Wiilly Niit

Old habits die hard…like not updating my blog very frequently.

I probably should write about the uneventful well baby doctor’s visit that the twins had today (huge sigh of relief), but my wife, the blog subject thief, already has it covered. Instead, I will talk about much more worldly matters.

It’s not quite news anymore but one of my Father’s Day gifts from Kristina came as quite a surprise. After years of Kristina taking a hard line stance against game consoles, she surprised me with a Nintendo Wii. I know my wife trusts me, but she has made rightful claims that her stance was due to her “not wanting to lose her husband.” I guess I should maybe take pause at that notion and wonder if she actually does want to lose her husband, but instead I blindly assumed that she thought I could actually be responsible and not play all day and all night. To prove my responsibility I even waited a couple days until I could clear out an evening to setup the Wii. I did this despite my instinct to set it up right away and let the family fend for themselves for a few days. However, on the evening I did get it installed I “tested” the unit until the, uh, wii hours of the night.

While I’ve certainly played computer games in years past (not sure why I don’t very often these days) the one and only game console I’ve ever owned is an Atari 2600. I sunk plenty of hours into that game console (I used to have the Activision patches to prove it). With that point of reference the Wii is an amazing creation to me. It is a far cry from the days of blowing in the cartridge to get a game to work. When I first opened the box I couldn’t believe how small the console is. Then as I looked at the connections I foolishly thought “how can you fit multiple joysticks into this (I hadn’t yet learned the proper term: Wii Remote - and didn’t think to use the proper generic term: game controller)?” Silly me, there are no wires for the controllers, because they are wireless. Duh. Speaking of wirelessness, it’s also very cool that the Wii comes with the ability to connect wirelessly to the internet. This has allowed me to download Super Mario Bros. for Kristina, which has the nice side effect of enabling my sinister plan for her to become attached to the Wii too.

Anyway, I’m quite happy with the Wii versus the other game consoles. Not only are most game titles a little more kid friendly (I’ll need to start Alex as soon as possible of course), but I really do like the idea of having to get up and move around to play a game. Plus, quite frankly the game controllers found on the Play Station and XBox just confuse and disorient and old man like me. The Wii controllers are quite natural, which is very welcome.

Anyway, I would write more, but clearly I have some important things to do.