know whether to find a lawyer or a sledgehammer. I decided to spare the disc’s life, but our relationship was never the same. In time, we grew apart, to the point that I don’t even think about Wii Fitness any more. No piece of software has ever refused to let me play as much as I wanted before. It’s never happened before, and it had better not happen again. If this is the future of gaming, I’m going to start looking for John Connor. Today our computers are making the rules and telling us how and when we can use them, tomorrow they could be telling us how to work for them.
So, my overall impression of the Wii was both positive and negative. Wii Play is only your first contact with the Wii. To see what the Wii is really about, I need to play a Mario game. Tomorrow: Super Mario Galaxy.