The Wii makes The Boston Globe’s “well-informed techie holiday gift guide.”
Wii gets you off your duff
Go ahead, grab another hunk of fruitcake. With Nintendo’s Wii gaming system, you’ll be bowling and boxing back down to your preholiday weight class. One of my students recently brought his Wii into the classroom. Facing a projector screen, and with our wireless Wii Remotes and Nunchuk controllers in our fists, we boxed until the kid beat the tar out of me — in one round. There has been a bit of hype around reports about “Wii elbow” and of remotes flying out of players’ hands. But all real sports come with the risk of injury. Wii is not for wimps. Suggested retail price is about $250, but you’ll probably have to wait until after the holidays to pay that. The system is selling for several hundreds more on many websites.
Hear that? It’s an oncoming wave of Wii fitness knockoff’s coming down the developer pipeline.
Touch Generation titles Brain Age, Brain Boost: Beta Wave, and Brain Boost: Gamma Wave also make the list. Oh, and that little white bombshell the Nintendo DS make an appearance on page 2. Who knew that song “White Christmas” was actually about trendy plastic casings?
Meh.All of this mainstream press for Wii is great for Nintendo, but I worry about it. Every mainstream media outlet that covers Wii – from newspapers to magazines and television programs – always tags it differently and specifically.In today's newspaper, the Wii is a great exercise emulator. In tonight's telecast, it is a family-friendly entertainment device. In yesterday's magazine, it is a dangerous machine that causes broken windows and television screens.Outside of the gaming media, no one seems to be labeling Wii as what it really is: a video game console. Innovative? Sure. Dangerous? If you're an idiot. But for all of the new-fangled workout and brain games, I'm still devoting hours of gaming on Wii through games like Twilight Princess and Red Steel.I guess what I'm saying is that…I worry that people will get the wrong idea of what Wii is all about. It's not just for casual gamers.
Anon. I think that's the entire point. While you and I are gaming away on RS or TP, those news stories are reaching the people who don't play those games at all, and never will. Non-gamers see the exercising and Wii sports as an appealing alternative to hardcore gaming. Sit back and enjoy, people like us get the best of both worlds.For the record, I've been playing TP for hours a day after work, before work and everywhere in between.