After a week of Wii, how are we holding up? Well, Corwin and I have played a lot of a game Charles bought, Lego Star Wars. Corwin has played the original and sequel on the computer and his GameBoy, so he has a bit of an advantage. Corwin has also broken the tennis game from Wii Sports. When he plays the computer, it only puts up its two best players against him and he usually wins. What’s sad is that at first, I could crush him like the insect he is at the game, but now I can barely score against him. At least I am still a better virtual bowler than he is.
Charles, on the other hand, has become obsessed with getting a “pro” rating at a sports game. As one plays a game against the computer, one is reward with “skill” points depending on the outcome of the game. A rating of 1,000 makes one a “pro”. Corwin was very vocally proud when he made “pro” in tennis, so naturally Charles had to become a pro too. He didn’t find it as easy as Corwin and became very frustrated, to the extent that he declared he hated playing the game. After much comforting by Mom, Charles was reconciled to struggling for his pro rating, which he worked on for a couple days but has kind of faded off on. At least he’s not crying in abject misery about it anymore. He did have a 202 game, so there’s some hope.
Mom got Barbi, Island Princess for Alice, but she’s still too young to play it, so one of us has to play it for her (the boys, naturally, are constitutionally incapable of tolerating that much cuteness at a time). As a result, Alice hasn’t gotten much out of the Wii. She does, however, really like to walk in front of the TV or through the boys while they’re playing despite repeated and urgent warnings. I am completely amazed one of them hasn’t smacked her a good one yet. We have only had a couple of furniture impacts, although Corwin has been saved by the wrist strap at least twice.
Mom and Corwin have suffered from Wii-njuries, getting sore in the arms and elsewhere from playing too much. Luckily, I am in such great shape that I wasn’t affected.
Not sure if it’s a sign of advanced age or overseas isolation but I haven’t got the faintest clue what a Wii is…
Wii is a game console produced by Sony. It’s main gimmick is that the controller is wireless and motion sensitive, so that (for instance) you play tennis by swinging your hand with the controller as if you were swinging a tennis racket. That’s how people get injured playing it. It was the hot console this year and last year, which is stunning. Even more stunning is that Mom decided to get this, not me or the kids.
Due to the motion controller, it has a broader age appeal than the standard console. Even folks not comfortable with the standard joystick/button controller thing, can pick up the wii controller and get the sports games to work fairly intuitively. One of the newspapers yesterday had a story about how the Wii was a hit with senior centers. It had a photo of an older gentleman who looked like he was playing the bowling game.